Digital nomads, or location independent remote workers, are people who live at least part of the year away from their home country while working remotely as an employee for their employer, as a contractor for companies or if they have their own business for themselves.

The classic stereotype of digital nomads is that they move fast from place to place every week or few weeks, while working on their laptop on a beach. Not much of that is true anymore in 2025: most people on Nomads.com move only every 4 to 6 months, to the same handful of places, work from coworking spaces or cafes and have close ties to the places they visit and regularly come back to to meet their friends from all over the world. And hardly anybody works from the beach: too much sand, and too much sun glare on your screen.

Just like the traditional nomadic tribes which "follow a fixed annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements", remote working travelers do the same. Many like to stay in climates around 23°C/74°F, and will move based on the seasons.

The term "digital nomad" has been used and abused over the last decades, including in shady online courses and get rich quick schemes, and for that reason many remote workers who travel are wary of using that term to describe themselves. Unfortunately the alternative terms haven't taken off yet. The faster that remote work becomes mainstream, the faster the term digital nomad will go out of fashion and we'll see it as normal that people work from different countries based on their personal preferences in living.