A typical coworking space offers an average of 90 desks across roughly 1,200 m². Yet few actually match these averages. In cities with over one million inhabitants, locations are significantly larger. As community size shrinks, spaces become more compact. In settlements under 20,000 people, there are on average 22 desks on about 270m² (2900 ft²).
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Space Size in Square Meters per Location (Early 2025)
Average location size increases with company age, partly because older providers expand more often. Multi-location companies run larger sites than single-space operators, and the share of the latter continues to fall. Today only 53 percent of all coworking spaces maintain a single location, down from over 75 percent ten years ago.
How many locations coworking space companies operate
Space per Desk on the Rise
On average, each desk accounts for about 14.4 m² (155 ft²). This metric is calculated by dividing a location’s total area by its number of desks, and it stands well above pre-pandemic levels.
As spaces grow, the area per desk generally rises because not only do private offices increase, but so do meeting and event spaces. These non-desk work areas count toward total floor area but do not add desks. Individual locations have also grown gradually in size each year.
The highest area per desk appears in mid-sized locations; very small coworking spaces fall far below this level.
Average Area per Desk (Early 2025)
Very large spaces hover around the average, likely because their layouts favor private offices over meeting or event areas. Chains with ten or more locations average just 12.5 m² per desk, while sites with 200 desks or more drop below 10 m² per desk.
It is all the more striking that North America shows the highest area per desk. There, private offices contribute more to revenue and require more space per workstation—perhaps not within each individual office but in the overall layout. Moreover, these offices often sit within mid-sized coworking spaces whose essential meeting and event facilities likely push area per desk well above average.
Another alternative hypothesis: In North America, the number of desks offered on the same floor area may have been reduced more often in response to increased demand for one-person offices—or general shifts in office-use habits—so that fewer desks now occupy private offices on unchanged square feet.
By contrast, European operators more often sell desk-based memberships in open workspaces. Although these memberships generate lower revenue per person, they allow more desks on the same floor area and thus achieve a higher average desk density.
Many Desks Within a Small Space Don’t Guarantee Profit
Desk density alone has little direct impact on profitability; offerings and layout matter more. Only locations with extreme desk density appear frequently unprofitable—and these are typically very small coworking spaces.
►► Next page: Revenue Sources and Earnings of Coworking Spaces
