A remote job is not remote for everyone: we counted who can take them

Type "remote jobs" into any search box and you get the same promise: work from anywhere. Then you open the listing, scroll to the end, and find the line that decides everything: Applicants must be based in the United States.

We wanted to know how often that happens, so we counted. Every listing on remoty.work is read for the countries and regions it accepts. On 4 November 2026 we asked the board one question per country: of the 17,035 live remote jobs, how many could a person living here actually take?

The answer depends on your passport, not your skills #

Someone in Ohio and someone in Lagos can have the same skills, the same laptop and the same fibre connection. The first can apply to 8,701 remote jobs. The second can apply to 605: one door for every fourteen.

Why so many countries land near 600 #

Notice how many countries cluster between 560 and 640. That is not a coincidence. About 530 listings on the board are open to anyone, anywhere: we checked with Mongolia, a country almost no ad names, and it gets 529. Every country gets those. On top of that floor, a country picks up the region-wide jobs that include it, such as "EMEA" for Africa and Europe or "APAC" for Asia, which is why Nigeria and Morocco land near 600 and Pakistan near 560.

What separates the United States from Nigeria is everything above that: jobs open to one country, a short list of countries, or a region the US sits in.

So the useful question for a job seeker is not "how many remote jobs exist?" but "how many are open to me, and which ones?" A board that shows you all 17,035 without that filter is showing you mostly doors that are locked.

"Your region is listed" is not the same as "you can apply" #

There is a second, quieter number behind the table. For Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and most of Africa and Europe, about 736 more listings name a region that includes the country, such as "EMEA" or "Europe, Middle East and Africa", but then name a specific country in the text. A typical example: the location says "Remote, EMEA" and the description says "you must be eligible to work in the UK".

We do not count those as open. We show them separately with a warning, because applying to them usually ends in an automatic rejection, and the time is better spent elsewhere.

Why companies restrict where you live #

It is rarely about talent. Hiring someone means paying them legally where they live: payroll, income tax, social contributions, benefits, and the labour law of that country. A company that has no legal entity in Nigeria and no employer-of-record contract covering it simply cannot put a Nigerian resident on payroll, even if the work is fully remote.

Time zones are the second reason. Many teams want overlap with US or European working hours, and say so with a region instead of a country.

Contractor roles are the exception. A company can pay an independent contractor almost anywhere, which is why contract and freelance listings make up a larger share of the jobs open to people outside the US and Western Europe.

What this means if you are job hunting from outside the US #

• Filter by eligibility first, then by title. Searching 17,035 jobs and reading each one's fine print wastes days. Searching the 605 or 900 you can actually take is a weekend.
• Read the last paragraph before the first. Country limits hide in "Requirements" or "Location" sections at the end.
• Treat region labels as a hint, not a promise. "EMEA" or "LATAM" means the company is thinking about your region, not that it can hire there.
• Look at contract roles and employer-of-record hires. Companies that use Deel, Remote.com, Oyster and similar services often say so, and they can hire in far more countries.

On remoty.work, pick your country once and every job page tells you, in one line, whether you can take it. That line is the reason the site exists.

How we counted #

Each listing's location text and description are read for countries, regions and phrases like "must be based in". A job is open to a country when it is open worldwide, names that country, or names a region containing it with nothing in the text narrowing it to somewhere else. The counts above are live board figures taken on 4 November 2026; the board changes every two hours, so the numbers on the site today will differ slightly. The method has limits: ads that state no location at all are treated cautiously, and an ad can be wrong about itself.