Is coworking cheaper than your own office in San Francisco?

A flex seat runs $272 to $725 a month per person at published San Francisco list prices (WeWork All Access from $272, a dedicated desk from $494, a two-person private suite about $725 each), while a leased office of your own runs about $560 to $1,860 per person per month across the neighbourhoods we price, plus a one-time setup cost. Which is cheaper is decided almost entirely by which street you sign: at the softest rents in the city your own office undercuts a dedicated desk, at the dearest it costs three times one, and the real difference is a three-to-five-year lease versus a month's notice.

The fork

Coworking or your own office in San Francisco?

A flex seat runs $272 to $725 a month per person, published. A leased office of your own runs about $560 to $1,860, plus one moving-in cost. Which of those is cheaper is decided almost entirely by which street you sign.

Flex prices read from the operators’ own pages 19 September 2026. Office figures are ours, priced the way every page on this site prices.

The flex side

Open seating, national operator

from $272 a month per person

WeWork All Access, monthly membership. WeWork no longer lists a separate monthly hot-desk product in San Francisco; this is the nearest published figure.
wework.com, read 19 September 2026

A desk that is yours

from $494 a month

WeWork dedicated desk, citywide starting price; individual locations listed at $494, $608 and $665.
wework.com, read 19 September 2026

A small private office

from $1,450 a month for two, about $725 each

WeWork private suites are priced per office: from $560 for one person, $1,450 for two, $1,760 for three — about $560 to $725 per person.
wework.com, read 19 September 2026

A premium flex floor

$550 a month per person

Mindspace at 575 Market Street, full membership; its own blog puts hot desks from $450 and small-team offices around $2,500 a month.
mindspace.me, read 19 September 2026

The city average

$287 a month per person

Average San Francisco coworking membership across listings; the same house averages a serviced private office at $953.88 per office.
coworkingcafe.com, read 19 September 2026

These are starting prices, struck through and asterisked on the pages they come from, and they move with demand. The last row is an average across houses, so it names no single desk.

The office side

Rent at asking rents, plus the nine recurring Services, citywide across all 23 neighbourhoods we price.

A team of 5

$3,080–$9,295 per month

$616–$1,859 per person, in 650–1,050 square feet

A team of 8

$4,660–$14,135 per month

$583–$1,767 per person, in 1,040–1,680 square feet

A team of 10

$5,830–$17,545 per month

$583–$1,755 per person, in 1,300–2,100 square feet

A team of 12

$6,880–$20,525 per month

$573–$1,710 per person, in 1,560–2,520 square feet

A team of 15

$8,495–$25,720 per month

$566–$1,715 per person, in 1,950–3,150 square feet

A team of 20

$11,245–$33,970 per month

$562–$1,699 per person, in 2,600–4,200 square feet

The low end assumes the softest asking rents in the city (Bayview, the Tenderloin); the high end the dearest (Jackson Square, the Presidio). Furniture, the IT fit-out and the move are not in these rows: they are once, not monthly, and they run $8,250–$28,000 for a team of five and $16,550–$60,300 for a team of twenty. Flex space includes the furniture.

What the prices don’t say

Three things that decide this before the numbers do.

The term

A flex membership cancels with a month or three of notice. A San Francisco office lease is three to five years, personally guaranteed in most buildings a ten-person company can afford. The office is cheaper per person only if the team is still that size in year three — which is why the fork is really a question about the hiring plan, not the real estate.

What sits inside the number

A flex seat includes the desks, the internet, the cleaning and the coffee. Our monthly rows include the same nine Services — but not the furniture until it is bought, and not the landlord’s operating-expense pass-through until it is capped. Per person, the honest gap between the two sides is narrower than either price suggests.

Where we lose

If you stay in flex, you do not need us. Everything Concierge takes over is work flex space does for you, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. The Dossier is for the month a team decides to leave it — the sixty days that start when a lease is signed.

Not printed

Three figures we could not stand behind, so this page does not carry them.

Industrious, the other large flex operator here, publishes no San Francisco list prices — its site is inquiry-only, and the aggregator figures circulating for it are undated.
A per-person price for a WeWork private suite at every size: the listings are per office, so the per-person figures above are one operator's published suite divided by its seats.
A discount rate. Every flex price above is a starting price; what a desk actually costs after the current promotion ends is nowhere published.

If you sign

Tell us the neighbourhood, the arrival date, and the headcount. The Dossier dates the ten Services — lease first — to your own move, and takes no card. And if the fork is still open, the lease clauses are worth reading before either price: an uncapped operating-expense pass-through can cost more per year than the desk you didn’t rent.

Concierge is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a page this size gets priced, sourced and published in a day.

Begin the Dossier What to strike from the lease