Boston's Growth In Coworking Space Outpaces The National Average

Greater Boston’s elevated office vacancy is providing coworking operators ample opportunities to expand into a market rich with innovators in need of flexible office space.

The market's coworking sector saw a significant increase in its real estate footprint over the last year, ending 2025 with a 26% year-over-year inventory increase, according to Coworking Cafe data.

The growth significantly outpaced the national growth rate for coworking space, 16%, during the same period.

At the end of Q4 2025, Greater Boston had 265 coworking spaces available, ranking seventh in the nation in this metric. The market hosted just over 6M SF of coworking space, making it the sixth-largest market.

For reference, Greater Boston only ranks 10th in population nationally, according to census data. 

Coworking space is benefiting from continued high vacancy rates for office space both in Boston and nationally, giving coworking operators the chance to expand as landlords look for tenants, coworking industry analysts say.

Downtown Boston vacancy rose to 18.9% at the end of 2025 with suburban office vacancy slightly higher at 21.6%, according to CBRE.

Boston-based Workbar announced this month it would expand one space in Needham and open another in Harvard Square. The company will now have 12 locations in Massachusetts.

Sarah Travers, the coworking operator's CEO, said the Boston startup economy has been one of the largest beneficiaries of growth in coworking spaces, as more companies seek flexible leases and local spaces to establish a presence in the city.

"Boston has always been a place where new ways of working take shape. That's driven by the universities, the startups, venture capital,” Travers said. "People want to build and scale companies here."

Travers said roughly half of the companies using her spaces are in the software and technology sectors, including those seeking office space to prop up young artificial intelligence companies.

Nationally, coworking has become one of the fastest-growing subsectors within the office sector, as companies' office needs have evolved due to a mix of remote work and return-to-office mandates. 

The total U.S. coworking footprint grew 4.7% quarter-over-quarter to 159.4M SF.

That footprint still made up just roughly 1.3% of the total 12.5B SF of U.S. office space by the end of the year, but enthusiasm for workspace is growing. What once was an office asset subclass for startups is now increasingly being utilized by the largest companies in the country, including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In Boston, coworking spaces make up roughly 2.2% of the office inventory at 6M SF, according to Coworking Cafe. International Workplace Group, the parent company of Regus, operates the most coworking space in the state, listing more than 64 private office locations, including nine serviced office spaces in Boston.

Workbar’s Needham expansion at 117 Kendrick St. marks its second at that location, which is owned by The Bulfinch Cos. The 40K SF location often is in high demand, enough so that Travers joked she hated to take a chair there.

"Workbar has seen real, self-sustained demand for what we are offering people in Boston," Travers said. "We do not expand just to expand."

The new Harvard Square location will be in Trinity Property Management’s 50 Church St., where it will take up 10K SF. Trinity President John DiGiovanni told the Boston Business Journal the firm had been looking to bring a coworking space to the site.

"As owners, we’re constantly evaluating how the workspace is evolving," he said.

Where in the past, coworking space design has been steered by a “make do” aesthetic, there has been more of a premium in the marketplace for well-designed space in the past few years.

Boston will soon have a high-end player in the coworking sector.

In January, boutique coworking operator The Malin announced plans to expand into the market. The New York-based operator is taking up 20K SF of space on the second floor of WS Development's 480K SF 111 Harbor Way in the Seaport.

The Seaport lease is part of a wave of expansion for the company, which previously unveiled plans to open coworking space in Nashville, Savannah, Georgia, Austin and Washington, D.C., in early 2026. In total, the operator has 12 locations encompassing roughly 260K SF.

The Malin founder Charlie Robinson said his organization has long sought to expand into Boston because of its favorable fundamentals for coworking space.

"We've always had Boston on our radar as being perhaps one of the very best locations for The Malin across the U.S.," Robinson said. "We have a lot of confidence in what we're going to be able to do in the Boston Seaport.”

Robinson said there has been an increase in opportunities for coworking spaces to open in Boston and nationally as landlords look for willing tenants to bring value to their office space. 

Robinson said the firm's relationship with WS Development helped the company find its Seaport space.

"There's a flight to quality happening across real estate, and we endeavor to be very much a part of that,” he said.