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IT freelance & contract jobs in Germany by city 2026

Where in Germany are IT freelance projects advertised – and how do they differ by city? Of 44,305 analysed listings, 48% name one of the 15 largest project cities as their location; Frankfurt leads with 13%. The 10 largest each have a page of their own with the remote share, German requirement, contract types, roles, skills and the companies posting the projects.

By . Data: 44,305 project listings on German IT freelance project boards, July 2026 – October 2026. Published , last updated .

The cities with the most IT freelance projects

The bar is the share of all analysed listings that name the city as their location; below each name the number of projects. Click a city to open its page. Not every listing names one of these cities: 8.6% name remote work instead of a place, 14% no place or only “Germany”, 29% another place or a region and 0.9% several of the cities.

  1. Frankfurt5,630 projects13%
  2. Berlin3,014 projects6.8%
  3. Munich2,473 projects5.6%
  4. Hamburg1,908 projects4.3%
  5. Cologne1,641 projects3.7%
  6. Düsseldorf1,123 projects2.5%
  7. Stuttgart1,114 projects2.5%
  8. Nuremberg924 projects2.1%
  9. Hanover733 projects1.7%
  10. Bonn687 projects1.6%
  11. Mannheim485 projects1.1%
  12. Karlsruhe411 projects0.9%
  13. Bremen409 projects0.9%
  14. Essen329 projects0.7%
  15. Dresden319 projects0.7%

Cities compared: remote, German, employee leasing and engineering

For each city with a page: the share of fully remote projects (of those stating a remote share), the share requiring German, the share of employment – employee leasing (ANÜ), fixed-term or permanent positions – and the share of engineering projects. Fully remote most often: Düsseldorf (45%), least often: Hanover (18%); across all projects: 39%. Listings in Bonn (66%) require German most often, in Nuremberg (43%) least often; across all projects: 52%. Employment instead of freelance: most in Frankfurt (29%), least in Nuremberg (4.8%); across all projects: 16%.

CityProjectsShare100% remoteGerman requiredLeasing & employmentEngineering
Frankfurt5,63013%39%64%29%46%
Berlin3,0146.8%39%61%19%31%
Munich2,4735.6%41%58%21%28%
Hamburg1,9084.3%36%55%22%26%
Cologne1,6413.7%31%58%28%40%
Düsseldorf1,1232.5%45%55%17%30%
Stuttgart1,1142.5%31%54%17%28%
Nuremberg9242.1%20%43%4.8%40%
Hanover7331.7%18%55%22%32%
Bonn6871.6%33%66%18%39%
All projects44,305100%39%52%16%30%

Typical IT skills per city

The skills a city's listings ask for most clearly more often than all projects – often a hint at the industries and large clients there. Each city's page has the full list, the most in-demand skills and the roles.

How to use the data

  1. Looking for projects nearby? Your city's page shows which roles and skills are asked for more often there than elsewhere – and which agencies post the most projects.
  2. The location is the client's, not necessarily where you work: 93% of the projects stating a remote share allow at least partly remote work. How many days on site they ask for: How remote are IT freelance projects?.
  3. No German? English-speaking IT contracts in Germany shows where and in which roles English is enough.

Projectmatch matches new projects against your profile automatically and shows the distance to the location. Browse current projects or try it now.

See also: IT recruitment agencies in Germany, Freelance vs employee leasing in Germany, The most in-demand developer roles and IT freelance projects by industry.

Method

We count the location a listing names – the client's, not where the freelancers live. The project boards' spellings are folded onto a fixed list of the 15 most frequent project cities: Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Hanover, Bonn, Mannheim, Bremen, Essen, Karlsruhe and Dresden (“München”, “D-Großraum München” and “Munich (80331)” count as Munich; Frankfurt (Oder) does not count as Frankfurt). A city gets a page of its own from 1.25% of all listings; a city that already has a page keeps it down to 1%. Every figure of a city stands against all projects of the same months. A share counts as higher or lower only when it differs from the share of the projects outside the city by at least 2 standard errors, from both that share and the share of all projects by at least 1 percentage point, and – for “higher” – at least 20 of the city's projects carry it; otherwise it reads “about as often”. A skill is typical for a city when at least 20 of its projects name it and its listings ask for it at least 1.5 times as often as all listings – measured against the number of skills its listings name on average, because listings naming more skills name each one more often. An AI model reads the skills from each project description and assigns the role from its title and skills, see The most in-demand developer roles; the remote share, German requirement and contract type are explicit statements. A company is named only when it posted at least 20 of the city's projects; repeats of the same listing count once. The figures are updated monthly.