Coworking vs. traditional office
A real cost breakdown for small teams deciding between the two, not just rent versus seat price.
Founders usually compare rent versus a seat price and stop there. The real comparison has five or six line items on the traditional side that never show up in the broker's pitch.
Rent is one line. Add the security deposit (often six to ten months in a lot of Indian markets), fit-out and furniture, an IT setup for wifi and networking, a maintenance or housekeeping hire, and the broker's fee. Most of this is invisible until you are three weeks into negotiating a lease.
A coworking seat price already includes furniture, wifi, housekeeping, and usually reception and security. That is the entire appeal for a small team: one predictable monthly number instead of six separate vendors to manage.
As a rough rule, coworking tends to win on cost up to somewhere around fifteen to twenty five people, depending on the city and the quality of space you are comparing. Past that, a managed traditional office often starts costing less per seat, since the per-seat overhead of amenities gets diluted across more people.
Ask two or three operators for a per-seat quote at your team size, then ask a broker for an all-in traditional cost at the same size. Compare the totals, not just rent.
A traditional lease is usually a three to five year lock-in. If your headcount is uncertain, that lock-in has a real cost: either you overpay for empty seats, or you break the lease and eat the penalty. Coworking contracts are typically monthly to annual, which is worth something even if the sticker price looks higher.
Meeting room credits run out fast for client-facing teams. Printing, extra access cards, and day passes for visiting team members can add up. Ask for the full price list, not just the headline seat price, before you compare numbers.
Once you have real numbers from both sides, put them next to each other for a twelve month horizon, not a one month snapshot. Browse coworking spaces with pricing in your city to build the coworking side of the comparison quickly.
Neither option is universally cheaper. It depends entirely on team size, how certain your headcount is, and how much you value not managing furniture and wifi vendors yourself.