Sleep for free

Ten ways to get free lodgings on your travels

Yes, it can be done! There are at least ten ways you can sleep absolutely for free. And the best news, none of them involves park benches or sneaking out of hotel windows via the fire escape at 4am.

From hospitality exchanges, home swapping, staying in monasteries, house sitting, or crewing a boat to sleeping on trains, in airports, on federal land, and even in strangers' apartments—here is how to do it.

Sleeping for Free
Totally free
• CouchSurfing
• Sleeping in Airports
• Crewing a Boat
• House sitting
• Free Camping (U.S.)
• Overnight trains

Often free/small membership fee
• Servas
• Monasteries
• Home Swapping
• Hospitality Exchanges

Some of these techniques do involve joining a club or network, and there is a fee involved with that, but spending the night won't cost you a dime—and besides, those one-time fees tend to cost less than a single night's stay in a mid-priced hotel.

These pages listed to the right cover all the freebie accommodation opportunities—just in case you want to skip ahead to the one that most piques your interest.

Or you can read about each option in turn to help decide which one suits you best, starting with the techniques that are (more or less) totally free and working our way up to ones that involve small fees or have some sort of catch.

Let's get right to it, and start with the noblest of the hospitality exchange networks, Servas.



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This article was last updated in June 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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Copyright © 1998–2011 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.