35 Jobs Where You Work Alone [Includes 4 with Zero Human Interaction]

Lots of jobs are hard on introverts — office politics, team-building events, and (ironically) happy hours can really get some people down. 

Luckily, there are a lot of options out there for people who prefer to work alone. While it’s pretty difficult to have absolutely no human contact at all, it’s definitely possible to find work that requires very little interaction with other people. 

In this post, we’re going to detail some of the best options out there. We’ll start with the jobs that are alone alone — jobs where the only thing you’ll ever interact with is your computer screen. 

Unfortunately, unless you’re a stock or crypto wizard, these types of completely solo jobs don’t pay all that well and are really only good for some extra cash. So, we’ll also cover some jobs that are mostly alone but require some degree of interaction with others. 

We’ll break the list down into four categories:

• Completely alone (no human interaction at all)
• Online interactions only
• Minimal in-person interactions
• Work for and by yourself, but interact with others

Jobs where you work alone — truly alone

This first category of jobs is about as alone as you can get — there’s no human interaction whatsoever involved in the day-to-day of these jobs. 

Unfortunately, these jobs also pay the least, to the extent that calling them “jobs” is a bit of a stretch — they’re essentially mini-gigs that can help you earn a bit of side cash, but not much more. 

Ipsos iSay

In a nutshell: Fill out surveys to earn small rewards. 

Ipsos iSay is a survey platform run by Ipsos, a leader in the market research space. These surveys are one of the ways that Ipsos conducts its market research, so your answers may go on to affect big decisions in small ways. 

When you fill out surveys for iSay, there is zero human interaction involved — you’re simply presented with surveys, answer the questions, and earn your rewards. Once you’ve completed enough surveys to rack up 500 points (equivalent to $5), you can cash out. It generally takes four weeks for payment to reach you. 

Your hourly rate on iSay will probably be under $2/hour. So, it’s not going to make you rich, but if you want to spend an hour a day filling out surveys, you could pay for your Netflix subscription or a few cups of coffee. 

Key takeaways:

• Easy way to earn money completely on your own
• Extremely low pay makes iSay only useful for side income

Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk)

In a nutshell: Complete short tasks to earn side cash.

Amazon mTurk is similar to Ipsos iSay in that the tasks you complete will be very simple and the payouts proportionally small (albeit typically a bit higher than iSay’s). 

Instead of just surveys, you’ll be completing HITs, which stands for “Human Intelligence Tasks” — short tasks that AI and bots can’t quite do well enough yet or tasks where human input is needed for other reasons. Sometimes, a HIT might be a survey, but it could also be identifying objects in a picture, or typing out some information contained in an image. 

Once again, you won’t be able to use this to make a full-time income, but you can make some side cash with mTurk. According to various user reports, you can probably expect to make around $1-5/hour on the platform. 

Key takeaways:

• Broader variety of tasks
• Generally better pay than iSay

Transcription (CrowdSurf, Rev) 

In a nutshell: Transcribe video and audio content to improve accessibility for hearing-impaired people. 

Transcription is a popular way to make money on your own online thanks to its minimal barriers to entry and significantly better pay compared to platforms like mTurk and iSay. Two of the most popular platforms in this space are Rev and CrowdSurf. 

Transcriptionists work to turn audio into text — they’re the ones who make closed captions and subtitles. Nowadays, much of that work has been taken over by AI, but there’s still a market for human transcription thanks to its improved accuracy on source material that’s particularly hard to hear. 

Rev advertises that its transcriptionists earn an average of $245/month, with the highest monthly earning on the platform coming out to $1,495/month. While most people won’t be able to make enough to fully support themselves through these sites, you can make enough money to cover some of your expenses. 

Key takeaways:

• Significantly better earnings, but still not typically enough to replace a full-time income
• Work is more mentally taxing than the other entries in this category

Jobs with online interactions only

This next category of jobs trades a bit of solitude for some higher earnings. While you won’t be able to avoid dealing with other people entirely with these jobs, they require significantly fewer social interactions than most work out there. In most of these roles, you only need to exchange emails with your clients and get on the occasional call. 

Unlike the last category, these jobs can very much provide a full-time income — and a very good one at that. Many of these jobs require a high degree of skill to be successful (but formal education or a college degree is not always required), so they’re not as easy to jump into, but they’re worth working towards if your goal is to work on your own. 

The list of jobs that fit here is practically endless, so we’re just going to provide a few examples to set you in the right direction. Some jobs you might want to consider include:

• Writer: If you’ve got a knack for language, you can earn money writing blogs, articles, website copy, advertisements, and all sorts of other online and print content for businesses. 
• Graphic designer: Are you artistically inclined? Graphic designers can earn money designing websites, company logos, product packaging, and more. 
• Web developer: Combine technical and graphic skills to create appealing websites for your clients. You’ll need a solid understanding of coding, web technologies, and some principles of graphic design to succeed. 
• Data entry: Earn money by inputting information into databases. Unlike the other jobs in this category, this one typically has minimal barriers to entry. 
• Virtual assistant: Virtual assistants take care of administrative tasks, like planning calls and managing emails. There’s more interaction involved here, but it takes place entirely online. 
• Social media manager: If you’re plugged into social media, you can turn it into a career by managing other people’s and businesses’ accounts. This job requires a significant amount of interaction with others, but it’s all online. 
• Software developer: Software developers spend a lot of time alone with their code. You’ll often need to work on a team with other developers, but there are lots of remote roles where those interactions will take place online only. Plus, you’ll be expected to spend a lot of time on your own with nothing but your code. 

If you’re starting out as a freelancer, using platforms, like Fiverr, Upwork, and Thumbtack can be a great way to get your footing. 

Jobs with limited in-person interactions

This next set of jobs doesn’t provide an advantage over the last category in terms of earning potential, but they are significantly easier to jump into. While the last group of jobs typically requires a high level of skill to succeed in, the jobs in this category don’t usually require no prior experience or education. In most cases, you can simply apply and start earning within a matter of days. 

Pet sitting

In a nutshell: Take care of animals and only interact with other people briefly. 

If you don’t want to deal with people, you might find spending your day with cute furry creatures significantly more appealing. 

Pet sitters have to interact with people sometimes, but it’s usually only for brief periods when first meeting a new animal and its owner. For example, you’ll need to meet your clients in person when arriving at their house to take care of their pet, but after that brief exchange, you’ll be on your own with just the company of your new furry friend. 

Pet sitting isn’t necessarily the dream job it may appear to be at first glance though: some animals can be very hard to take care of, and some animals can become aggressive or otherwise difficult to control. The job can be stressful, but if you love animals, it can be equally rewarding. 

Care.com is a great way to get started — it’s an online marketplace that connects pet owners with caregivers. You can set up a profile on Care.com and start applying to jobs quickly and for just the small cost of the background check. 

You can sign up for Care.com here. 

Key takeaways:

• Minimal interactions with other people
• Great for animal lovers
• Can be difficult (and sometimes dangerous)

Restaurant and grocery delivery apps

In a nutshell: Work on your own delivering food and groceries. 

Delivery apps, like DoorDash and Instacart, have become some of the most popular gigs in the gig economy because they’re easy to get started with, pay well, and let you work on your own schedule. 

Although you won’t be able to avoid interacting with other people entirely with these apps, most of the job is solo, and the interactions you have will usually be extremely brief. For example, you’ll need to speak with restaurant workers or cashiers briefly when picking up orders or shopping for groceries, and you may need to hand off deliveries to customers sometimes (most customers prefer if you leave their orders at the door, so this is becoming increasingly rare). 

The best apps in this category are DoorDash (apply here), Uber Eats (apply here), Instacart (apply here), Walmart Spark (apply here) and Shipt (apply here). 

DoorDash and Uber Eats are both restaurant delivery apps, and these typically require a bit less interaction with others. Shipt and Instacart are grocery delivery apps, and they usually require you to exchange more messages with customers — they also involve a bit more work, as you’ll have to shop for all the individual items in the order instead of simply picking up a pre-packaged bag of food from a restaurant. 

We’ve done a detailed comparison of the best jobs like DoorDash, so make sure you check that out for more info on how to decide between all the options out there. 

Key takeaways:

• Work by yourself and be your own boss
• Only interact with others when picking up or shopping for orders and sometimes when dropping them off
• Get started fast
• Most apps offer same-day pay
• Some apps allow delivery by bike or on foot, which can make for a great workout 
• Lots of time on the road leads to an increased risk of accidents

Package delivery apps

In a nutshell: Make money delivering packages to customers — no shopping involved. 

If shopping for groceries and going into crowded restaurants is too much for you, package delivery is a similar option that requires even less interaction: simply pick up packages from warehouses and deliver them to customers. 

You’ll spend the vast majority of your time alone in your car. Unlike food delivery apps, which allow you to work whenever you want, these apps typically require you to sign up for delivery routes and shifts in advance. While you still get full control over your schedule (you can choose your routes and never have to work when you don’t want to), it’s not quite as flexible as food delivery. 

Delivery routes can be long, ranging from 2 to 7+ hours. However, the pay is solid, and if you like spending time alone in your car, you can have a good time listening to music and podcasts in relative solitude. 

The top apps and roles to consider here are Amazon Flex (apply here), the Shipt Driver role (apply here), and Roadie (apply here). 

We cover each of these options in more detail in our full delivery driver app comparison, so be sure to read that over for more information. 

Key takeaways:

• Most of the job is entirely on your own
• Long shifts can be tiring and put a lot of wear and tear on your car
• More alone than food delivery apps
• More time spent on the road means an increased risk of getting in an accident

Housekeeper

In a nutshell: Earn money cleaning houses and apartments.  

Although housekeepers work in other people’s homes, they’re mostly left alone. As a housekeeper, you’ll have to interact with homeowners at the beginning of a job (they’ll likely want to give you some brief instructions), but once you start working, they’ll usually leave you on your own. 

Cleaning can be a very calming and meditative experience, but it’s also some seriously hard work. 

If you want to find housekeeping work, Care.com is a great place to start. It’s an online marketplace where housekeepers can create profiles and homeowners can post jobs. 

You can sign up for Care.com here. 

Third (graveyard) shift jobs 

In a nutshell: A great choice for night owls that want to work on their own.

One way to be alone is to be awake when everyone else is asleep. If you’re a natural night owl, overnight shifts can allow you to work at times when no one else is around. 

Although there’s no guarantee that you’ll be entirely on your own, chances are you will be. For example, if you work as an overnight hotel clerk, you may occasionally have to talk with the odd guest who needs help in the middle of the night, but for the most part, you can spend the night quietly at your desk. 

Some examples of jobs that often have late shifts include:

• Security guard
• Hotel clerk
• Inventory stocker
• Warehouse jobs (Amazon warehouses have night shifts)
• Custodian
• Cashier or manager at 24/7 stores

Night shifts can take a toll on your health, especially if you’re not naturally a night owl. They’re known to cause health problems, but these issues are less likely to occur if your circadian rhythm naturally tends towards the later side, which is largely determined by genetic factors. Because of these risks, it’s a good idea to speak with your healthcare provider before starting one of these roles. 

Key takeaways:

• Can work well for natural night owls, but can take a physical toll on others
• Lots of different jobs to choose from
• Can pay a full-time income

Jobs where you work for and by yourself (no coworkers), but interact with others

This final category includes jobs where you work alone in the sense that you don’t have a boss or coworker, but you still have to interact with other people throughout the course of your work. These jobs give you more autonomy than traditional full-time jobs, but they’re not quite as solitary as the other jobs in this post. 

Rideshare driver

In a nutshell: Get paid to transport passengers from point A to point B. 

Uber and Lyft have all but replaced the taxi industry, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve used one of them at some point. When you work on either of these platforms, you’re your own boss, and you don’t have any coworkers either. However, you will be driving people around, so the job isn’t alone in the sense of not having to interact with others. 

That said, many passengers don’t want to interact with their drivers, so outside of initial hellos, it’s likely that the simple presence of another person in your car is as far as the interactions will go. 

Key takeaways:

• Completely flexible scheduling
• Significant wear and tear on your car from all the driving
• Increased time driving means a higher risk of accidents

Caregiver (babysitting and senior care)

In a nutshell: Take care of other people but be your own boss. 

As a babysitter or senior caregiver, you’ll have to interact with other people, but you’ll still be your own boss, and you won’t have any coworkers. 

Although these jobs aren’t truly alone, they do bypass many of the major pain points of traditional work, such as office politics and boring meetings. Plus, a lot of the time the people you’re caring for will want to be left alone anyway, and you just need to watch over them. While you still need to remain vigilant and watchful, you won’t necessarily need to spend all your time talking with the child or senior you’re caring for — you may just need to sit quietly with them while they watch TV. 

If you want to get started as a caregiver, Care.com is a great option. You can sign up here for babysitting and sign up here for senior care. 

Key takeaways:

• Often requires a lot of interaction with others, but allows you to be your own boss
• No coworkers
• Rewarding and meaningful work

Online tutoring and teaching

In a nutshell: Share your knowledge with others and help them improve their skills. 

Out of all the jobs we’ve covered, this one requires the most interaction out of all of them. However, you still get to avoid having any coworkers, and you won’t have a boss to answer to. 

Online tutoring platforms, like Varsity Tutors and Wyzant, make it easy to connect with students seeking extra help. If you’re skilled with languages, language learning platforms, like iTalki and Preply, are worth looking into as well.  

Key takeaways:

• Lots of interaction required, but no bosses or coworkers
• Very rewarding and meaningful work

Advice from experienced gig workers

We asked three of our Gig Pros what advice they’d give someone who wants to work alone. Here’s what they said. 

James’s advice

James Tuliano has been doing Shipt and DoorDash since 2020, averaging about 20 hours per week across both platforms. He also has Uber Eats experience. Here are some additional tips from him:

In addition to the ones listed here, I have a few more suggestions that I personally use:

UserTesting (I earn $200-300 a week on this website. You basically test different companies' websites and apps while recording your reactions. Sometimes you can do higher-paying Zoom calls with the UI person from the company, but they are optional and in most tests you are not talking to anybody, just yourself.)

Telus (They have different positions but most pay around $14 an hour, and you perform a bunch of different tasks, usually rating how good a search result was. It's more in-depth, but I believe you can do it for 20 hours max a week, so you can make $280 a week to supplement your income using Telus.)

Userlytics (just like usertesting).

Also for the gig apps, I think that anything involving food delivery is pretty decent for those who don't like working with other people. You usually only interact with the cashier, and that interaction is very minimal. Sometimes you have to meet the customer to hand them the food, but 90% of the orders you just drop off at their door. Grocery delivery is much more people-oriented and while you would probably still be fine, you do have to be decent at customer service if you want to succeed in that business.

Catherine’s advice

Catherine Meyers has 5 years of experience doing Instacart and 2 years of experience with Shipt. She’s also worked on Amazon Flex and DoorDash. Here’s her advice:

Working alone requires you to be pretty self-motivated! There is zero consistency to choosing gig work. Even if there’s an established pattern you notice to the gig work you do, there’s no counting on things to unfold the same way from week to week. I try to work Friday-Sunday on Shipt in particular because these days are guaranteed to have a higher flow of orders, but sometimes the orders get snatched up quickly, the customers tip small amounts, and they’re concentrated around stores in an area farther away from me, etc. Sometimes it’s easy money, and sometimes it’s not — so you have to be prepared to work a little harder compared to a W2 job.

Sometimes, I’ll power through BUSY days to try to bring in as much money as possible. You might end up dragging through slow days picking up any possible order just to make close to minimum wage. You have to have an understanding that there will never be consistency.

Faith’s advice

Faith McLaughlin has 8 years of gig work experience. She’s worked with Postmates, Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash. Here’s what she has to say about working alone:

If you’re looking to work alone and your primary goal is to have almost no human interaction, then I would suggest getting a job in the National Forest Service and request being assigned to Alaska. But, if that’s too much of a back-to-nature vibe for you, then my next suggestion is would be to balance your time between jobs like package delivery gigs like Amazon Flex where you have very little time spent with people and fill up your idle hours with gigs that don’t pay as much like transcription or surveys. At least then you’ll know you’re still generating some sort of income while you’re relaxing!

It makes sense to try to find whatever gig you enjoy doing the most and concentrate on that while trying out others gigs too. Only you will know which app is the one that you like but certainly the easiest in my opinion are gigs like Instacart or Wag/Rover. If you enjoy walking, then you’ll get your daily exercise in any of those from shopping or walking dogs.