The best Wi-Fi cafés in Paris

Ever get nostalgic for 70s youth hostel decor? Look no further – the trappings of table football, board games and musty old books have all been slavishly recreated at the Pères Populaires. One of the cheapest bars in the city, it’s also a local canteen, complete with sticky table-tops and the tenacious smell of stale beer that bears witness to many a debauched evening. The décor is an incoherent mixture of second-hand furniture with some good pieces, and of bent wood hat stands with peeling wallpaper. One perches uncomfortably on chairs or on a knackered old sofa, knocking back jugs of beer or rum mixers and mopping it all up with a cheap charcuterie board (€5 to €8). During the day the place is tranquil and full of light, thanks to a huge picture window – and the area’s students flock to its free Wi-Fi. Always full in the evenings, it gets busiest when the gigs start at 8pm, mostly local groups playing jazz or cheesy hits. A decidedly blue collar French venue, but none the worse for that.

Les P'tites Indécises caters primarily to large appetites and pinched wallets. Set in the middle of a sunlit square near Parmentier, this brightly lit restaurant boasts a generous brunch that comes in two varieties: the ‘p’tit dej’ and the ‘complet’, both of which include freshly squeezed juice, your choice of hot drink and an unlimited bread basket with a selection of spreads. If you choose the 'p’tit dej' (reasonably priced at €14.50), you also get a choice of entrée and dessert: the entrée nearly always includes fried eggs and bacon to mop up your hangover, plus a seasonal treat like melon & ham or Italian mozzarella salad. For dessert, you can pick up a light option such as yoghurt with berries, or – if you’re feeling a bit more wicked – a decadent chocolate and hazelnut brownie. Got space for more? Take the complet for €23, which has an added main course, from a selection of good French bistro classics and Petites Indécises specialities.  The décor is bright and cheerful and the menu is simple but solid. Ultra-affable waiters score bonus points for happily translating the menu if need be, but in a venue this popular they can be hard to pin down. This is the sort of place to head to with a crowd of friends to comb over last night's debauchery while gently nursing a hangover. If the weather's nice, choose one of the tables that snake around the outside of the conservatory to sip a café crème in the sun. It also has free Wi-Fi and so attracts students and freelancers durin

This is one of Time Out's 100 best bars in Paris. Click here to see the full list. Having fallen in love with Germany during a holiday to Berlin, the owners of this café began to import German products and traditions, creating a nice Franco-German ambiance. The success was immediate, attracting devotees of both classic Croque Monsieurs and traditional German currywurst, a German sausage in a curry sauce with crisps. During Oktoberfest, Café Titon becomes a fully-fledged biergarten. German beer aficionados will be ecstatic to find Paulaner, Erdinger, and even Franziskaner Dunkel. Outside of currywurst and bratwurst, the menu is mostly centred on French cuisine with tartares, large salads, steaks, and sandwiches. The café is also a light and airy place to work, with the free wifi and good grub providing enough sustenance to keep you going for an afternoon at the 'office'. 

Hidden away in an unfashionable part of the 18th arrondissement, Lomi opened in October 2012. From the outside, this looks like a bland modern building, but Lomi’s architect has transformed a basic concrete space into a cool café that resembles an abandoned warehouse with rusty metal girders, peeling paint on the walls, simple wooden tables and old leather couches. The café has already attracted a strong local following, with a colourful mix of mums and babies, building workers and students hunched over laptops, local businessmen and coffee fanatics making a pilgrimage: Lomi is also renowned in the coffee fraternity for its roasting. For a change, there are more women than men behind the bar, with a lady barista and a Japanese patisserie chef who trained at William Ledeuil’s Ze Kitchen Gallery restaurant. They prepare sandwiches, salads and quiches throughout the day, and although there isn’t a breakfast menu yet, they are already well known for their scones, chocolate cake and cheesecake. At the back of the café you can see a glass-walled laboratory filled with weird-looking coffee machines, filters and grinders. This is where Lomi test their prospective coffee beans, and out of sight is a vast coffee roaster and sacks of beans from as far afield as Salvador, Brazil and Ethiopia. Lomi is one of an increasing number of Franco-Australian collaborations, owned by Aleaume Paturle, who picked up the coffee bug making espressos in San Diego, and Aussie barista Paul Arnephy, who wo

This is a café for all those students and young professionals who’d rather do their emails and spreadsheets in the local Starbucks than at home. The concept here is that you pay per hour, not per drink: €4 for the first hour, and €2 for every hour thereafter. Furnished with everything your laptop needs - wi-fi, spacious tables, optimised lighting, peace and quiet – this is the place to go for those who, like us, need coffee to get their work done. The buffet also includes juice, biscuits, brioche and Nutella (with a few deluxe items, such as freshly pressed orange juice, available for a small extra fee). There’s even board games for when you get bored with the PowerPoints.

Paris is seeing a positive nouvelle vague of creative freelance Parisians keen to escape the confines of their apartments and find trendy cafés where they can work, get good coffee and look good all at the same time. More often than not they’re stuck with the local bar (because red wine and work go so well together…), so with Café Craft, Augustin Blanchard is filling a gap in the market.In a quiet street just minutes from the Canal Saint-Martin, this café is a refuge for the new breed of wireless creative who are flocking to the trendy outskirts of eastern and northern Paris. With its high speed WiFi, studious atmosphere and minimalist yet welcoming design inherited from Brooklyn and Scandinavia, Craft Café represents a kind of place that is still relatively unusual in Paris.And like its ancestors in London and New York, Café Craft trumpets its coffee credentials, claiming to serve the best in Paris (a bold challenge, non?) – theirs is made from beans roasted by the famous Café Lomi. For blood sugar, there are sweet and savoury pastries (we recommend the red fruit crumble).

Just a few steps away from Beaubourg, there’s a place you can park your books and your laptop and settle in for an afternoon. This petite café boasts free Wi-Fi, a mix of comfortable chairs and desk-like arrangements and a variety of different coffees and teas. The coffee menu caters to both anglophones and French, proven by the fact that they differentiate between a café crème, a café au lait and a cappuccino. They’ve also got an alcohol license so you can grab a beer if the work gets too much. If you come at lunchtime you can take your pick from one of the delicious salads (complete with homemade dressing) or homemade savoury tarts such as the leek and bacon, and later maybe a slice of their cheesecake or chocolate fondant for an afternoon pick-me-up. The clientele tend to be students and freelancers so the atmosphere is conducive to working, if you’re okay with the hum of traffic from outside and a constant soundtrack of indie music in the background. It’s a shame that there’s no outdoor seating, but the bilingual staff, great coffee and I-just-stumbled-upon-a-Paris-gem feeling makes up for it. 

Loustic is a relatively new face on the Parisian coffee scene, but it’s already made its mark. Owner Channa Galhenage is a flat cap-wearing Londoner with a sharp eye for trends: his first masterstroke was to hire designer Dorothée Meilichzon (of hip design studio CHZON) to do up the place. Sexy design lamps, geometric patterns, huge cushions and deep bamboo chairs give the slightly poky venue a voguish coating. Throw in the arty Marais address, the eclectic international food on offer (if quiche represents France and kale chips America) and the mood jazz on the sound system, and you’ve got yourself a hipster hangout par excellence.The layout of the café is a bit awkward: the narrow front room squeezes in a row of seats along the bar, leaving about as much breathing space as a metro carriage in rush hour. But in the back the venue opens out into a snug space furnished with a large corner sofa and gentle yellow lighting – ideal for settling in with some friends or a laptop. If you’re here to work, there’s free Wi-Fi and tasty beverages aplenty – having done stints at KB and Alto Café, Galhenage knows how to serve a great cup of joe. 'Loustic' may mean 'smart alec' in Old Breton, but there's nothing smug about this warm, vibrant spot.