Belgrade or Novi Sad for Business: Rent, Taxes, Talent

Almost every foreign founder in Serbia chooses between two cities: Belgrade, the capital of a million and a half people and the country’s main business centre, and Novi Sad, the administrative centre of Vojvodina an hour’s drive to the north, where a noticeable share of the Serbian IT industry is concentrated. Both cities are suitable for registering a company and for living; the difference lies in cost, pace, the labour market and — for sole proprietors — in the amount of the lump-sum tax.

What follows is a practical comparison on the criteria that genuinely affect a business, rather than the impression you get from a walk through the centre.

Belgrade: where business happens

• Novi Beograd is the business district, with class A office buildings along Bulevar Mihajla Pupina and the Sava embankment. This is where the offices of international companies, banks and most large IT employers are. Parking is easy, the avenues are wide, and the airport is quick to reach.
• Stari Grad and Vračar are the historic centre. Offices in renovated buildings, coworking spaces, restaurants for client meetings. Rent is higher, parking is difficult, and the prestige of the address is at its maximum.
• Savski Venac and the Belgrade Waterfront district offer new towers, hotels and offices next to the Prokop central station; companies that want a modern address and proximity to the centre at the same time move here.
• Zemun, Voždovac and Zvezdara are calm residential districts with small offices and noticeably lower rent; they suit teams for whom budget matters more than the shop window.

Belgrade’s advantages are obvious: the largest labour market in the country, all the banks and state bodies in one city, an international airport with direct flights to dozens of destinations, and the greatest concentration of the Russian-speaking community and of services in Russian. The drawbacks are the cost of living and renting, the traffic, and competition for specialists with international companies.

Novi Sad: where business happens

• The centre and Liman make up the university district and the Danube embankment; this is where IT company offices, coworking spaces and most of the new business centres are.
• Grbavica and Bulevar oslobođenja form the city’s business axis, with banks, offices and shopping centres.
• Petrovaradin is a quiet district on the opposite bank, with a view of the fortress; more a place to live than to put an office.
• The industrial zones in the north of the city house manufacturing companies and logistics, including foreign plants.

Novi Sad is markedly smaller — around 370,000 residents — and therefore calmer and cheaper. Its university, with a strong faculty of technical sciences, has given the city a reputation as an engineering centre: several Serbian IT companies with hundreds of employees grew up here, and international corporations have opened development centres. The drawbacks are a narrower choice of class A offices, the absence of its own international airport (the nearest is Belgrade’s) and a thinner market for non-technical specialists.

The cost of renting

Specific rates shift from quarter to quarter, so we do not quote figures in the article: for current terms on desks and offices, see the pages for office rental in Belgrade and office rental in Novi Sad. The general pattern is stable: for the same budget, in Novi Sad you get more space or a better class of building.

The lump-sum tax depends on the city

For a sole proprietor, choosing a city also means choosing the amount of tax. The base for calculating the lump-sum tax (paušalni porez) is the average salary in the municipality of registration. In the central municipalities of Belgrade salaries are the highest in the country, so the lump sum there is higher too; in Novi Sad the base is lower, and in other Vojvodina towns lower still. Over a year the difference is meaningful for a freelancer with modest revenue.

For a DOO, profit tax, VAT (PDV) and payroll taxes do not depend on the city. There is a local company signboard levy (firmarina), but in most municipalities it is not charged to micro and small companies, or the amount is negligible.

Banks, state bodies, infrastructure

All the major Serbian banks are present in both cities, but head offices and non-resident departments are more often in Belgrade: a complicated case is sometimes easier to resolve at a branch in the capital. Tax branches, the APR (Business Registers Agency) and the police departments for foreigners exist in Novi Sad too — company registration, a residence permit and an electronic signature can all be arranged without travelling to Belgrade.

Transport between the cities is good: the motorway takes about an hour and the high-speed train a little over half an hour, which makes “live in Novi Sad, travel to Belgrade for meetings” a realistic arrangement. Nikola Tesla international airport serves both cities; from Novi Sad it is around an hour and a half by car.

Talent and salaries

Belgrade offers the widest choice of specialists across every profile and the most expensive market: for developers, marketers and finance people you are competing with international companies. Novi Sad is strong in engineering talent — graduates of the technical faculty — and salary expectations are somewhat lower, but the pool of candidates is narrower and the best of them are quickly picked up by the large local IT companies. For a fully remote team, the city of registration barely affects hiring at all — an employee can live anywhere in Serbia.

There is a practical difference in hiring too: Belgrade has more candidates with fluent English and experience in foreign companies, so a founder who does not speak Serbian finds it easier to assemble a first team. In Novi Sad vacancies take longer to fill, but turnover is lower — employees change employer for a small raise less often, and the team is more stable.

A founder’s life: housing, schools, healthcare

A business decision is rarely taken separately from day-to-day life. Residential rent in Belgrade is the highest in the country, especially in the centre and in Vračar; in Novi Sad the same budget gets you an apartment closer to the centre or a larger one. The capital has several international schools, including programmes in English and Russian; in Novi Sad the choice is noticeably smaller, though private schools with English-language programmes do exist. Private clinics with English-speaking doctors operate in both cities, and complex cases are more often referred to centres in Belgrade.

If you are registering the company at your home address, check the lease: the owner has to consent expressly to registration of the sedište, and some buildings restrict commercial registration through the rules of the residents’ association. In both cities this is settled in advance, when you choose the apartment, rather than after the filing with the APR.

Which city suits whom

There is no universal answer, but the rule of thumb is simple: if your business lives on meetings and flights, choose Belgrade; if it lives behind a monitor and on a budget, Novi Sad deserves serious consideration. In both cities you can start with a virtual office with a real agreement and move into your own premises once you have a team. Compare what each option includes in our pricing.