The contribution draws a comparison between the definition and regulation of working relationships which do not fall within the area of subordination in two European legal systems: the German one, which has long known a social protection scheme for economically dependent workers (‘arbeitnehmerähnliche Personen’); and the Italian one, which instead knows the category of coordinated and continuous collaborators and which, recently, has extended the full application of the discipline of subordinate work to the so-called hetero-organized collaborators.