This paper examines forms of free and unfree labour on coffee plantations in Angola from the 1930s through 1950s, and interrogates the meaning of these categories in the context of an emerging wage economy. Using colonial inspection reports from that period, the paper shows that foreign coffee planters in Angola mainly relied on two kinds of labour supplies, free workers (‘voluntários’) and coerced workers (‘contratados’), but also that in reality the distinction between these categories was not always clear. On the one hand, many workers signed up ‘freely’ for plantation labour to avoid being put on a ‘contract’; on the other, both free and contract workers received wages for their labour, meaning that the difference between the two categories was not one between paid and unpaid labour (although levels of remuneration differed). The paper furthermore demonstrates that the colonial recruitment of wage labour for medium-sized and large coffee plantations in Angola squeezed the labour supplies available to local smallholders, threatening the viability of African coffee production.