Offshore Developer Cost Calculator
A mid-level offshore developer typically costs $20–$55 per hour, while senior developers range from $40–$85 per hour, depending on role and specialization. For comparison, a US-based developer earning the BLS median salary of $135,980 represents an estimated $105 per hour when benefits, recruitment, equipment, and management costs are included. This calculator lets you compare both models for your team and shows the calculations behind each estimate.
This calculator measures people, not projects. It estimates the monthly cost of hiring an offshore developer or team and compares it with the cost of an equivalent US-based hire. It does not estimate the cost of a specific software project. Project pricing depends on scope, technical complexity, and requirements, which can vary significantly between an AI system, web platform, and mobile application. For a project-specific estimate, tell us what you’re building.
Offshore rates are based on our published developer rate card and reflect the rates used for our dedicated development engagements. US salary data is sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the relevant survey date and methodology provided below. This gives you a transparent basis for comparing the two hiring models.
$27,000 – $43,200
per month for 3 developers
$324,000 – $518,400 over 12 months
$63,606
per month for 3 developers, fully loaded
$763,269 over 12 months
$20,406 – $36,606
less per month · 32–58%
$244,872 – $439,272 over 12 months
How both numbers were reached
Every figure below is either a published rate or a BLS statistic times a percentage you can change.
Avenotech, offshore
- Published rate
- $50 – $80/hr
- Billed monthly
- $24,000 – $38,400
- Your management overhead
- $3,000 – $4,800
- Total per month
- $27,000 – $43,200
Backend Developer, Senior (6–10 yrs)
rate × 160 hrs × 3
12.5%, because it does not disappear when you outsource
all in · about $56 – $90/hr per developer
US in-house employee, per developer per year
- Base salary
- $171,980
- Benefits and payroll taxes
- $42,995
- Recruitment, amortised
- $4,300
- Equipment and software
- $6,879
- Your management overhead
- $28,269
- Fully loaded, per developer
- $254,423
BLS 75th percentile for Software Developers (15-1252)
25% of base
7.5% of base spread over 3 years
4% of base
12.5% of the four lines above
Base salary is the 75th percentile for Software Developers (SOC 15-1252), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025.
48% on top of base salary · about $133/hr
Assumptions. Change any of these and the numbers above update
A full-time developer at 40 hours a week, 4 weeks a month. Raise it to 173 if you prefer 2,080 hours a year divided by 12.
Health insurance, payroll taxes, retirement match, paid leave. Typically 20–30% of base salary in the US.
Agency fee, job ads and internal interview time, charged once at hire. Amortised over expected tenure below. Contingency recruiters commonly charge more than this.
How long the hire stays. Recruitment cost is spread across this many years. Shorter tenure makes hiring more expensive per year, not less.
Laptop, monitors, IDE and SaaS seats, desk space where applicable.
Your own time spent on specs, code review, sprint planning and one-to-ones. Applied to every model, including ours, because it does not go away when you outsource. Set it to 0 to see direct cost only.
Multiplier on the equivalent salaried hourly rate. Covers self-employment tax, own benefits, unbilled bench time and margin. This one is our convention, not a published figure. Change it if you have real quotes.
No email required to see the result, and none of these inputs are sent anywhere.
Offshore rates, published in full
These are the same rates published on our dedicated developers page, and they are what you would actually be quoted rather than a headline that moves once you get on a call. Every figure the calculator uses comes from this table.
| Role | Mid-level (3–6 yrs) | Senior (6–10 yrs) | US comparison used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontend Developer | $25 – $50 | $50 – $80 | Software Developers (15-1252) |
| Backend Developer | $25 – $50 | $50 – $80 | Software Developers (15-1252) |
| Full-Stack Developer | $30 – $55 | $55 – $85 | Software Developers (15-1252) |
| Mobile Developer | $25 – $50 | $50 – $80 | Software Developers (15-1252) |
| DevOps / Cloud Engineer | $30 – $55 | $55 – $85 | Software Developers (15-1252) |
| QA Automation Engineer | $20 – $40 | $40 – $65 | Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers (15-1253) |
| AI / ML Engineer | $30 – $55 | $55 – $85 | Data Scientists (15-2051) |
- Minimum one full-time developer. We do not sell fractional or part-time allocation.
- Staff augmentation runs 3+ months, ongoing. A dedicated team runs 6+ months.
- Billing is monthly per developer, or monthly per team on a dedicated engagement.
- Teams of 5 or more developers take a 10% discount, applied in the calculator above.
- Junior developers (1–3 years) start at $20 per hour and are quoted case by case rather than from the table.
Where the US salary figures come from
Every US salary in this calculator is a published federal statistic, not our estimate. They come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) run by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: national, cross-industry, May 2025 estimates, released 15 May 2026 and retrieved by us on 16 August 2026.
We use the published median for a mid-level developer and the 75th percentile for a senior one. That mapping is our assumption, not the BLS’s: the survey reports what people earn, not how many years they have worked. The full percentile spread is below so you can pick a different one.
| Occupation (SOC code) | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | US employment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers (15-1252) | $105,210 | $135,980 | $171,980 | $214,670 | 1,687,890 |
| Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers (15-1253) | $80,310 | $104,300 | $133,180 | $167,010 | 186,740 |
| Data Scientists (15-2051) | $85,660 | $120,230 | $158,880 | $199,130 | 262,440 |
| Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244) | $78,010 | $99,130 | $126,640 | $155,050 | 314,340 |
| Web Developers (15-1254) | $64,230 | $92,650 | $126,230 | $162,290 | 70,190 |
Retrieved from the BLS public API (api.bls.gov), national cross-industry estimates, series OEUN0000000000000<SOC><datatype>.
Where our job titles and the BLS list disagree
The BLS occupation list was not written with modern engineering teams in mind. Three of our mappings are judgement calls, and here they are, so you can disagree with them knowing what they cost the comparison.
- DevOps / Cloud Engineer
- BLS publishes no DevOps, SRE or cloud engineering occupation. We map it to Software Developers (15-1252), which is where most DevOps engineers at software employers are classified. If you think Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244) is the better match, the US median drops from $135,980 to $99,130 and the saving narrows by roughly a third.
- Frontend Developer
- Mapped to Software Developers (15-1252) rather than Web Developers (15-1254). BLS separates the two, and 15-1254 covers a broader, lower-paid job family that includes site building and CMS work. Using it would put the US median at $92,650 and make the offshore saving look smaller than it is.
- AI / ML Engineer
- Mapped to Data Scientists (15-2051), the closest published occupation. BLS has no machine learning engineer code. Compensation for ML engineers at frontier labs sits far above this figure, but those employers are not the ones weighing an offshore team.
How we calculated this
Two formulas, no hidden multipliers. Every percentage below is editable in the assumptions panel, and the defaults are stated so you can see what you are changing.
Offshore, per month
published hourly rate
× hours per month
× team size
× team discount if 5 or more developers (10%)
+ your management overhead
US in-house, per year
BLS base salary
+ benefits and payroll taxes
+ recruitment cost spread over expected tenure
+ equipment and software
+ your management overhead
A worked example
3 backend developers at senior (6–10 yrs), over 12 months, compared against US in-house employees. Our published rate is $50 to $80 an hour, which at 160 hours a month for 3 developers is $24,000 – $38,400, plus $3,000 – $4,800 of your own management time, giving $27,000 – $43,200 a month. The same three developers hired in the US start at a BLS 75th percentile of $171,980 each, which loads up by 48% to $254,423 a year each, or $63,606 a month for the team. The difference is $20,406 – $36,606 a month, or $244,872 – $439,272 over 12 months.
Default assumptions
- Billable hours per month
- A full-time developer at 40 hours a week, 4 weeks a month. Raise it to 173 if you prefer 2,080 hours a year divided by 12.
- Benefits load
- Health insurance, payroll taxes, retirement match, paid leave. Typically 20–30% of base salary in the US.
- Recruitment cost
- Agency fee, job ads and internal interview time, charged once at hire. Amortised over expected tenure below. Contingency recruiters commonly charge more than this.
- Expected tenure
- How long the hire stays. Recruitment cost is spread across this many years. Shorter tenure makes hiring more expensive per year, not less.
- Equipment and software
- Laptop, monitors, IDE and SaaS seats, desk space where applicable.
- Your management overhead
- Your own time spent on specs, code review, sprint planning and one-to-ones. Applied to every model, including ours, because it does not go away when you outsource. Set it to 0 to see direct cost only.
- US contractor markup
- Multiplier on the equivalent salaried hourly rate. Covers self-employment tax, own benefits, unbilled bench time and margin. This one is our convention, not a published figure. Change it if you have real quotes.
What this calculator does not price in
Four costs sit outside the model, and they do not all point the same way. Two of them make offshore look better than the arithmetic suggests, and two make it look worse.
Ramp-up, on both sides
A new developer takes roughly 2–4 weeks to reach full productivity on an existing codebase, and that is true whether they sit in your office or ours. The calculator bills from day one. Knock 2–4 weeks off the first engagement year if you want the conservative number.
The time it takes to hire in the US
Hiring a US developer locally takes 3–6 months from opening the role to a first commit. Our developers start in under two weeks. The calculator prices what each option costs, not what the delay costs you, and for a funded roadmap the delay is often the larger number.
Timezone overlap
Our teams commit to a fixed overlap window with yours, but overlap is not the same as a colleague two desks away. Decisions that would take a hallway conversation take a day when they miss the window. That is a real cost and it is not in these numbers.
Severance, bench time and utilisation
An in-house employee is a fixed cost through a slow quarter and carries notice and severance obligations. A contract team scales down on notice. Neither the risk nor the flexibility is priced here.
Offshore developer cost questions
How much does an offshore developer cost per hour?
Our offshore rates run from $20 to $85 per hour depending on role and experience. Mid-level developers (3–6 years) are $25–50 across frontend, backend and mobile; senior developers (6–10 years) are $50–80. Full-stack, DevOps and AI/ML sit slightly higher at $55–85 senior, and QA automation lower at $20–65. A US in-house developer at the BLS median of $135,980 costs roughly $102 per hour once benefits, recruitment, equipment and management overhead are loaded on top of base salary.
Where do the US salary figures come from?
From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025 national estimates, retrieved 16 August 2026. We use the published median for mid-level and the 75th percentile for senior. The BLS figures are base salary only; the loading for benefits, recruitment, equipment and management is applied on top and every percentage is editable in the assumptions panel.
Is offshore development actually cheaper once you account for overhead?
Often, but the savings depend on how the engagement is structured. The hourly rate is only one part of the total cost. You should also account for onboarding and ramp-up time, requirements and code reviews, team management, and any coordination costs associated with working across time zones. Longer-term engagements generally have more opportunity to realize the cost advantage because these initial costs are spread over a larger period. Our calculator includes the key cost assumptions so you can compare the estimated total cost of an offshore developer with an equivalent US-based hire, rather than relying on hourly rates alone.
When is offshore development the wrong choice?
Highly regulated work that needs on-site presence, physical access to systems, or personnel who have cleared a specific jurisdiction’s vetting. If your compliance regime requires people in a particular building or holding a particular clearance, no cost saving changes that, and we would tell you so rather than take the engagement. Outside that, the usual constraint is engagement length rather than the work itself: below about three months the ramp-up absorbs most of the saving.
What is the minimum engagement?
One full-time developer. Staff augmentation runs 3+ months on an ongoing basis; a dedicated team runs 6+ months. We do not sell fractional allocation, because a developer split across three clients is not the model that produces good work.
Do the rates change once we get on a call?
No. The table this calculator draws from is the same one published on our dedicated developers page, and it is what you would actually be quoted. There are no recruitment fees and no separate onboarding charge. Teams of five or more take a 10% discount.