Directory snapshot · Retrieved 2026-09-12
Offshore Software Development Rates 2026
We set out to compute median offshore development rates from the hourly ranges 6,654 software development companies advertise publicly, across 20 countries. We found something more interesting than a median: the offshore market doesn't price itself on a curve, it picks from a menu.
Most companies advertise one of a handful of preset bands, the same bands the big directories offer as checkboxes. Statements like “the median offshore rate is $37/hr” are technically true and mostly meaningless: that number is the midpoint of the band most companies picked. What actually carries information is which band a company picks, and that varies sharply by country.
62.1%
of all 6,654 companies advertise the exact same band: $25–$49/hr
98.5%
sit in just four preset bands. Custom ranges: 1.5%
0.2%
advertise below $25/hr. The bargain-bin offshore rate barely exists as a published price
The menu
Share of companies by advertised band. This isn't a distribution that got bucketed for display; the advertised prices themselves come in these bands.
What countries actually differ on: premium positioning
Since nearly everyone picks between the $25–$49 band and the $50+ bands, the honest cross-country comparison is: what share of a country's shops position themselves at $50/hr or above? Countries with at least 20 companies advertising rates.
| Country | Companies | Advertising $50/hr+ | Median band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Czech Republic | 159 | 80% | $50–$99/hr |
| Poland | 1,324 | 59% | $50–$99/hr |
| Costa Rica | 61 | 59% | $50–$99/hr |
| Brazil | 205 | 51% | $50–$99/hr |
| Romania | 402 | 50% | $30–$55/hr |
| South Africa | 150 | 50% | $50–$99/hr |
| Turkey | 174 | 47% | $25–$49/hr |
| Kenya | 55 | 45% | $25–$49/hr |
| Colombia | 189 | 44% | $25–$49/hr |
| Philippines | 87 | 44% | $25–$49/hr |
| Ukraine | 112 | 40% | $25–$49/hr |
| Nigeria | 118 | 39% | $25–$49/hr |
| Mexico | 216 | 38% | $25–$49/hr |
| Argentina | 294 | 37% | $25–$49/hr |
| Bangladesh | 243 | 37% | $25–$49/hr |
| Vietnam | 161 | 25% | $25–$49/hr |
| Egypt | 75 | 24% | $25–$49/hr |
| Pakistan | 856 | 21% | $25–$49/hr |
| India | 1,772 | 16% | $25–$49/hr |
Read it as brand positioning, not payroll: 80% of Czech shops price themselves as premium while 16% of Indian shops do, and the same gap separates Poland (59%) from Pakistan (21%). That spread is the real “nearshore premium,” and it's a choice companies make, not a rate card that follows salaries around.
Does anyone price outside the menu?
We crawled the websites of the 3,574 rated companies that list one (homepage plus common pricing paths; 3,075 were reachable). Only 33 companies, 1.1%, advertise an hourly rate anywhere on their own site. Caveat: a static crawl misses rates rendered by JavaScript or buried in PDFs, so the true figure is somewhat higher — but even generous error bars leave it in the low single digits.
In other words, the menu isn't summarizing this market's public pricing. It effectively is this market's public pricing. Where a company does publish a rate on its own site, it usually agrees with its directory band: 24 of the 33 matched.
What doesn't matter (as advertised)
Team size: no effect. From 10-person shops to 500+, every size class medians into the same $25–$49 band. Whatever premium a big shop charges, it doesn't show up in advertised rates.
The sub-$25 developer: missing. Only 0.2% of companies anywhere advertise below $25/hr, including in the lowest-cost markets. The $15/hr offshore rate exists in negotiations and on freelance platforms, but as a company's published price it has effectively disappeared.
Get the data
Per-country aggregates (companies, band shares, premium positioning) as CSV, CC-BY 4.0. Cite with a link to this page. Refreshes with the directory.
Methodology
Offshore.dev lists 11,000+ offshore software development companies. Of those, 6,654 advertise an hourly rate range publicly, on their own websites and in their public profiles around the web, including the directories that list them. We aggregate and normalize those ranges into one dataset. Each company contributes one range; countries with fewer than 20 rated companies are excluded rather than reported on thin samples.
Why band shares instead of medians: advertised rates overwhelmingly come in preset bands (most platforms where companies list themselves offer rate ranges as a picklist), so the distribution is a few spikes, not a curve. Averages and medians over spiky data mostly report which spike is biggest. We say so and report the spikes directly. Where we do quote a median, it's the median company's band, not a synthetic dollar figure.
These are advertised rates, not negotiated contract rates: what a company wants the market to think it charges. That describes advertised positioning; it does not establish what clients actually pay.
You're welcome to cite this data (CC-BY 4.0) with a link to this page. It updates as companies change what they publish.
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