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Offshore vs nearshore
We are the offshore option. Here is where nearshore genuinely beats us.
If you are a US buyer, your realistic alternatives to India are Latin America — Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina — and increasingly Eastern Europe. If you are a European buyer, it is Poland, Romania, Portugal and the Baltics. Those are nearshore: one to three hours of time difference instead of eight to eleven.
A vendor who tells you offshore always wins is selling. The decision turns on four things: how much of your work needs synchronous conversation, how deep the skill is in each market, what the all-in cost difference actually is, and whether your data has to stay inside a particular legal perimeter.
Side by side
| India (offshore) | Nearshore | |
|---|---|---|
| Overlap with US Eastern | 4–6 hours on a late shift | 6–8 hours naturally |
| Overlap with UK | A full UK day on a late shift | A full day, no shift needed |
| Overlap with Australia | A full AU day on an early shift, no night work | Poor from LATAM; good from South-East Asia |
| Typical developer rate | $20–52/hour | $30–70/hour LATAM; $35–75 Central Europe |
| Talent depth | Deepest pool globally in Java, QA, SAP, data, ERP and support | Strong in product engineering; thinner in enterprise stacks |
| Scaling from 5 to 50 | Routine | Harder — smaller markets, faster rate inflation |
| EU data perimeter | Transfer mechanism required: SCCs plus an impact assessment | Inside the EU for Polish, Romanian and Baltic suppliers |
| English | Universal in the engineering market | Strong, variable by country |
| Cultural working style | Deferential by default; needs deliberate work to get pushback | Closer to US and Western European norms |
| Travel for an onsite week | Long haul | Short haul from the US or Western Europe |
Our view
What we would tell you on a call
Choose nearshore when the work is genuinely collaborative hour by hour — early-stage product discovery, a design-heavy build, anything where a two-hour decision loop changes the output. Choose it also when your data cannot leave the EU, or when the team is small enough that the rate difference does not pay for the overlap you lose.
Choose India when you need depth or scale: enterprise stacks, QA at volume, data and ERP work, support that has to run around the clock, or a team that has to go from five people to thirty without the rate doubling. Choose it for Australian hours, where India's early shift covers a full working day and Latin America cannot.
The thing not to choose India for is a small price difference. Against Poland at roughly $35 an hour, our advantage is capability depth and scale, not the hourly rate — and if someone is selling you offshore purely on cost, that is the whole pitch and you should expect the quality to match it.
Questions
Offshore vs nearshore
- Is nearshore really better for communication?
- The time zone is better. Whether communication is better depends on the vendor: a nearshore team with no written culture is worse than an offshore team with a strong one. Ask both to show you how they document decisions.
- Could we use both?
- Larger teams do — nearshore for product discovery and the parts that need live conversation, offshore for depth and volume. Below about fifteen engineers the overhead of two vendors is not worth it.
Send us one role brief
One page is enough: the stack, the seniority, the first month of work and the hours you need covered. Three shortlisted CVs come back within 48 hours, with the rate band and notice period attached.