Offshore developer rates, 2026
What engineers from India actually cost, by role and seniority, all-inclusive — and how that compares with nearshore and with hiring locally.
Most vendors will not publish a number, which makes this market unnecessarily hard to shop in. Ours are below. They are all-inclusive bands rather than a single teaser figure, because a single figure is always the cheapest junior on the bench and tells you nothing about what your engineer will cost.
Every monthly figure here is the hourly band multiplied by 160 hours a month, or the daily band by 20 working days a month in the day-rate markets. Nothing is rounded in our favour.
Our rates, by experience and market
| Experience | United States | United Kingdom | Australia | United Arab Emirates | Canada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| build2–4 years | $20–28/hour$3,200–4,480/month | £150–210/day£3,000–4,200/month | A$28–38/hourA$4,480–6,080/month | AED 95–135/hourAED 15,200–21,600/month | C$30–40/hourC$4,800–6,400/month |
| senior5–8 years | $28–38/hour$4,480–6,080/month | £210–300/day£4,200–6,000/month | A$38–52/hourA$6,080–8,320/month | AED 135–185/hourAED 21,600–29,600/month | C$40–54/hourC$6,400–8,640/month |
| lead9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour$6,080–8,320/month | £300–450/day£6,000–9,000/month | A$52–70/hourA$8,320–11,200/month | AED 185–250/hourAED 29,600–40,000/month | C$54–72/hourC$8,640–11,520/month |
What the rate includes
- Salary and all Indian employer costs, taxes and statutory benefits
- Company-managed laptop, endpoint protection and security tooling
- Recruitment, screening and replacement — there is no placement fee
- Account management, and the delivery lead on a pod
- Leave cover arrangements, agreed before the engagement starts
What it does not
- Licences for your own systems — your cloud, your IDE seats, your ATS
- Travel, if you ask someone to visit you (at cost, agreed first)
- Genuine overnight shift cover, which carries a premium shown separately
No setup fee, no recruitment fee, no per-engineer onboarding charge, no management percentage.
By role
Rates by role, United States
The band a role falls in is set by the seniority the work needs, not by the technology. A React engineer and a Java engineer at the same experience level cost the same; a platform or data lead costs more because the market for them is tighter.
| Role | Typical experience | Hourly | Full time, monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| system administrators | 2–4 years | $20–28/hour | $3,200–4,480/month |
| cloud engineers | 9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour | $6,080–8,320/month |
| DevOps engineers | 9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour | $6,080–8,320/month |
| mobile app developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| dedicated developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| React developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| web developers | 2–4 years | $20–28/hour | $3,200–4,480/month |
| full stack developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| Salesforce developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| software developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| WordPress developers | 2–4 years | $20–28/hour | $3,200–4,480/month |
| Python developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| PHP developers | 2–4 years | $20–28/hour | $3,200–4,480/month |
| Android developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| React Native developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| Java developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| Laravel developers | 2–4 years | $20–28/hour | $3,200–4,480/month |
| iOS developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| Flutter developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| AI engineers | 9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour | $6,080–8,320/month |
| Node.js developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| Angular developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| data engineers | 9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour | $6,080–8,320/month |
| .NET developers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| QA engineers | 5–8 years | $28–38/hour | $4,480–6,080/month |
| machine learning engineers | 9+ years, or tech lead | $38–52/hour | $6,080–8,320/month |
Against the alternatives
What other regions cost, including the ones that beat us
Published market benchmarks, not our rates. We include them because you will compare anyway, and because there are briefs where another region is the better answer — offshore versus nearshore sets out which.
| Region | Typical rate | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| India | $20–52 | Deepest talent pool; 4–8 hours of overlap on a shifted roster |
| Philippines | $18–40 | Strong support and QA; thinner in senior platform engineering |
| Vietnam | $18–40 | Strong for Japan-facing work; smaller senior pool |
| Poland | $35–75 | Inside the EU for data transfers; an hour from most of Western Europe |
| Romania and the Baltics | $30–65 | The same EU advantage, slightly below Poland |
| Mexico and Colombia | $20–45 | US time zones; mid-level rates at or near India's |
| Brazil and Argentina | $22–50 | US overlap; senior supply tightening |
| United States (contract) | $75–160 | What you are usually comparing against |
| United Kingdom (contract) | £450–800/day | Senior cloud and cyber at the top of the range |
| Australia (contract) | A$800–1,200/day | Sydney senior day rates |
Benchmarks are indicative ranges drawn from published vendor rate cards and market reports, current as of 2026. They move. The bands in our own table are the ones we will honour.
How to compare vendors on price
Four questions that make quotes comparable
- What seniority does this rate buy, in years and in what? A rate without a seniority attached is not a price.
- What sits on top — setup, recruitment, onboarding, management? Ask for the all-in monthly figure for one engineer for twelve months.
- What hours are contracted, and what happens if they are not worked? Overlap offered as best efforts is not overlap.
- What is the replacement position in the first month? This is where cheap quotes turn expensive.
Questions
Offshore rates
- How much does it cost to hire a developer in India?
- Through Skydream Digital, $20–28/hour for an engineer with 2–4 years' experience, $28–38/hour for 5–8 years, and $38–52/hour for a senior engineer or tech lead. All-inclusive. Full time at 160 hours a month that is $3,200–4,480/month, $4,480–6,080/month and $6,080–8,320/month respectively. The wider market runs wider in both directions — roughly $15 to $60 an hour — and the bottom of that range is usually juniors billed as seniors.
- What is the hourly rate for offshore software development?
- Across the main offshore and nearshore regions, published rates run from about $18 an hour to about $75. India sits at $20–52, South-East Asia slightly below, Central and Eastern Europe at $30–75, and Latin America at $20–50. Anything materially below $18 an hour is a junior, a trainee, or a bench resource presented as something else.
- Why do rates vary so much between vendors?
- Three reasons, and only one is quality. Seniority is the biggest — 'developer' can mean two years or twelve. The second is what the rate includes; some vendors add setup fees, per-engineer onboarding charges and a management percentage on top. The third is genuine capability. Ask every vendor for a band by seniority and for what the band includes, and the quotes become comparable.
- Is a cheaper offshore rate worth taking?
- Usually not, and the arithmetic is not close. An engineer at $15 an hour who needs twice the review and rewrites a third of the work costs more than one at $32 who does not. The rate is the smallest number in the total cost of an engagement; rework, management load and attrition are the large ones.
- How does this compare with hiring locally?
- A senior engineer on contract typically costs $75–160 an hour in the US, £450–800 a day in the UK and A$800–1,200 a day in Australia. Against that, India at $28–38 an hour is roughly a third to a half — before counting the recruitment fee you do not pay and the three to five months of hiring you do not spend.
- Do your rates change during an engagement?
- Not inside a contract term. At renewal we index for Indian wage inflation and tell you the number in advance. We do not reprice mid-engagement.
- Are these rates negotiable?
- The band is real, not an opening position. Where there is movement it comes from the shape of the engagement — a longer term, a pod rather than individuals, or a different mix of seniorities — not from discounting the same engineer.
Get a rate against your actual brief
Send the role, the stack and the seniority. Three shortlisted CVs come back within 48 hours, each with its rate, notice period and overlap window attached — so you are comparing people, not brochures.