By the numbers
The headline figures, each one linked to where it came from. Click through and check my reading against the source, that is the point of publishing it this way.
Why we built this
Rate data is the most-cited category in IT sourcing coverage, and almost all of it sits behind a lead-gen form or scattered across vendor blogs with no way to compare across regions.
I sell outsourced delivery for a living, so I read a lot of rate cards, and I can tell you the public pricing picture is in worse shape than most buyers realize. The numbers exist. They are just buried: gated PDFs here, a vendor blog there, never lined up in one role-by-region view a procurement team or a journalist can actually cite. So we lined them up. Every figure on this page traces to a public origin, meaning the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Aalpha, and FullStack, and where a role-by-region cell has no verifiable public figure, we wrote NEEDS SOURCE in the cell instead of inventing a number. I would rather hand you an honest gap than a confident guess, because the confident guesses are exactly what this market has too many of already.
The master rate matrix
Hourly ranges by role and region. One warning before you read it: the offshore and nearshore figures are billed vendor rates with margin already inside, while the US onshore figure is an earned wage from government data, which is a different animal entirely. Cells we could not verify say NEEDS SOURCE.
| Region | General developer | Senior developer | AI / ML specialist | QA (manual) | QA (automation) | Solution architect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India / South Asia | $18 to $402 | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE |
| Asia (broad) | NEEDS SOURCE | $40 to $702 | $30 to $602 | $15 to $252 | $25 to $402 | NEEDS SOURCE |
| Eastern Europe | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | $20 to $352 | $35 to $552 | NEEDS SOURCE |
| Latin America | NEEDS SOURCE | $60 to $902 | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | $70 to $1002 |
| US onshore | $69.50 mean wage1 | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE | NEEDS SOURCE |
Read this before comparing cells. The $69.50 per hour US figure is what a developer earns, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is not what you pay. What a US firm charges for that developer is far higher once margin and overhead load in, and the blended table below shows how much. The offshore and nearshore numbers in this matrix already include vendor margin. So the honest comparison is billed rate to billed rate, and I flag this because I watch buyers compare a BLS wage against a vendor quote all the time, which flatters the onshore side and quietly distorts the whole business case.
Offshore, nearshore, and onshore blended rates
The blended rate is the number you actually budget against: one hourly figure that rolls a mix of roles, project management, QA, and governance into a single price.
| Delivery model | Blended hourly rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Offshore | $27 to $55 | FullStack Price Guide |
| Nearshore | $44 to $82 | FullStack Price Guide |
| US onshore, small firm | $90 to $160 | FullStack Price Guide |
| US onshore, mid-market | $120 to $250 | FullStack Price Guide |
| US onshore, enterprise-class | $400+ (some to $900) | FullStack Price Guide |
Region profiles
A short read on each region, limited strictly to what the public sources report. Talent depth and time-zone overlap matter as much as the rate, but those are judgment calls; the bands below are not.
India / South Asia
The reference point. This is the low-cost tier nearly every buyer anchors against when modeling offshore savings, and it has held that position longer than most of the vendors quoting it have existed.
Asia (broad)
Seniors and AI/ML specialists command a real premium over general development here. The ceiling still sits well under any onshore billed rate, which is the arbitrage the whole model runs on.
Eastern Europe
On the figures we can verify, a balanced mid-tier. Automation QA prices above the Asia bands, and that gap reflects deeper tooling and engineering depth, not just geography.
Latin America
The nearshore premium tier for US buyers. Seniors sit above Asia seniors ($40 to $70), and what that spread actually buys is time zone: your team and theirs awake and shipping in the same working day.
QA pricing splits sharply, manual versus automation
The clearest pattern in the verified data: manual and automation QA are not the same product, and the price says so in both regions.
| Region | Manual QA | Automation QA |
|---|---|---|
| Asia | $15 to $25 | $25 to $40 |
| Eastern Europe | $20 to $35 | $35 to $55 |
Automation runs well above manual in both markets. So when a rate card quotes you a single QA number, ask which discipline it is actually pricing, because the swing between the two can quietly rewrite a project budget after the contract is signed.
How to read a rate card
A blended rate is not a developer's cost. Know what is folded in before you compare anything.
A published blended rate loads a lot on top of the raw engineer: vendor margin, project management, QA, delivery governance. That is exactly why a US firm bills $90 to $250 and up while the government mean wage for the developer doing the work is $69.50 per hour: the wage is one person's pay, the billed rate is a delivered outcome with everything else wrapped around it. My rule when comparing quotes: make both sides quote the same thing. A fully blended all-in rate and a bare staff-augmentation body rate can differ enormously for identical talent, and in my experience half the quotes that look cheaper are only cheaper because someone left the wrapping out.
Methodology and disclaimer
A synthesis of public, published rate data. No proprietary survey, and we say so plainly.
Everything here is aggregated from public sources. The onshore anchor is US government wage data: Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS, occupation 15-1252, May 2024. The offshore, nearshore, and onshore billed figures come from vendor and analyst compilations that publish their ranges in the open, specifically the Aalpha offshore rate breakdown and the FullStack Software Development Price Guide. We report ranges rather than single points because that is how the sources themselves report, and pretending to more precision than the source has is its own kind of dishonesty. Where a role-by-region cell had no verifiable public figure, we marked it NEEDS SOURCE instead of estimating. One distinction we repeat on purpose: the BLS figure is a raw earned wage, the vendor figures are billed rates with margin inside, and the two are not directly comparable. Every figure links to its public origin.
Full source list
Every figure on this page, with its public URL and access date.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), Software Developers (15-1252), May 2024. Mean hourly wage $69.50; median annual $133,080. bls.gov/oes/2024/may/oes151252.htm Accessed July 13, 2026.
- Aalpha, Offshore Software Development Hourly Rates. India general development $18 to $40; AI/ML specialists $30 to $60 across Asia; Asia seniors $40 to $70; Latin America senior developers $60 to $90 and solution architects $70 to $100; manual QA $15 to $25 (Asia) and $20 to $35 (Eastern Europe); automation QA $25 to $40 (Asia) and $35 to $55 (Eastern Europe). aalpha.net/articles/offshore-software-development-hourly-rates Accessed July 13, 2026.
- FullStack, Software Development Price Guide (Hourly Rate Comparison). Offshore blended $27 to $55; nearshore blended $44 to $82; US firm billing $90 to $160 (small), $120 to $250 (mid-market), and $400+ (enterprise-class, some to $900). fullstack.com/labs/resources/blog/software-development-price-guide-hourly-rate-comparison Accessed July 13, 2026.
Cite this report
Journalists and analysts, reference away. Cite it like this.
Sthenos Technologies. "The 2026 IT Outsourcing and Staff Augmentation Rate Benchmark." Published July 13, 2026.
https://sthenostechnologies.com/it-outsourcing-rate-benchmark-2026/
Talk through your sourcing plan
If you are budgeting an offshore, nearshore, or onshore build and want an outside read on the numbers, bring your rate cards and I will tell you what I see.
Book a 30-minute call