{
  "slug": "eastern-europe-developer-cost-index",
  "metaTitle": "Eastern Europe Developer Cost Index 2026: 22 Countries Ranked",
  "metaDescription": "Developer cost in Eastern Europe as an index (US = 100): Estonia 49, Czechia 36, Poland 33, Romania 24, Hungary 18. ILOSTAT and Eurostat data, free to cite.",
  "question": "How much does a software developer cost in each Eastern European country, compared with the United States?",
  "title": "Eastern Europe Developer Cost Index 2026",
  "answer": {
    "headline": "On the God of Startups Developer Cost Index (United States = 100), a month of ICT work costs 49 in Estonia, 36 in Czechia, 33 in Poland, 24 in Romania, 18 in Hungary and 5 in Georgia. The index divides each country's average monthly earnings in the ICT sector (ILOSTAT, market exchange rates) by the US figure of $11,254 for 2025.",
    "sample": "ILOSTAT average monthly earnings in the ICT sector (ISIC Rev.4 J) for 22 countries, Eurostat labour cost levels, Eurostat ICT recruitment survey — 2022–2025 reference periods",
    "verifiedAsOf": "2026-10-13"
  },
  "matrix": {
    "id": "index-table",
    "title": "The index: 22 countries ranked by the monthly cost of ICT work",
    "note": "Index = monthly ICT-sector earnings ÷ US monthly ICT-sector earnings ($11,254, 2025) × 100, rounded. Rows whose latest wage is 2022–2023 are marked by their year. Employer cost per hour includes social contributions (EU members and Serbia only). Hiring difficulty = share of IT firms that recruited ICT specialists and had hard-to-fill vacancies.",
    "columns": [
      {
        "key": "rank",
        "label": "Rank"
      },
      {
        "key": "country",
        "label": "Country"
      },
      {
        "key": "index",
        "label": "Index (US = 100)",
        "numeric": true
      },
      {
        "key": "wage",
        "label": "Monthly ICT wage (US$)",
        "numeric": true
      },
      {
        "key": "year",
        "label": "Wage year",
        "numeric": true
      },
      {
        "key": "employer",
        "label": "Employer cost per ICT hour (€, 2025)",
        "numeric": true
      },
      {
        "key": "pool",
        "label": "ICT workforce",
        "numeric": true
      },
      {
        "key": "hard",
        "label": "IT firms with hard-to-fill vacancies (2024)",
        "numeric": true
      }
    ],
    "rows": [
      {
        "country": "Estonia",
        "index": "49",
        "wage": "$5,513",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€38.4",
        "pool": "40k",
        "hard": "64.1%",
        "rank": "1"
      },
      {
        "country": "Slovenia",
        "index": "46",
        "wage": "$5,164",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€38.3",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "69.4%",
        "rank": "2"
      },
      {
        "country": "Czechia",
        "index": "36",
        "wage": "$4,055",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€34.9",
        "pool": "211k",
        "hard": "85.3%",
        "rank": "3"
      },
      {
        "country": "Slovakia",
        "index": "36",
        "wage": "$4,043",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€30.8",
        "pool": "107k",
        "hard": "67.2%",
        "rank": "4"
      },
      {
        "country": "Latvia",
        "index": "36",
        "wage": "$4,023",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€27.8",
        "pool": "41k",
        "hard": "70.7%",
        "rank": "5"
      },
      {
        "country": "Poland",
        "index": "33",
        "wage": "$3,709",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€29.3",
        "pool": "687k",
        "hard": "32.1%",
        "rank": "6"
      },
      {
        "country": "Croatia",
        "index": "31",
        "wage": "$3,545",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€30.1",
        "pool": "76k",
        "hard": "50.5%",
        "rank": "7"
      },
      {
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "index": "28",
        "wage": "$3,206",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€24.0",
        "pool": "129k",
        "hard": "58.7%",
        "rank": "8"
      },
      {
        "country": "Lithuania",
        "index": "25",
        "wage": "$2,801",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€32.0",
        "pool": "73k",
        "hard": "65.8%",
        "rank": "9"
      },
      {
        "country": "Romania",
        "index": "24",
        "wage": "$2,671",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€26.0",
        "pool": "205k",
        "hard": "40.3%",
        "rank": "10"
      },
      {
        "country": "Serbia",
        "index": "21",
        "wage": "$2,364",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€28.2",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "60.2%",
        "rank": "11"
      },
      {
        "country": "Hungary",
        "index": "18",
        "wage": "$1,988",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "€24.4",
        "pool": "164k",
        "hard": "73.1%",
        "rank": "12"
      },
      {
        "country": "Türkiye",
        "index": "15",
        "wage": "$1,632",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "375k",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "13"
      },
      {
        "country": "Montenegro",
        "index": "10",
        "wage": "$1,181",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "46.9%",
        "rank": "14"
      },
      {
        "country": "Bosnia and Herzegovina",
        "index": "10",
        "wage": "$1,129",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "56.7%",
        "rank": "15"
      },
      {
        "country": "Moldova",
        "index": "9",
        "wage": "$1,041",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "16"
      },
      {
        "country": "Ukraine",
        "index": "8",
        "wage": "$953",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "301k",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "17"
      },
      {
        "country": "Kazakhstan",
        "index": "8",
        "wage": "$950",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "166k",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "18"
      },
      {
        "country": "Albania",
        "index": "8",
        "wage": "$875",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "19"
      },
      {
        "country": "Azerbaijan",
        "index": "7",
        "wage": "$793",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "60k",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "20"
      },
      {
        "country": "Uzbekistan",
        "index": "6",
        "wage": "$684",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "21"
      },
      {
        "country": "Georgia",
        "index": "5",
        "wage": "$515",
        "year": "2023",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—",
        "rank": "22"
      },
      {
        "rank": "ref",
        "country": "United States",
        "index": "100",
        "wage": "$11,254",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—"
      },
      {
        "rank": "ref",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "index": "56",
        "wage": "$6,294",
        "year": "2025",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—"
      },
      {
        "rank": "ref",
        "country": "Germany",
        "index": "61",
        "wage": "$6,809",
        "year": "2022",
        "employer": "—",
        "pool": "—",
        "hard": "—"
      }
    ],
    "sources": [
      {
        "source": "ILOSTAT — mean monthly earnings by economic activity",
        "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/"
      },
      {
        "source": "Eurostat — labour cost levels (lc_lci_lev)",
        "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/lc_lci_lev/default/table"
      },
      {
        "source": "Eurostat — ICT specialists recruitment (isoc_ske_itrcrn2)",
        "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_ske_itrcrn2/default/table"
      }
    ]
  },
  "cite": "God of Startups Atlas (2026). Eastern Europe Developer Cost Index 2026. https://godofstartups.com/atlas/eastern-europe-developer-cost-index — data: ILOSTAT, Eurostat. Licence: CC BY 4.0.",
  "sections": [
    {
      "id": "index",
      "title": "Developer Cost Index by country (United States = 100)",
      "chart": "bars",
      "note": "Calculated from ILOSTAT average monthly earnings in the information-and-communication sector at market exchange rates. Same series as the monthly wage table in the IT outsourcing guide.",
      "rows": [
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          "label": "Hungary",
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          "label": "Bosnia and Herzegovina",
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    {
      "id": "employer-cost",
      "title": "Full employer cost of an ICT hour in Central and Eastern Europe (€, including social contributions)",
      "note": "Eurostat labour cost level for the information-and-communication sector: wages plus employer social contributions and other labour costs, per hour worked. This is the number to budget with, not the gross wage.",
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      ],
      "chart": "bars"
    },
    {
      "id": "hiring",
      "title": "Hiring difficulty: IT firms with hard-to-fill ICT vacancies (2024)",
      "chart": "bars",
      "note": "Eurostat, 2024: share of IT services firms (NACE J62–J63) that recruited ICT specialists and had hard-to-fill vacancies. A high share means rates are under upward pressure.",
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          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_ske_itrcrn2/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Romania",
          "value": "40.3%",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_ske_itrcrn2/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Poland",
          "value": "32.1%",
          "segment": "easiest to hire",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_ske_itrcrn2/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "reconciliation": {
    "title": "Why this index differs from vendor rate cards and salary sites",
    "body": "The index compares what ICT-sector employees earn, converted at market exchange rates — the cost floor of a team, not a vendor's price. Rate cards add employer charges, bench time and margin; salary sites sample self-reported pay and over-represent senior developers in capital cities. Because the series is converted at market rates, a currency move (Türkiye, Hungary) shifts a country's index without any change in local pay. Seven countries last reported for 2022–2023 and are compared with the 2025 US figure, which overstates their relative cost slightly if local wages have since risen faster than US ones.",
    "sources": [
      {
        "source": "ILOSTAT — earnings and employment by economic activity",
        "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/"
      },
      {
        "source": "Eurostat — labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity",
        "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/lc_lci_lev/default/table"
      }
    ]
  },
  "methodology": "The index is a calculation, labelled as such: for each country, ILOSTAT's latest average monthly earnings of employees in the ICT sector (ISIC Rev.4 section J), in US dollars at market exchange rates, divided by the United States value for 2025 ($11,254) and multiplied by 100. Inputs are tier-1 fact nodes in the God of Startups Atlas knowledge graph, each with its source URL and period; nothing is estimated by AI. The index is updated when ILOSTAT publishes a new year. Reuse is free under CC BY 4.0 with attribution; machine-readable data is linked below.",
  "page": "https://godofstartups.com/atlas/eastern-europe-developer-cost-index",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "note": "Each row carries its primary source, period and evidence tier (1 = official/statutory, 2 = industry research with disclosed method)."
}