IT outsourcing in Eastern Europe: what does a development team cost in each country, where are the developers, and how do you choose?

How to choose a country for an outsourced development team

Monthly ICT wage by country — the salary floor of a software team (US$)

Average monthly earnings in the ICT sector (ISIC Rev.4 J) at market exchange rates. A vendor's hourly rate card sits above this floor: it adds employer charges, bench time, management and margin. Rows whose latest ILOSTAT point is 2022–2023 are marked historical.

Full employer cost of an ICT hour in Central and Eastern Europe (€, including social contributions)

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.

Czechia: monthly pay by IT role (median, CZK, 2025)

Czech Statistical Office, structure of earnings 2025. Median gross monthly earnings of employees by occupation (CZ-ISCO). Local currency: compare roles inside the country, use the first table for cross-country comparison.

Poland: what experience and firm size do to a developer's pay (PLN per month, October 2024)

Statistics Poland, structure of wages by occupation, October 2024. Software and applications developers and analysts (ISCO 251), gross monthly earnings. The spread from the bottom decile to the top decile is the range a team budget has to cover.

Lithuania: monthly pay by IT role and region (average, EUR, 2024)

Statistics Lithuania, average gross monthly earnings by occupation (ISCO-08), 2024. Vilnius pays a premium over the rest of the country.

Hungary: software developer pay by age (average, HUF, 2022)

Hungarian Central Statistical Office, full-time employees, 2022 — the latest occupational breakdown published. Older than the other rows; treat as the shape of the curve, not the current level.

Talent pool: ICT-sector employment (thousands)

Everyone employed by information-and-communication companies, one definition across countries. Poland alone is bigger than Czechia, Romania and Hungary combined. Serbia and Uzbekistan are excluded: their series carry a break that failed our plausibility gate (see reconciliation).

Where the developers are: employed developers and ICT professionals by country

National statistics offices and ILOSTAT, occupation-based counts (ISCO-08 major group 25 and sub-group 251). Definitions differ by country: Poland counts employees, Czechia includes the self-employed, Estonia reports full-time equivalents.

Where the pool is growing — ICT employment, compound growth since 2019

Compound annual growth of the same ILOSTAT series, computed in our graph. The Baltics and the Western Balkans grow from a small base; Poland and Türkiye grow fast from a large one, which is the rarer combination.

Hiring difficulty: IT firms that had hard-to-fill vacancies for ICT specialists

Eurostat ICT usage in enterprises survey, 2024. Share of IT services firms (NACE J62–J63, 10+ employees) that recruited or tried to recruit ICT specialists and had vacancies that were hard to fill.

Why it is hard: IT firms citing a lack of applicants

Same survey, 2024: share of IT services firms that recruited ICT specialists and named a lack of applications as a difficulty.

Why it is hard: IT firms citing too-high salary expectations

Same survey, 2024: share of IT services firms that recruited ICT specialists and named applicants' salary expectations as a difficulty — a leading indicator of rate increases.

What an IT firm bills per head: net turnover per person employed (NACE J62)

Eurostat Structural Business Statistics, 2023: computer programming and consultancy, net turnover divided by persons employed. A proxy for the annual revenue a vendor earns per engineer.

Vendor margins: gross operating rate of IT services (NACE J62)

Eurostat Structural Business Statistics, 2024: gross operating surplus as a share of turnover. Higher margins leave vendors room to negotiate; Germany and France shown for reference.

Vendor supply: mid-size and large IT firms (NACE J62)

Eurostat Structural Business Statistics, 2023: number of computer programming and consultancy enterprises by size class. Firms with 50+ staff are the agencies that can staff a full team.

Vendor supply: IT & software micro-firms (NACE J62, 0–9 employees)

Freelancers and boutique studios — the long tail founders actually hire from. Every market added firms since 2021 except Hungary.

Export intensity — ICT services as a share of all service exports

How much of a country's service exports is ICT. A high share means a mature vendor ecosystem, and also a market where the best teams are already booked by foreign clients.

Export volume: computer services exports (€ million, 2024)

Eurostat international trade in services, 2024: exports of computer services. Volume shows how many foreign clients a country's vendors already serve.

Methodology

Every number on this page is a fact node in the God of Startups Atlas — a knowledge graph where each metric carries its source URL, reporting period and evidence tier. Tier 1 here means ILOSTAT, Eurostat and the World Bank. Growth rates are computed in the graph from the same series and labelled as derived. Where a figure failed our plausibility checks it is excluded and said so, not silently dropped. Vendor hourly rate cards are not in the graph — they are tier-3 marketing data — so this page publishes the wage floor instead. Role-level pay, headcounts and hiring-difficulty rows were added on 2026-10-13 from the same graph; each is a tier-1 fact from a national statistics office, Eurostat or ILOSTAT. The selection guide restates numbers from the tables; it adds no figures of its own.

Related benchmarks

Market cells behind this benchmark

Fact tables from the same knowledge graph — one market, every number with its source, period and evidence tier.