What it costs to hire a software developer

A U.S. software developer costs about $182,000 to $242,000 in the first year as an employee, $30 to $180 an hour as a freelancer, and $150 to $300 an hour through a U.S. agency. Which figure applies depends on what you buy and what you need the person to do.

An employee

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median U.S. software developer wage at $135,980 in May 2025. The lowest-paid tenth earned under $82,460, and the highest-paid tenth earned over $214,670.^[1]

Salary is only part of the cost. Benefits and payroll taxes add roughly 30% to 43%, which takes the median salary to about $177,000 to $194,000 a year.^[2] A recruiter, if you use one, charges 15% to 25% of first-year salary. Equipment and software tools add more. With those included, one estimate puts the first-year total at about $182,000 to $242,000.^[2]

That total leaves out your own time. In one marketplace example for a senior engineer on a $200,000 salary, management overhead adds $20,000 to $50,000, and the yearly cost reaches $280,000 to $390,000.^[2]

A freelancer or contractor

One 2026 compilation of freelance rates estimates $30 to $60 an hour for a junior, $60 to $110 for a mid-level developer and $100 to $180 for a senior.^[2] A separate guide from a freelance hiring marketplace puts the average across the U.S. and Canada at $82 to $130 an hour. It calls its figures directional benchmarks, not quotes.^[3]

Over a year, a mid-level freelancer working 1,920 hours costs $115,000 to $211,000. A mid-level employee with benefits costs $169,000 to $243,000.^[2] The ranges overlap. The main difference is that you can stop paying a freelancer when the work stops.

An agency

A U.S. agency bills $150 to $300 an hour for a team that includes project management and testing. Agencies in Latin America, Eastern Europe and India bill $25 to $120.^[2] An agency usually costs 1.5 to 2.5 times as much as a solo contractor, because it bundles management and testing into the rate.^[2]

Why the hourly rate misleads on a stuck project

A rate tells you what an hour costs. It does not tell you how many hours it takes to finish. If your product never shipped, or keeps breaking because of how it was built, more hours at any rate will not fix it.

That guide makes a related point. A $35-an-hour contractor who needs constant oversight can slow a whole project, while a $120-an-hour senior engineer who ships reliable code can lower the total cost.^[3]

So the better question is what it will cost to finish and who can do the work. Answering it starts with someone reading the code and telling you what state it is in. Then you can decide whether you need one senior engineer, a small team, or a cheaper team that a sound design lets you keep.

Moosara is a software rescue practice. It bills by the hour, and a rescue usually costs $8,000 to $11,000 in billed hours. Stabilizing the software usually takes about a month. That is a fraction of one employee's first year, though it buys a different thing: a stable system, not a full-time hire.

Once the system is stable, a cheaper developer can often maintain it. Moosara recruits and trains that developer, who is based offshore. Depending on the size of the project, the developer costs $3,000 to $5,000 a month. The first-year employee figure above works out to roughly $15,000 to $20,000 a month. Moosara does not charge to vet candidates. It bills for its hours spent training the developer, and it takes no cut of the developer's pay. If your project is late, stuck or unstable, a conversation with Robert Lara III is the quickest way to get a figure for yours.