A US software developer on payroll costs a company about $198,000 a year once benefits and taxes are counted. A US freelancer charges $82 to $130 an hour. Those are the typical prices, and they are the smaller part of what hiring a developer costs.
What an employee costs
The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median US software developer salary at $135,980 in May 2025. The lowest-paid tenth earned $82,460, and the highest-paid tenth earned more than $214,670.[1]
Salary is not the cost. The employer also pays for paid leave, insurance, retirement contributions and payroll taxes. For full-time private-sector workers in management and professional jobs, wages were 68.5 percent of what employers spent on compensation in June 2026. Benefits were the other 31.5 percent.[2] Dividing $135,980 by 0.685 gives about $198,000 a year, or $16,500 a month.
At firms with fewer than 50 workers, wages were 74.1 percent of compensation costs.[2] That gives about $184,000. The share covers every kind of job at small firms, not only developers, so treat it as a rough guide. Neither figure includes recruiting, equipment or the time it takes to find someone.
| Option | Typical price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employee, median salary | $135,980 a year | [1] |
| Employee, with benefits and taxes | About $198,000 a year | Our estimate from [1] and [2] |
| Freelancer, US and Canada | $82 to $130 an hour | [3] |
| Freelancer, Eastern Europe | $40 to $85 an hour | [3] |
| Freelancer, Latin America | $35 to $75 an hour | [3] |
What a freelancer costs
Arc, a marketplace for hiring developers, surveyed 5,302 freelance developers for 2026. Freelancers in the US and Canada charged $82 to $130 an hour. Senior freelancers in the US charged $95 to $150.[3] A month of full-time work, about 173 hours, comes to $14,200 to $22,500 at the first range. You pay no benefits, only for the hours worked.
Rates drop outside North America. Arc's figures were $40 to $85 an hour in Eastern Europe and $35 to $75 in Latin America.[3] These are what freelancers say they charge, not what clients paid.
Why the hourly number misleads
A cheap hour is not a cheap result. Suppose one developer charges $45 an hour and needs three times as long as another who charges $135. The two cost the same, and the first leaves you with the weaker software.
The gap grows when the foundation is poor. On a badly built system, each fix takes longer, and each new feature breaks something old. If your product never shipped, or keeps breaking, the developers' hourly rate is rarely the cause. The cause is usually skill or architecture, and paying more hours to the same people does not change either one.
Where to spend
The costly decisions are few. Someone has to judge whether the architecture will hold, interview candidates who can build it, and review the work. That takes senior experience, and it is worth paying for once, early.
After that, the daily work can go to cheaper developers, provided the system was built for them to maintain. A clear structure also keeps hosting bills low, because the system does not need extra servers to make up for slow code.
Moosara is a software rescue practice built around this order of work. It finds out why a project is stuck, fixes the architecture, interviews and hires the team, and trains them. If you are paying for development and the product is not shipping, talk to Robert directly before you spend more.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025: software developer wages (as reported by nuecareer.com) https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (tables 4 and 6) https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.htm
- Arc, Freelance Developer Rates in 2026: Global Cost Guide (survey of 5,302 freelance developers) https://arc.dev/employer-blog/freelance-developers-cost/