Nearshore Developer Pay Index
What professional developers in Latin America actually earn, compared with the US, Europe and Asia. Built from 12,446 responses to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, with every sample size shown.
Key findings
- The US median developer reported $150,000 in annual total compensation (n=4,376).
- Across Latin American countries with enough responses, medians ranged from $25,447 to $44,404, or 17%–30% of the US figure.
- Experience matters more than geography inside a country: see the experience table below before comparing a senior quote from one country with a junior quote from another.
- In Stack Overflow's first 2026 figures, Brazil's median is 23% of the US median, up from 20% in 2025. Across the countries published in both years, the share of US pay moved by at most 5 points. See the 2026 update.
- These are salaries, not bill rates. Read salary vs rate before using them to judge a vendor quote.
2026 update: the gap to US pay is holding
Stack Overflow has published median pay by country from its 2026 survey (22 countries). It filters respondents differently from our 2025 analysis, so the fair comparison is each country's share of the US median within the same year. On that measure most countries moved by a point or two, and none by more than 5, so a quote built on the 2025 tables below is still a sound benchmark. Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay are not in the 2026 published table, so the 2025 figures remain the latest for them.
| Country | % of US, 2025 | % of US, 2026 | 2026 median / yr | 2026 n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 64% | 63% | $96,333 | 855 |
| Canada | 61% | 61% | $94,315 | 539 |
| Germany | 54% | 55% | $85,296 | 1,218 |
| Spain | 43% | 44% | $68,237 | 331 |
| Poland | 42% | 43% | $65,733 | 309 |
| Portugal | 42% | 40% | $61,413 | 135 |
| Brazil | 20% | 23% | $36,002 | 244 |
| Ukraine | 18% | 23% | $35,800 | 259 |
| India | 12% | 12% | $18,802 | 472 |
US 2026 median: $154,000. Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, published results, retrieved 2026-10-06.
Latin America (nearshore to the US)
| Country | Median / yr | 25th–75th pct | Hourly equiv. | % of US | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico | $31,583 | $15,792–$57,903 | $15.2 | 21% | 156 |
| Brazil | $30,582 | $14,199–$54,611 | $14.7 | 20% | 539 |
| Argentina | $40,474 | $18,989–$74,676 | $19.5 | 27% | 136 |
| Colombia | $25,447 | $9,176–$56,000 | $12.2 | 17% | 105 |
| Chile | $32,870 | $15,404–$50,894 | $15.8 | 22% | 82 |
| Costa Rica | Too few responses | — | — | — | 17 |
| Uruguay | $44,404 | $10,262–$92,838 | $21.3 | 30% | 33 |
| Peru | Too few responses | — | — | — | 29 |
US, Canada & Western Europe
| Country | Median / yr | 25th–75th pct | Hourly equiv. | % of US | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $150,000 | $110,000–$200,000 | $72.1 | 100% | 4,376 |
| Canada | $91,198 | $67,851–$124,029 | $43.8 | 61% | 774 |
| United Kingdom | $95,299 | $68,071–$134,780 | $45.8 | 64% | 1,273 |
| Germany | $81,210 | $62,648–$104,413 | $39.0 | 54% | 1,775 |
Eastern Europe
| Country | Median / yr | 25th–75th pct | Hourly equiv. | % of US | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poland | $62,767 | $35,477–$95,515 | $30.2 | 42% | 516 |
| Ukraine | $26,979 | $4,137–$57,519 | $13.0 | 18% | 613 |
| Romania | $57,437 | $27,570–$88,171 | $27.6 | 38% | 187 |
Southern Europe
| Country | Median / yr | 25th–75th pct | Hourly equiv. | % of US | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal | $62,300 | $40,605–$90,491 | $30.0 | 42% | 195 |
| Spain | $63,808 | $41,185–$89,331 | $30.7 | 43% | 475 |
South & Southeast Asia
| Country | Median / yr | 25th–75th pct | Hourly equiv. | % of US | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | $18,598 | $8,137–$40,684 | $8.9 | 12% | 943 |
| Pakistan | $7,023 | $2,107–$17,558 | $3.4 | 5% | 118 |
| Philippines | $16,462 | $7,528–$39,446 | $7.9 | 11% | 60 |
| Vietnam | $9,362 | $764–$22,020 | $4.5 | 6% | 44 |
Median pay by years of professional experience
Cells with fewer than 30 responses are withheld.
| Country | 0–4 years | 5–9 years | 10+ years |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $91,600 | $135,000 | $170,000 |
| Canada | $62,015 | $76,606 | $104,330 |
| United Kingdom | $54,457 | $81,685 | $108,913 |
| Germany | $54,585 | $76,570 | $92,812 |
| Mexico | $18,608 | $36,847 | $40,000 |
| Brazil | $10,922 | $33,859 | $41,941 |
| Argentina | n=25 | n=24 | $51,992 |
| Colombia | n=24 | n=24 | $44,043 |
| Chile | n=20 | n=22 | $42,412 |
| Uruguay | n=2 | n=10 | n=21 |
| Poland | $31,274 | $67,273 | $81,870 |
| Ukraine | $12,000 | $38,346 | $52,894 |
| Romania | $25,523 | $58,586 | $75,000 |
| Portugal | n=29 | $58,007 | $75,410 |
| Spain | $30,164 | $57,891 | $73,959 |
| India | $9,299 | $24,410 | $40,684 |
| Pakistan | $4,214 | $13,695 | n=23 |
| Philippines | n=18 | n=16 | n=24 |
| Vietnam | n=22 | n=10 | n=11 |
Salary vs rate: how to use these numbers
The hourly column is annual compensation divided by 2,080 hours. It is what a developer earns per working hour, not what a company charges you. A nearshore vendor's bill rate also has to cover payroll taxes and benefits, hardware and software, recruiting, project management, time between projects, and margin.
That makes the table useful in two ways. If a quote's hourly rate is close to the salary-equivalent figure, the vendor is either underpaying people or not covering real costs, and both show up later as turnover. And if a quote is several times the US-relative gap you see here, ask what you are getting for the difference.
Want a second opinion on a nearshore quote? See how we work on nearshore software development.
Methodology
- Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, fielded May-June 2025; ConvertedCompYearly is total annual compensation converted to USD by Stack Overflow. License: Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.
- Included: respondents who code professionally and reported compensation above zero (12,446 responses across the 21 countries shown).
- Medians and quartiles only. Means are distorted by a small number of extreme values.
- Any figure based on fewer than 30 responses is withheld.
- Survey respondents skew toward developers who are active on Stack Overflow, and response counts in smaller countries are modest. Treat single-country figures as indicative.
- Computed with
scripts/research/developer-pay.py; results published on 2026-09-16. - 2026 update: Stack Overflow's published 2026 medians by country (Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0), copied by
scripts/research/developer-pay-2026-published.pyon 2026-10-06. Only shares of the US median are compared across years.