{"head":{"title":"Offshore vs Onshore Development Cost | OceanLab","description":"Compare an in-house US hire, an onshore agency and an offshore partner for the same team and months. Salary from BLS, on-costs and rates all editable.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/tools/offshore-vs-onshore-cost"},"tool":{"slug":"offshore-vs-onshore-cost","path":"/tools/offshore-vs-onshore-cost","name":"Offshore vs onshore cost","h1":"Offshore vs onshore development cost","lede":"Compare hiring in-house, an onshore agency and an offshore partner for the same people and months.","category":"delivery","categoryTitle":"Run the project","method":["In-house: salary × (1 + on-costs) × people ÷ 12 each month, plus a one-off recruiting cost per hire. The salary default is the US BLS median for software developers; on-costs are a placeholder.","Onshore agency: your quoted hourly rate × paid hours per month × people. It starts empty until you enter a quote.","Offshore partner: the hourly rate × paid hours × (1 + coordination time) × people. The rate defaults to OceanLab's $50 engineering rate; coordination time is an OceanLab planning assumption."],"sources":[{"label":"US BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: software developers, median annual wage (May 2025)","url":"https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm","checkedAt":"2026-10-25"}],"faq":[{"question":"Is the BLS figure what a developer costs?","answer":"No, it is a median wage. An employee also costs benefits, payroll taxes, equipment and recruiting, which the on-costs and recruiting lines add."},{"question":"Why add coordination time offshore?","answer":"Remote teams across time zones need more written specs, hand-offs and calls. The 10% is a planning assumption; set it to your own experience."},{"question":"Which time zones does OceanLab cover?","answer":"OceanLab engineers work remotely from India with overlap for the US (East and West), the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Australia and Asia, and can travel onsite when needed."},{"question":"Is anything I enter sent anywhere?","answer":"No. The tool runs in your browser and there is no sign-up. Nothing leaves the page unless you choose to email your result to OceanLab."}],"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"},"related":[{"href":"/tools/developer-rate-comparison","label":"Developer rate comparison","detail":"Enter the hours and the quotes you have, and compare what the same work costs at each rate."},{"href":"/tools/team-size-calculator","label":"Team size calculator","detail":"Enter the hours of work and the weeks you have, and see the smallest team that fits, allowing for coordination."},{"href":"/tools/build-vs-buy","label":"Build vs buy","detail":"Compare SaaS seats with a custom build year by year, find the break-even point, and check the reasons that are not about cost."}],"studies":[{"meta":{"slug":"pylon","industry":"insurance","projectType":"Insurance operations console","featured":true,"country":"us","tags":["insurtech","ai","saas","enterprise"],"compliances":["SOC 2 Type II","HIPAA-aligned","GDPR","ISO 27001"],"cover":{"src":"/pylon-1.png","width":1440,"height":1207}},"text":{"en":{"title":"Building Pylon - AI-Native Insurance Operations from Prototype to Production","description":"Replaced fragmented policy spreadsheets and disconnected claims tools with a unified AI-driven workspace, designed and shipped in 8 weeks via clickable AI prototype.","category":"InsurTech","client":"Pylon"}}},{"meta":{"slug":"kleidi","industry":"internal","projectType":"SaaS admin dashboard","country":"gr","tags":["saas","enterprise"],"compliances":["GDPR","SOC 2","ISO/IEC 27001"],"cover":{"src":"/case-studies/kleidi/01-home.png","width":1440,"height":1000}},"text":{"en":{"title":"Kleidi - SaaS Admin Console with Consented Support Access and a Full Audit Trail","description":"Designed and built a clickable internal admin console for an Athens SaaS company that sells housekeeping software to EU hotels: find any tenant and see everything about it on one page, enter a customer's workspace only with their consent, work GDPR data requests on the clock, and give staff elevated rights only for a limited window with someone else's approval.","category":"Internal Tools / SaaS Admin Console","client":"Myrtaki Software"}}},{"meta":{"slug":"shadoof","industry":"devtools","projectType":"Feature flags service","country":"eg","tags":["enterprise"],"compliances":["SOC 2","Egypt PDPL (Law No. 151 of 2020)"],"cover":{"src":"/case-studies/shadoof/01-home.png","width":1440,"height":1000}},"text":{"en":{"title":"Shadoof - Feature Flag and Progressive Delivery Service for a Marketplace's Engineering Teams","description":"Designed and built a clickable feature flag console for the engineering teams of a Cairo online marketplace: targeting rules and sticky percentage rollouts per environment, change requests with a second approver for Production, kill switches for incidents and a full change history for every flag.","category":"Developer Tools / Feature Flags","client":"Khan Sukkar"}}},{"meta":{"slug":"helio","industry":"energy","projectType":"Solar, battery & smart-home app","featured":true,"country":"ch","tags":["energy","iot","mobile","ai"],"compliances":["GDPR","Swiss FADP","IEC 62443","ISO 27001"],"cover":{"src":"/helio-1.png","width":2400,"height":1797}},"text":{"en":{"title":"Helio - Smart Solar & Storage App with IoT Sensor Network from Prototype to Production","description":"Built a consumer iOS and Android app for solar generation, battery storage, EV charging and smart-home device control - backed by an IoT sensor network and AI optimisation engine. Shipped from clickable AI prototype to App Store in 16 weeks.","category":"Energy / IoT","client":"Helio"}}}],"more":[{"href":"/case-studies","label":"All case studies","detail":"Every OceanLab product build."},{"href":"/ai-automation","label":"AI automation","detail":"AI built into real business workflows, with people in charge."}],"today":"2026-10-25"}