Most cost comparisons in this category are wrong in the same way: they compare a monthly rate against a salary. That is not the comparison. Here is the one that is.
When a finance director compares an offshore rate against an in-house hire, the instinct is to put the monthly rate next to the monthly salary. That understates the offshore saving substantially, because a salary is only one of the things an employer pays for a seat.
The honest comparison is rate against fully loaded cost — everything you spend to have that person working, divided by twelve.
The categories below apply to an in-house hire in most jurisdictions. The rates and thresholds differ by country and change year to year, so get current figures from your accountant rather than from a vendor’s website — including ours.
| Cost category | In-house hire | Our inclusive rate |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | You pay | Included |
| Employer statutory contributions | You pay | Included |
| Pension / end-of-service provision | You pay | Included |
| Medical and other insurance | You pay | Included |
| Recruitment fee | One-off, often significant | None |
| Equipment | You buy and replace | Included |
| Workspace | You provide | Included |
| Payroll administration | Your finance team or a bureau fee | Included |
| Notice and severance exposure | Yours | Ours — 30 days’ notice to scale down |
| Replacement cost if it fails | Full search again | Replaced in 7 days, no fee |
| Stack-specific software licences | You pay | Not included — quoted separately |
We list the last row deliberately. Tooling specific to your stack is not in our rate, and we would rather say so here than have you find out at invoice stage.
A hire who takes three months to become useful has cost you three months of salary for partial output, plus the manager’s time. Our shortlist arrives within 7 days of a signed brief and a fully onboarded professional is typically working within 2–4 weeks — but ramp-up to full productivity is a real cost either way, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is selling.
This is the one that distorts the whole calculation. A permanent hire who does not work out costs the search, the salary paid, the notice period, potentially severance, the manager’s time, and the search again. It is often the single largest staffing cost a growing company absorbs, and it never appears in a budget line. Under our model that risk sits with us: if a placement underperforms we replace them within 7 days at no extra fee.
Why there is no number on this page. A single headline rate would either quote the cheapest role and disappoint you, or quote an average that describes nobody. We send a full all-inclusive rate card broken down by discipline and seniority, on request, usually within a day.
What we will commit to in public: the rate is inclusive of employment, payroll, insurance and benefits, and scaling down takes 30 days’ notice with no long lock-in.
Because a single headline number would mislead more than it helped. The rate for a mid-level support role and a senior data engineer are not comparable, and neither is the same across our UK, UAE and Pakistan entities. Publishing one figure would mean either quoting the cheapest and disappointing people, or quoting an average that describes nobody. We send a full all-inclusive rate card on request, broken down by discipline and seniority.
The total an employer actually spends to have someone in a seat, not just the salary line. It includes employer statutory contributions, pension or end-of-service provision, insurance, recruitment cost amortised over the person’s tenure, equipment, software licences, workspace, and the management overhead of employing someone. Salary is usually the largest single component but rarely the majority of the total.
Not always, and it is worth being honest about when it is not. If a role needs constant same-room collaboration, deep local market knowledge, or physical presence, the friction can cost more than the saving. Offshore works best where the work is well-defined enough to be done asynchronously and the output is judged on quality rather than proximity.
Four things, roughly in order of impact: seniority, discipline (specialist engineering and AI roles price differently from support or operations), the entity the person is employed through, and the working hours you need covered — asking someone to cover a timezone materially outside their own has a cost.
Our rate covers employment, payroll, insurance and benefits. It does not cover software licences or tooling specific to your stack, or third-party costs you would incur regardless of who did the work. We would rather list those separately than bury them in a rate and have you discover them later.
Build the fully loaded annual cost of the local hire including every category above, divide by twelve, and compare that against our monthly rate. Comparing our rate against a salary figure alone will make offshore look like a smaller saving than it is — and comparing it against a freelancer’s hourly rate will make it look larger, because the freelancer carries none of the employment cost.
Broken down by discipline and seniority, all-inclusive. Tell us the role you are considering and we will send the relevant part rather than a fifteen-page PDF.
Request the rate card →Outstaff Solutions Limited (Company No. 17272604, registered office Slough SL1 3DT, United Kingdom), together with Outstaff Solutions & Technology FZE (IFZA, Dubai) and Outstaff Solutions (Karachi).
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