"Hire offshore and save 70%" is the pitch on every outsourcing homepage. It is directionally true and specifically useless — it tells you nothing about what your actual project will cost, or what you give up to get there.
This guide sets out real, checkable numbers: publicly cited industry rate ranges for the US, UK, and South Asia, our own published Bangladesh pricing, and — more importantly — the tradeoffs that determine whether offshore hiring is actually the right call for your project, not just the cheaper one.
The rate gap, in ranges
Agency rate-card surveys published by directories like Clutch and GoodFirms commonly place hourly development rates in these broad bands:
- United States: roughly $75–$200/hour for agency-level web, mobile, and custom software development.
- United Kingdom: roughly £40–£100/hour (broadly $50–$130/hour).
- Western/Northern Europe: roughly €50–€120/hour.
- South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh): roughly $15–$40/hour, with Bangladesh commonly at the lower end of that band.
These are industry-wide averages, not a quote — treat them as a starting orientation, not a number to build a budget on. The number that matters is what a specific vendor quotes for your specific scope.
"A 3–5x rate difference is not a quality discount. It is a labor-market difference — the same engineering judgment costs less to buy in Dhaka than in San Francisco or London."
What actually drives the gap
The rate difference is not arbitrary. A senior software engineer in Bangladesh earns a strong, competitive local salary — but that salary, converted to USD or GBP, is a fraction of the equivalent US or UK figure because the cost of living and local wage baseline are fundamentally different. You are not buying junior work at a discount; you are buying the same seniority in a different labor market. The scale of that baseline gap shows up in independent developer compensation data too — the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey puts median US backend developer pay near $175,000, well above typical UK software developer earnings reported in the UK Office for National Statistics' ASHE earnings-by-occupation dataset — and the gap widens further at senior and management levels.
What we actually charge
Rate-card averages are useful for orientation, not for budgeting. Here is our own published international pricing from our international hiring page — set independently for the international market's scope and delivery standard, not converted from our BDT rates at a floating exchange rate:
- Business website: from $900
- E-commerce website: from $3,500
- Mobile app (iOS/Android): from $1,500
- Custom web application: from $3,500
- POS software: from $2,200
- ERP system: from $7,500
These are starting prices for defined scopes, quoted in writing after a discovery call — not a floor you should expect every project to land on.
Where the savings genuinely hold up
Offshore Bangladesh development works well for projects with a definable scope: marketing and e-commerce websites, mobile apps with a clear feature set, internal business tools (CRM, inventory, HR), and POS/ERP builds where the workflow is documented up front. Written specs travel well across timezones, and fixed-price engagements convert the rate gap directly into budget savings without adding coordination risk.
Where they do not
The savings get eaten by coordination overhead on projects that need genuinely undefined-scope discovery work or design-heavy products requiring rapid live feedback loops — the problem there isn't reachability (our call center runs 24/7, so timezone is not a barrier to getting someone on the line), it's that undefined scope doesn't travel well through a written-spec process regardless of who is building it. If your project needs that kind of constant, evolving-scope iteration, factor that into the comparison — not the clock.
How to actually decide
Do not decide from a rate card. Send a real scope to two or three vendors — one local, one offshore — and compare the written, fixed-price quotes for the same requirements. The rate-band numbers above will roughly hold, but the real decision is whether the vendor's process (discovery, milestones, written communication) fits how your team actually works.
If you want to see how that process runs in practice, our international hiring page walks through engagement models, our own real pricing, and case studies you can read end to end — not just a claim. If you are specifically US-based, our US outsourcing page covers 24/7 reachability and USD-native pricing in more depth; UK-based readers can see our UK outsourcing page for VAT/Making Tax Digital invoicing details.
Three things worth settling before you send that scope out for quotes: which contract structure fits your project, whether you want a dedicated team or a project-based engagement, and how timezone overlap will actually work day to day. And before any vendor gets your idea in detail, see our NDA and IP ownership guide for what their contract needs to say.
Sources
External references behind the figures and claims on this page. Rate bands and vendor pricing move — check the source before quoting a number.
- 2025 Developer Survey — Work and compensation
Stack Overflow
Self-reported developer compensation in the US and other markets.
- ASHE Table 14 — earnings by occupation
UK Office for National Statistics
Official UK earnings data for programming and software roles.
Frequently Asked Questions
Industry rate surveys (Clutch, GoodFirms, and similar agency rate cards) commonly place South Asian offshore development, including Bangladesh, in the roughly $15–$40/hour range against $75–$200/hour for US agencies and £40–£100/hour for UK agencies. The exact gap depends on seniority and specialization — the number to verify is always a written quote for your specific scope, not a rate-card average.
Primarily cost of living and currency — a senior Bangladeshi engineer earns a strong local salary at a fraction of the US/UK equivalent nominal figure, without a proportional drop in output for well-specified web, mobile, and business-software work. It is not a quality discount; it is a labor-market difference.
Timezone distance from the US (minimal working-hours overlap, workable async) versus better overlap with UK/EU/Australia, and a heavier reliance on written specs over spontaneous in-person conversations. Projects with a clear scope handle this well; projects that need constant same-room iteration do not.
Fixed-price is usually cheaper and lower-risk for well-defined scopes (a website, an app, a defined internal tool) because you are not paying for scope discovery by the hour. Hourly/dedicated-team makes more sense for ongoing product work where the scope is expected to change.
Our published international starting prices: business websites from $900, mobile apps from $1,500, custom web applications from $3,500, POS software from $2,200, and ERP systems from $7,500 — priced independently for the international market, not converted from our BDT pricing. See the full breakdown on our hiring page.