Software Developer Cost Calculator

The median US software developer earned $135,980 in base pay in May 2025 (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025). Benefits and payroll taxes make up 30.8% of total compensation for professional workers (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026), so the fully loaded cost is about $196,500 a year, $16,375 a month or $94 an hour. Recruiting comes on top of that.

The BLS does not publish pay by programming language. C#, .NET, Java and Python developers are all counted as software developers, so the same figures apply: $105,210 at the 25th percentile, $135,980 at the median, $171,980 at the 75th and $214,670 at the 90th. Choose "Software developer" in the calculator and change the seniority to see the loaded monthly and hourly cost.

At the median, base pay works out to $65.38 an hour ($135,980 over 2,080 hours), and about $94 an hour once benefits and payroll taxes are added. Contract rates through a staffing firm run higher: Kforce reported an average Technology bill rate of about $90 an hour for 2025 (Kforce 2025 annual report). The staff augmentation cost calculator breaks a bill rate into pay and markup.

For a US software developer, fully loaded, about $12,670 a month at the 25th percentile of pay, $16,375 at the median, $20,711 at the 75th and $25,851 at the 90th. Through Second Talent a full-time developer costs $29 to $39 USD an hour, billed monthly ($4,599 to $5,999 for 160 hours).

Set the team size and engagement length in the calculator. It multiplies the monthly cost per developer by both, so three mid-level US software developers come to about $49,100 a month fully loaded. For a mixed team, price each seniority level separately and add the results.

Benefits and payroll taxes (30.8% of compensation, per the BLS), then the cost of the search itself. SHRM's 2025 benchmark puts the median time to fill a role at 44 days (SHRM 2025 recruiting benchmarking), and recruiting agencies charge a percentage of the new hire's annual compensation (Robert Half 2025 annual report). Equipment and software licenses are extra for an in-house hire.

Second Talent helps US startups hire vetted AI-Native Engineers and Specialists from Asia. A full-time engineer costs $29 to $39 USD an hour, billed monthly ($4,599 to $5,999 for 160 hours), with salary, payroll taxes, benefits and our fee included, and a 90-day, one-time replacement guarantee. That is typically 50-70% less than a comparable US hire. The calculator places the rate within that range by seniority as a planning figure; your quote depends on the role.

US salaries are the national annual wage percentiles for each occupation in the May 2025 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, mapped as junior = 25th percentile, mid-level = median, senior = 75th and lead / staff = 90th. Loaded costs divide salary by 69.2%, the wage share of total compensation for professional workers in the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026. Hourly figures use 2,080 hours a year. Roles map to BLS occupations: software developers (15-1252), web developers (15-1254), software quality assurance analysts and testers (15-1253), database architects (15-1243), data scientists (15-2051), computer network architects (15-1241), information security analysts (15-1212).