Eastern European Developer Rates in 2026, by Country

By the Wild.Codes editorial team. Updated October 2026. Currency conversions use exchange rates for 14 October 2026.

A senior developer's median pay is $4,500 a month net in Ukraine (DOU, June 2026) and about 24,780 PLN ($6,354) on a Polish B2B invoice (Just Join IT, 2025 job ads). Mid-level medians are $2,500 in Ukraine and $4,846 on a Polish B2B invoice.

Once taxes and contributions are added, those senior salaries cost a client or employer roughly $30-42 an hour. Vendors bill more. The Uvik rate index puts senior Python bill rates at $35-55 an hour in Ukraine and $45-60 in Poland, and Accelerance's survey of 60 vendors puts European senior rates at $64-76.

In short

• For a Ukrainian senior, take-home pay is about $4,500 a month (DOU), the cost to a client once FOP taxes are added is about $30 an hour, and the bill-rate band in Uvik's index is $35-55 an hour.
• Polish job ads in 2025 had a senior median of about 24,780 PLN ($6,354) on a B2B invoice and 21,573 PLN ($5,532) gross on an employment contract (Just Join IT).
• In our analysis of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, employed developers with 11 or more years of experience reported a median of $53,686 a year in Ukraine and $78,880 in Poland, against $170,000 in the US.
• European vendor rates fell 4.4% year on year, with "downward pressure especially strong in Central and Eastern Europe" (Accelerance).

Wild.Codes wrote this article. We are an AI hiring platform for engineering teams, and the engineers we match come from Eastern Europe and LATAM, so we have a stake in these numbers. Every figure below comes from a linked survey, statistics release or vendor report. None of them are our own rates.

In this article

• The short answer
• Which number are you comparing?
• Country by country
• One survey, nine countries
• What moves the number?
• What does a SaaS team cost?
• What a rate can't tell you
• FAQ
• How we put this together
• Sources

The short answer

The table shows the latest monthly pay figure we could open for each country, in US dollars. The last column shows what each figure measures: a net survey median from Ukraine, a gross job-ad median from Poland and a sector average from Romania are not the same thing, even when they sit side by side.

Converted at central-bank rates for 14 October 2026. The rates are listed in How we put this together.

Per hour, a senior costs a client or employer about $30 in Ukraine and $40-42 in Poland once taxes and contributions are added, and the Czech all-levels median comes to about $39. Vendor bill rates for seniors run $35-60 for Python engineers in Uvik's index for the region and $64-76 in Accelerance's Europe-wide survey. The next section shows the working.

Which number are you comparing?

When someone asks what a developer in Eastern Europe costs, there are three answers: what the engineer earns, what a vendor bills per hour, and what a monthly rate covers. Mixing them up can make the same engineer look half or twice as expensive.

What the engineer earns

Salary data comes in three forms. DOU reports Ukrainian pay in US dollars "after taxes", so its figures are take-home pay. Polish job ads show employment contracts (umowa o pracę, or UoP) as gross pay, while B2B figures "represent net invoice values (excluding VAT)", according to Just Join IT. A B2B contractor pays their own tax and social contributions out of that invoice. The Czech ISPV median is gross pay for employees.

An employer pays more than gross pay. According to PwC's tax summaries, employers in Poland add roughly 19-22% in social contributions, employers in Czechia add 24.8% for social security and 9% for health insurance, Hungary's social tax is 13% in 2026, and Romania's employer pays a 2.25% work insurance contribution, while the employee pays 25% social insurance and 10% health insurance. A Ukrainian developer who works as a private entrepreneur (FOP, group 3) pays in 2026 a 5% single tax, a 1% military levy and a minimum social contribution of 1,902.34 hryvnias a month (24 Kanal).

What a vendor bills per hour

A bill rate is what a development vendor or contractor charges you. Accelerance surveyed 60 software development partners and reported European rates of $31-39 an hour for junior developers and $64-76 for seniors, published in November 2025 for 2026 (Accelerance). Those are Europe-wide figures, with no country split and no mid-level rate.

The Uvik Software Developer Rate Index, updated October 2026, gives senior Python bill rates of $35-55 an hour in Ukraine, $45-60 in Poland, $40-55 in Romania and $40-50 in Bulgaria. Uvik says its hourly figures "include vendor overhead" and warns: "Do not divide a salary by working hours to get a bill rate." Uvik compiles the index from public salary data, rate guides including Accelerance's, and its own placement data, so the two vendor sources are not independent. Both are vendor sources, and neither itemizes what the rate pays for beyond the engineer.

What a monthly rate covers

Some hiring platforms, Wild.Codes among them, quote one monthly figure per engineer. On the Wild.Codes subscription, the monthly rate covers payroll, contracts, compliance and PTO. That rate is not the engineer's salary, so compare it with a vendor's monthly cost, not with the salary table above.

To compare an hourly quote with a monthly one, multiply by 160 hours, which is roughly one full-time month. At Accelerance's European senior band, $64-76 an hour comes to $10,240-12,160 a month. The junior band, $31-39 an hour, comes to $4,960-6,240.

The ladder below puts the three layers side by side for senior engineers. The hourly column is a client or employer cost equivalent for the pay rows and a bill rate for the vendor rows, which are the two numbers Uvik warns against mixing up.

The Ukrainian row assumes the engineer invoices enough to keep $4,500 after the FOP taxes above. The Polish employment row uses the employer contribution rates PwC lists (19.48% to 22.14% when the components are added up). The Czech row uses the 2512 median for all levels, so it understates a senior. Rates are for 14 October 2026.

Country by country

Ukraine

DOU's summer 2026 survey of 4,541 developers gives medians of $950 for juniors, $2,500 for middles, $4,500 for seniors and $5,500 for Technical Leads, all net in US dollars (DOU). From DOU's raw survey file, we calculate that the middle half of seniors living in Ukraine earn $3,600-5,675, and the middle half of middles $1,850-3,100.

Pay has been flat overall. The median for all developers was $3,500, the same as in June 2024 and $50 more than in December 2025. TypeScript seniors fell from $5,000 in 2023 to $4,500 in 2026, while juniors gained $90 and are back at their 2022-2023 level. Ukrainian developers living abroad earn more: $2,850 for middles and $1,429 for juniors. Figures are already in dollars, so no conversion applies.

Poland

Just Join IT's report on 2025 job ads gives medians of 9,020 PLN for juniors, 18,900 PLN for mid-level and about 24,780 PLN for seniors on B2B, against 8,000, 15,000 and 21,573 PLN gross on employment contracts (Just Join IT). In 2025, senior employment pay rose 7.87%, mid-level B2B 8% and senior B2B 2.2%.

Advertised pay and actual pay differ. The same report's survey of 4,400 people found mid-level employees were offered 15,500 PLN in ads but earned 12,500 PLN on average, a 19% shortfall, and the B2B gap was 21%. Senior B2B was the exception: actual pay of 24,260 PLN beat the advertised 23,940 PLN. The two sets of figures use different calculations, so read them as two findings rather than one series.

Romania

Romania's statistics institute (INS) reported an average net wage of 13,464 lei (about $2,820) in IT programming and consultancy for July 2026, against a national average of 5,820 lei (Ziarul Profit, citing INS). We could not open the INS release itself, so this rests on the republication.

It is an average for everyone in the sector, juniors and support staff included, so it says nothing about seniority. In our Stack Overflow 2026 analysis, Romanian employees with 11 or more years report a median of $54,344 a year (33 responses). Romania's 6-10 year median ($61,952, 13 responses) comes out higher. With 13 responses, that is most likely sampling noise.

Czechia

The official ISPV earnings survey gives a median gross wage of 101,103 Kč a month (about $4,647) for software developers in the business sector, occupation code 2512, for 2025 as a whole, covering 25,600 employees (ISPV, MPSV). Application programmers (2514) had a median of 87,817 Kč. The median for all jobs in the business sector in 2025 was 43,241 Kč (Kurzy.cz).

This is the latest full-year occupational figure, so it is older than the rest of the table and has no level split. Stack Overflow 2026 adds the experience view: $41,764 a year at 3-5 years, $57,144 at 6-10 and $64,081 at 11 or more.

Hungary

We found no official IT pay figure by level for Hungary. For context, the statistics office (KSH) reported average gross earnings of 745,500 forints (about $2,297) for full-time employees across the economy in July 2026, or 523,300 forints net (KSH). That covers every sector, not developers.

The best developer-specific source is Stack Overflow 2026. Hungarian employees report medians of $39,638 at 3-5 years (10 responses), $47,225 at 6-10 years and $77,134 at 11 or more (34 responses).

Bulgaria

DEV.BG analyzed more than 1,700 job ads with published net salaries in 2025 (DEV.BG). Junior Java ads (up to two years of experience) ranged from 2,390 to 3,340 leva, about $1,368-1,912. Mid-level Python (two to five years) ran 6,000-8,500 leva, about $3,434-4,865, and senior Java (over five years, team leads included) 7,512-11,250 leva, about $4,300-6,439. Each range runs from the median advertised minimum to the median advertised maximum.

Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 at 1.95583 leva per euro (European Commission), so 2025 data is in leva and newer data in euros. Ads published between May 2025 and May 2026 put backend development between €1,022 and €8,180 net a month, which shows how wide the market is (DEV.BG).

Serbia

Serbia's statistics office put the average net wage in computer programming and consultancy at 323,377 dinars (about $3,084) in July 2026, against a national average of 121,346 dinars (Novosti). The June figure was 305,372 dinars (Biznis.rs). Sector averages swing from month to month, so the June-to-July rise is not a trend.

The figure covers all staff in the sector. Stack Overflow 2026 has enough Serbian responses only at 11 or more years: a median of $78,076, from just 18 people.

Moldova

Public data is thin. Companies registered with Moldova IT Park employ more than 25,000 specialists at an average salary of 50,000 lei, about $2,781, for 2025 (IPN), which IPN calls the highest level in the Moldovan labor market. The source does not state the period, or whether the figure is gross or net; only a monthly figure fits that description. It covers all staff. Stack Overflow 2026 has only six employed Moldovan respondents who reported pay, too few for a level split.

One survey, nine countries

National sources measure pay in different ways, so the only like-for-like comparison across the region comes from one survey asked the same way everywhere. We ran our own analysis of the public Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026 dataset: 30,903 responses from 169 countries, collected from June 23 to August 5, 2026 (methodology).

We kept respondents who said they were employed, dropped converted pay below $3,000 or above $400,000 a year, grouped people by years of professional experience and took the median. We hid every cell with fewer than 10 responses and counted independent contractors separately. The survey asks for total annual compensation "before taxes and deductions", so these are gross figures. Stack Overflow converts them to US dollars and applies a Ukraine-specific correction for amounts likely entered in dollars under hryvnias. Survey data licensed under ODbL 1.0.

Lithuania's 6-10 and 11+ medians really are identical in the data: $68,237, from 13 responses each.

At 11 or more years, Poland, Serbia and Hungary sit within about $2,000 of each other, and samples this small cannot rank them. Ukraine and Romania come out lowest. Among the Eastern European countries, junior cells pass the 10-response bar only in Poland and Ukraine, and only just, so treat them as rough.

Independent contractors with 11 or more years report a median of $83,116 in Hungary (15 responses) and $81,316 in Romania (18 responses), above the employee medians for both countries. Both contractor samples are thin. Spread over 1,920 working hours a year, those come to about $43 and $42 an hour. That is our arithmetic on reported annual pay, not a quoted freelance rate.

The survey also lines up with the national sources. A Ukrainian median of $53,686 a year is about $4,474 a month, close to DOU's $4,500 net senior median. That is consistent with FOP taxation, where gross and net pay are close. Polish figures line up less neatly. The senior employment-contract median of 21,573 PLN comes to about $66,400 a year gross, against a survey median of $78,880 for employees with 11 or more years. The senior B2B invoice comes to about $76,300 a year, against $88,527 for contractors with 11 or more years. Job-ad medians cover every senior, while 11 or more years is the experienced end, so the survey running higher is what you would expect.

What the survey cannot show: people choose to take part, the samples are small outside Poland and Ukraine, and the public file does not apply Stack Overflow's own chart filters, so our medians can differ from the charts Stack Overflow publishes. Years of experience are also not the same as job titles.

What moves the number?

Seniority comes first. In DOU's data a Ukrainian senior's median is almost five times a junior's, and in Polish job ads the mid-level B2B median is about twice the junior one.

Among the best-paid languages in DOU's data, Scala developers have a median of $6,400, Ruby developers $4,500, and Swift and Kotlin developers $4,250 and $4,200. By area, senior back-end developers earn a median of $4,700 and senior mobile developers $4,625. Python seniors gained $360 since December 2025 (DOU).

In Poland, Just Join IT puts the B2B premium over employment-contract medians at 12.5% for juniors, 26% for mid-level and 14.9% for seniors. Part of that gap is tax and social cover the contractor now pays personally. Stack Overflow shows the same pattern: Polish contractors with 11 or more years report a median of $88,527 (74 responses) against $78,880 for employees.

For Ukrainian middles, company type moves pay less than seniority does. DOU finds they earn the most at companies it classifies as "outstaffing" ($2,700), with product companies close behind at $2,600. Location matters about as much: Ukrainian middles living abroad earn $2,850 against $2,500 at home.

What does a SaaS team cost?

Take a common starting team for a SaaS build: one senior and two mid-level engineers for six months. The table uses only the figures above.

The vendor range is wide because Accelerance publishes no mid-level rate, so we bounded the two mids by its junior and senior bands. The top of the range assumes both mid-level engineers bill at the senior ceiling, so treat it as an outer limit. The senior bill-rate bands in Uvik's index for the region ($35-60 an hour) sit below Accelerance's senior band, so a quote from a vendor based in Eastern Europe can come in under this range.

The pay-based totals leave a lot out. They exclude recruiting, management time, equipment, replacing someone who leaves, and the legal work of contracting across borders. The vendor totals, by Uvik's account, include the vendor's overhead, and you would need to ask each vendor what that covers. The two routes buy different things, so the gap between them is not a saving or a markup on its own.

Before you put two quotes side by side, ask each vendor whether the price is hourly or monthly and how many hours a month it bills, whether paid leave and public holidays are inside the rate, who pays for equipment, what happens if the engineer leaves, and which currency the invoice is in. For your own mix of roles, the team cost calculator is a starting point.

What a rate can't tell you

A rate tells you the budget. To judge whether one engineer can do the work, you need to see how they work, and a CV rarely shows that. Two candidates at the same rate in the same city can be very different hires.

"AI has made every candidate look polished. [...] The scarcest developer skill right now is judgment, which is why we focus on mid-level and senior engineers." Serge Lavrinchuk, founder and CEO of Wild.Codes

Wild.Codes works on the step before the hire. You describe a role and see pre-selected engineers from our ready pool, with a monthly rate on each. When you confirm the role, the full search starts: our AI hiring engine and a talent manager build your shortlist, with recorded technical interviews you can watch, so you can judge an engineer before you spend your own interview time.

If the region fits your plans, you can hire Eastern European developers with Wild.Codes. For other country trade-offs, see which Eastern European country suits your project and the emerging tech hubs in Eastern Europe.

To see the monthly rate on engineers who fit your role, describe the role and see your matches. No cost until you hire.

FAQ

How much does it cost to hire a developer in Eastern Europe in 2026?

As a monthly budget, a senior costs a client or employer about $4,832 in Ukraine, the FOP invoice that leaves the $4,500 net median after tax (DOU, 24 Kanal). In Poland it is about $6,354 on a B2B invoice and $6,609-6,757 on an employment contract once employer contributions are added (Just Join IT, PwC). A Czech software developer at the all-levels median costs an employer about $6,218 a month (ISPV). Vendors bill more: Accelerance's Europe-wide senior band of $64-76 an hour comes to $10,240-12,160 for a 160-hour month (Accelerance). The pay-based figures leave out recruiting, management and equipment.

What is the average hourly rate for a developer in Eastern Europe?

The vendor-reported figures are $31-39 an hour for juniors and $64-76 for seniors across Europe (Accelerance). Uvik's index gives senior Python rates of $35-55 in Ukraine, $45-60 in Poland, $40-55 in Romania and $40-50 in Bulgaria (Uvik). Both are vendor bill rates, not what the engineer earns.

Why is a vendor's hourly rate higher than what the developer earns per hour?

A bill rate pays for the vendor as well as the engineer. Uvik says: "an hourly bill rate includes vendor costs, a salary does not." The senior salaries in this article cost a client or employer about $30-42 an hour once taxes and contributions are added, against $35-60 in Uvik's senior bill-rate index for the region and $64-76 in Accelerance's Europe-wide band.

Is a monthly rate the same as the engineer's salary?

No. On the Wild.Codes subscription, for example, the monthly rate covers payroll, contracts, compliance and PTO, and it is not the engineer's salary. Ask what any monthly quote includes before you compare it with salary data.

Which Eastern European country has the highest developer pay?

In our analysis of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, employed developers with 11 or more years report medians of $78,880 in Poland, $78,076 in Serbia and $77,134 in Hungary. Those three are too close to rank with these sample sizes. Ukraine ($53,686) and Romania ($54,344) are lowest among the countries we could measure.

Are developer salaries in Ukraine rising or falling in 2026?

Mostly flat: DOU's June 2026 median for all developers was $3,500, the same as in June 2024. TypeScript seniors fell from $5,000 in 2023 to $4,500, while Python seniors gained $360 since December 2025 (DOU).

How do B2B and employment-contract salaries differ in Poland?

Employment-contract (UoP) figures are gross pay, and B2B figures are net invoice values excluding VAT, before the contractor's own tax and contributions (Just Join IT). In 2025 job ads, the senior median was 21,573 PLN on UoP and about 24,780 PLN on B2B, a 14.9% difference.

How much does a small SaaS build team cost in Eastern Europe?

For one senior and two mid-level engineers over six months, pay-based totals come to about $61,446 with Ukrainian FOP contractors and about $94,805-96,915 on Polish employment contracts, including employer contributions. At Europe-wide vendor rates, the same team costs $120,960-218,880, and a vendor based in the region can quote less. Pay-based totals leave out recruiting, management and replacement costs.

What do freelance developers charge in Romania or Hungary?

The closest data we have is reported pay, not quoted rates. In our analysis of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, independent contractors with 11 or more years report median annual pay of $83,116 in Hungary (15 responses) and $81,316 in Romania (18 responses). Spread over 1,920 working hours a year, that is about $43 and $42 an hour. Both samples are thin.

How we put this together

The Wild.Codes editorial team wrote this article in October 2026. Wild.Codes helps teams hire engineers from Eastern Europe and LATAM, so we are one of the hiring options a reader of this page might compare. We used AI tools for research and for the Stack Overflow calculation, and every figure comes from a source listed below.

We used national statistics and large surveys first, job-board data second, and vendor rates only for the bill-rate layer, labeled as vendor figures. DOU and Just Join IT report by the seniority labels in their own data. DEV.BG defines junior as up to two years of experience, mid-level as two to five, and senior as over five, including team leads. Stack Overflow groups people by years of professional experience.

All conversions use rates for 14 October 2026. The European Central Bank reference rates give 1.1195 dollars per euro, and through that 3.8998 PLN, 21.757 Kč, 4.7737 lei and 324.52 forints per US dollar. For the hryvnia we use the National Bank of Ukraine rate (45.0802 hryvnias per dollar) and for the Moldovan leu the National Bank of Moldova rate (17.9822 lei per dollar). For the dinar we take the National Bank of Serbia's euro rate (117.3892 dinars per euro) and cross it with the ECB dollar rate, which gives about 104.86 dinars per dollar. Bulgarian figures were published in leva and converted through the fixed rate of 1.95583 leva per euro.

Sources

• DOU, "Зарплати українських розробників - літо 2026", published 13 July 2026: dou.ua. Raw survey data: github.com/devua/csv. Accessed 14 October 2026.
• Just Join IT, "IT Salary Report in Poland 2026" (2025 job ads and a survey of 4,400): justjoin.it. Accessed 14 October 2026.
• Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026, methodology, public dataset and schema. Survey data licensed under ODbL 1.0. Our analysis, 14 October 2026.
• Accelerance, "Price Pressure and Performance: The New Equation for Global Dev Rates", Peter Griffin, 24 November 2025: accelerance.com. Vendor survey.
• Uvik, Software Developer Rate Index 2026, updated October 2026: uvik.net. Vendor index.
• ISPV (MPSV), earnings by occupation, 2025, results as of 25 March 2026: mpsv.gov.cz. National median 2025: kurzy.cz, 25 March 2026.
• Romania, INS July 2026 earnings, as republished by Ziarul Profit, 11 September 2026.
• Serbia, July 2026 earnings by sector, as reported by Novosti, 26 September 2026; June 2026 by Biznis.rs, 25 August 2026.
• DEV.BG, 2025 salary analysis, 11 November 2025: dev.bg; IT skills top 10 2026, 28 May 2026: dev.bg.
• European Commission, Bulgaria adopts the euro, 28 January 2026: trade.ec.europa.eu.
• Moldova IT Park average salary, IPN, 9 February 2026: ipn.md.
• KSH, earnings July 2026, published 16 September 2026: ksh.hu.
• PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries, "Other taxes", reviewed July to September 2026: Poland, Czechia, Romania, Hungary.
• Ukraine FOP group 3 taxes in 2026, 24 Kanal, 19 September 2026: 24tv.ua.
• Exchange rates for 14 October 2026: ECB euro reference rates for the dollar, zloty, koruna, leu and forint; National Bank of Ukraine; National Bank of Moldova. Serbian dinar: National Bank of Serbia euro rate via Kurir, 14 October 2026.