The median US software developer earned $135,980 in May 2025, the worldwide full-stack median across 177 countries was just $72,509, and a Ukrainian developer earns about 3.3 times less than a US one ($41,400 at the DOU median against the BLS figure). AI pays: US AI/ML engineers earn a $189,500 median, and Dice puts the AI-work premium at 17.7%. US pay growth has stalled: the average tech salary rose just 1.2% in 2024, and employers budget 3.5% raises for 2026. Here are the numbers behind developer pay this year, with sources you can check.
How much do software engineers make in the US?
Software engineers in the US earn a median of $135,980 a year as of May 2025, per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics — note that "software engineer" and "software developer" are the same BLS occupation (15-1252), so both titles share this figure.
The spread is wide. The lowest-paid 10% earned less than $82,460 — the realistic band for entry-level offers — while the top 10% earned more than $214,670. Software QA analysts and testers sit lower, with a median of $104,300.
Two more BLS numbers worth citing: the occupation covers roughly 1.9 million US jobs, and employment is projected to grow 10% from 2025 to 2035, several times the all-occupation average. The market has cooled since 2021, but the demand curve still points up.
Experience and employer move the number more than title does. The Levels.fyi 2025 End of Year Pay Report, built on 245,000-plus self-reported submissions, puts US median total compensation at $155,000 for entry-level engineers, $226,000 at the standard software-engineer level, $312,000 for senior engineers and $457,000 for staff engineers. Those packages include equity and bonus, so Levels.fyi's running US median across all levels is $196,600 (51,185 submissions, October 2026), about $60,000 above the BLS wage median.
Company tier widens that gap further. At Meta the US median package is $490,000 and at Google $284,000 (Levels.fyi, October 2026). Outside big tech the curve is flatter: the Dice Tech Salary Report 2025 (2024 pay data) puts tech professionals inside the tech industry at $114,861 on average against $108,674 in non-tech industries, with 15-plus years of experience averaging $133,047 and entry-level pay down 1.4%, a second consecutive annual decline. BLS industry medians agree: software publishers pay developers $164,550 at the median, finance and insurance $135,460, and computer systems design firms $132,050.
What is the average software developer salary worldwide?
Worldwide, the median full-stack developer earns $72,509 and the median back-end developer $79,742, per the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey of more than 49,000 developers across 177 countries; the survey publishes per-role medians only, no single all-roles figure.
The full spread by role, worldwide medians:
- Engineering manager: $130,000
- Cloud infrastructure engineer: $103,113
- AI/ML engineer: $89,427
- DevOps engineer: $87,011
- Backend developer: $79,742
- Full-stack developer: $72,509
- Mobile developer: $69,609
- Frontend developer: $62,015
Frontend remains the lowest-paid mainstream specialization, infrastructure and management the highest. Twenty of the roles tracked saw median pay rise 5% to 29% year over year.
How much do software engineers make by country?
Software developer salary by country, in one line: the US leads at $120,000-$136,000 a year, Germany follows at about $88,500, Poland runs near $40,800, Ukraine $28,800-$41,000, and India $8,000-$25,000 depending on role and city.
The anchor for the gap is Stack Overflow's 2025 data: a US engineering manager sits at a $200,000 median against $118,000 in Germany and $52,000 in India, and the spread widens with seniority. The country averages above compile from 2026 rate surveys (Qubit Labs, The Employer of Record) — vendor aggregations, so treat them as directional bands, not payroll data.
Government and survey statistics cover three more markets:
- United Kingdom: the full-time median for programmers and software development professionals is £56,914, up 4.2% on the year, with a mean of £63,810 (ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 provisional, Table 14.7a). Stack Overflow's UK medians land higher in dollar terms: $108,913 for back-end and $85,429 for full-stack, against $175,000 and $138,000 in the US.
- Canada: the national median wage for software engineers and designers is C$56.49 an hour (Government of Canada Job Bank, NOC 21231).
- India: Stack Overflow's 2025 medians are $22,086 for back-end, $13,949 for full-stack and $10,462 for front-end developers. The engineering-manager median of $52,308 is roughly a quarter of the US figure, so the gap holds at every level.
What is a software engineer's hourly rate?
A US software developer earns about $65 an hour as an employee at the median, the BLS annual median of $135,980 divided by 2,080 hours, while US and Canadian freelancers bill $82-130 an hour, roughly 1.3 to 2 times the employee rate; Eastern Europe runs $40-85 and South Asia $22-55.
BLS's Quick Facts hourly figure, $64.44, runs lower because it pools developers with QA analysts and testers. The contractor bands come from Arc's 2026 freelance rate guide, a survey of 5,302 freelance developers. By seniority it runs $20-50 an hour for juniors, $40-90 for mid-level and $75-150 for senior engineers, with senior Indian freelancers at $25-60.
Agency rates follow the same geography. Clutch's pricing data (September 2026) lists an average cost of $50-99 an hour for US software development companies, Poland in the same band, and Ukraine and India at $25-49. Accelerance's November 2025 partner survey of 60 outsourcing firms adds the trend: senior developers at $64-76 an hour in Europe and $31-41 in Asia, with rates down by single digits in every major outsourcing region: 7.1% in Latin America, nearly 8% in Asia and 4.4% in Europe, where the pressure was strongest in Central and Eastern Europe.
How much do developers earn in Ukraine and Eastern Europe?
The median developer salary in Ukraine is $3,450 per month net of taxes (December 2025), with seniors at $4,500 and Kyiv leading cities at $3,700 — and Poland runs roughly 40-60% above Ukraine for the same seniority.
The data comes from the twice-yearly DOU.ua community survey — some of the most granular salary data in the industry (4,522 respondents in the winter 2026 wave):
- Overall median: $3,450 per month, up $50 in six months
- Senior software engineers: $4,500 (down $200); middle: $2,500 (up $100); junior: $900 (down $30)
- Principal: $6,333; system architects: $6,500 (down $400)
- Kyiv leads at $3,700, Lviv at $3,505
The pattern inside the numbers: mid-level pay is still rising while junior and senior medians softened, a market consolidating around proven mid-career engineers. That is why Ukraine remains the value anchor of European engineering talent.
Do AI skills raise developer salaries?
Yes, across every source we checked. In the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, US AI/ML engineers earn a median of $189,500, against $175,000 for back-end and $138,000 for full-stack developers. On Levels.fyi, the US ML/AI engineer median package is $250,000, about $53,000 above the all-engineer median of $196,600. The Dice Tech Salary Report 2025 puts the premium for professionals who build or implement AI at 17.7% over peers who do not, partly because AI workers skew senior. Across all occupations, PwC's 2025 AI Jobs Barometer found a 56% wage premium for advanced AI skills in 2024, up from 25%.
One caution: Stack Overflow's worldwide AI/ML median is $89,427 — the AI premium is concentrated in the US market.
Are developer salaries still growing in 2026?
Barely, and the two numbers in circulation measure different things. The average US tech salary rose just 1.2% in 2024 to $112,521, per the Dice Tech Salary Report 2025, the most recent edition; adjusted for inflation, Dice notes, that is the 2005 level. Employers' budgeted base-pay increases are the forward-looking series: about 4% in 2025, projected at 3.5% for 2026, per Payscale data cited in the IEEE-USA outlook. A raise budget that outruns the realized average means the money goes to specific skills, not across the board.
Growth is also uneven by sector in the same Dice data: manufacturing tech roles grew compensation 15.1%, while software, consulting, and banking held above $125,000 averages with slower growth.
What does a developer actually cost an employer?
Salary understates the real number. Benefits account for 31.6% of total compensation for US civilian workers, per the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release, before recruiting fees, equipment, software seats, office costs, and the 3-6 months a new hire takes to reach full productivity.
A $136,000 median US developer salary is therefore a $180,000-$200,000 annual commitment (the BLS benefits share alone implies about $199,000). That loaded-cost math, more than the headline salary gap, drives teams to blend in senior engineers from Poland and Ukraine, where the salary data above puts a senior engineer's fully loaded cost at roughly $70,000-$100,000 a year on the same benefits logic.
If you are weighing that trade-off, the deciding factor is rarely the rate card. It is whether the engineers stay long enough to compound knowledge, the problem team augmentation is built to solve.
Last updated October 8, 2026