Every number on this site, and where it comes from.
Rate benchmarks and price bands are only useful if you can see how they were made. This page is the method behind every table on the site — and the honest limits of what those numbers are.
What gets published
Three kinds of numbers appear on this site, and they are deliberately different things:
- Market rate benchmarks — what independent developers typically charge per hour, by stack and region. The rates page and the region pages.
- Typical project ranges — what a build of a given type normally lands between. Every service page, and the homepage console.
- Your quote — a fixed price or honest band scoped to your actual brief, in writing. This is the only number that is an offer.
Sources
Benchmarks are compiled from three source types, cross-checked against each other:
- Public marketplace rate data — published rate distributions and typical rates on major freelance platforms.
- Agency pricing pages — published hourly rates and project minimums from agency websites across regions.
- Industry rate surveys — published developer-rate surveys and reports, used for regional calibration.
No private data, no scraped confidential correspondence, no invented sample sizes. Where sources disagree, the band is widened rather than averaged into false precision.
Assumptions
- Currency: all figures USD.
- Seniority: the default benchmark is a mid-level independent developer. Senior specialists sit above the band; juniors below it.
- Agency markup: agencies typically bill 30–60% above the equivalent independent rate — stated wherever agency numbers appear.
- Project ranges: assume the client supplies or pays for content production separately unless a service page says otherwise.
- Bands, not points: a range says something true; a precise number would say something false.
Why the homepage console and the regional tables differ
The homepage console shows a blended global mid-range for a quick orientation. The regional tables break the same underlying data down — South Asia sits at the low end of the blend, North America at the high end. Neither number contradicts the other; they are the same data at different zoom levels.
What these numbers are not
They are not quotes, not offers, and not a pricing menu. They are editorial estimates for sanity-checking the market — use them to judge whether any quote you receive, from anyone, is plausible. The cost guide explains how to read them against real proposals.
Update cadence
Tables are reviewed quarterly. Each table carries its data period and next review date — when a number changes, the change is made because a source moved, not because a page needed freshening. If a number on this site cannot be traced back to this method, it does not belong here.
Quarterly, and only when the numbers move
Get the rate report before you negotiate.
Updated rate bands across the major stacks and regions, plus what changed and why. No other email.