Offshore is cheaper per hour. That part is true. The rest of the sum is where the argument lives.
Offshore developers publish rates of US$20 to US$70 an hour at entry and intermediate level; an Australian programmer’s median is $2,496 a week before 12 percent super. What decides the choice is cross-border privacy under APP 8, who owns the code, and who is still answering in year three. We are the local option, so discount us accordingly.
We are the local option. Read this page knowing that.
Kindra is a Brisbane firm and this page compares Brisbane firms to offshore contractors. Every sentence below has a commercial interest behind it. The honest way to handle that is to say so, put the published numbers on the table including the ones that favour offshore, and let you check them.
Some of them do favour offshore. The hourly rate difference is large and real, and for a well-specified piece of work with a clear finish line an offshore developer is often the right call. The argument for local is not that offshore is bad. It is that the hourly rate is a small part of the sum, and the other parts are usually left off.
One more disclosure, because it cuts against us: our own default servers are in Singapore and Helsinki, with Australian hosting available when an engagement needs it (ownership and security). “Local developer” does not automatically mean “local data”.
The published hourly rates
Upwork, the largest public marketplace, publishes rate bands for software developers: “$20 – $40 per hour” at entry level, “$40 – $70 per hour” intermediate, and “$70 – $150+ per hour” expert, with a stated median of US$20 an hour and a typical range of US$10 to US$100 (Upwork, fetched 3 September 2026). Those are US dollars and they are global, so the median is pulled toward the countries where most of the supply is.
The Australian side is published by government. Software and Applications Programmers had median full-time earnings of $2,496 a week in the ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours for May 2023, with 185,300 people employed in the occupation and projected growth of 10,100 a year (Jobs and Skills Australia, fetched 3 September 2026). That is about $130,000 a year before anything is added.
For context, full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings across all industries were $2,083.70 in May 2026, and $2,389.60 in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (ABS Average Weekly Earnings, May 2026). Programmers sit above both, and nobody local will match US$20 an hour.
What a local developer actually costs an employer
Start from the $2,496 median week and add what the law adds. Superannuation guarantee is 12 percent of ordinary time earnings from 1 July 2025 (ATO super guarantee rates, fetched 3 September 2026). That takes about $130,000 a year to about $145,000 before leave, workers compensation, payroll tax where it applies, equipment or a desk. Arithmetic on the sourced figures; not a measurement.
Spread over the hours a person actually works, an employed Australian developer is well north of A$100 an hour loaded, before the cost of managing them. A local firm’s rate has to cover that plus the firm. An offshore contractor at US$40 an hour, intermediate on Upwork’s bands, is roughly a third of that. If the hourly line were the whole sum, this page would be one paragraph long.
Where the hourly rate lies to you
The rate is the price of an hour. A software project is priced in outcomes, and the two are connected by things the rate does not show: how many hours it takes to explain what you want, how many to fix what came back, and how many are needed in year three when the person who built it has moved on.
| Offshore contractor | Local (Australian) developer | |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly rate | Yes US$20 to US$70 at entry and intermediate on Upwork’s published bands. Roughly a third of local. | No Median $2,496 a week plus 12% super, or well over A$100 an hour loaded before the firm’s margin. |
| Cost of explaining the job | Partly Written specification, often across a time zone. Ambiguity is discovered after delivery. | Yes A conversation, on site if needed, with someone who knows what a variation or a CoES is. |
| APP 8 cross-border disclosure | No Applies if you are a covered entity and the contractor sees personal information. You remain accountable under s 16C. | Partly Does not apply to the developer — but ask where the servers are. Ours default offshore; Australian hosting is available. |
| Who owns the code | Partly Whatever the contract says, enforced in whichever country the contractor is in. Get it in writing before payment. | Partly Whatever the contract says, enforced in Australia. Our contract: repository access from the first commit, ownership on the final invoice. |
| Year-three continuity | No Marketplace contractors move on. Continuity depends on your holding the code and the documentation. | Partly A firm is more likely to still exist; not certain. Same answer: hold the code and the documentation. |
| Well-specified, one-off work | Yes This is where offshore wins outright and we would say so. | Partly Will do it. Will cost more. Not the right call for a fully specified, finish-line job. |
| Assessed by us | No We have not measured offshore project outcomes. Published rates and published law only. | Partly We are this column. Our commitments are contractual and published; our results are not measured. |
Privacy: APP 8, and the exemption that means it may not apply to you
If your business is covered by the Privacy Act and an offshore developer will see personal information — a customer list, a staff roster, an invoice with a name on it — then Australian Privacy Principle 8 applies. Before disclosing to an overseas recipient you must “take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that the recipient does not breach the APPs”, and under section 16C an act by the overseas recipient that would breach the APPs “is taken to have been done by the APP entity” — that is, by you (OAIC APP 8 guidelines, fetched 3 September 2026). There are exceptions — informed consent, or a recipient bound by a substantially similar law — and they are narrower than they sound.
Now the part most local firms leave out. Organisations with an annual turnover of $3 million or less are generally exempt from the Privacy Act, unless they are a health service provider, trade in personal information, are a Commonwealth contractor, or fall into a handful of other categories (OAIC, fetched 3 September 2026). A four-vehicle plumbing business is almost certainly exempt. An allied health practice is covered regardless of size. If someone is selling you “local” on privacy grounds without asking your turnover and sector, they are selling.
And the disclosure that cuts against us again: choosing a local developer does not by itself keep the data in Australia. Our own client servers default to Singapore and Helsinki; Australian residency through NextDC is available for engagements that need it, and we have not been assessed against the APPs, which is stated plainly on ownership and security.
Where offshore wins, and we would say so
A fully specified job with a clear finish line. If you can write down exactly what the software should do and how you will know it is done, an offshore contractor at a third of the hourly rate is very hard to argue against, and we do not try. Most of the risk in software is in the specification. If you have already carried it, do not pay a local rate for someone to carry it again — build versus buy covers the question underneath.
Budget that simply does not stretch. A sole trader with $3,000 to spend does not have a local-firm option; our own minimum engagement is around $5,000 and we publish that on how we charge. Pretending otherwise would be dishonest, and a well-briefed offshore contractor is a legitimate way to get something built at that size.
Where local wins
Work that is not yet specified — which is most small-business automation. The expensive part of “connect the job system to the ledger” is not the code. It is discovering that the progress claims live in a spreadsheet nobody mentioned, that the variations are emailed, and that the bookkeeper re-keys everything on Friday. That is found in a conversation, on site, by someone who knows what those words mean — it is what the Leak Check and Blueprint exist for. A written brief across a time zone finds it after delivery, at the hourly rate, twice.
Accountability you can enforce. A contract with an Australian firm is enforced in Australia. Repository access from day one, ownership on the final invoice, no export fee — those are commitments we publish and put in the contract, and they are worth exactly as much as your ability to hold us to them.
Year three. The system will need changing when the vendor changes its API, when the tax rule changes, when you add a second business unit. Whoever built it is the cheapest person to change it. A firm still in the same city with the same repository is a different proposition from a marketplace profile that has gone quiet — and this is the argument that is genuinely about continuity rather than nationality.
The questions that matter more than the country
Location is a proxy. The things it stands for can be asked directly, of anyone, and they are what should decide it.
- KNDR·01Who owns the code, in writing, from whenNot “on completion”. From the first commit, in a repository you can access today. If the answer is “after final payment”, the price of leaving is whatever they say it is.
- KNDR·02Where does it run, and who holds the keysWhich country, which provider, whose account. “Local developer” can mean a Singapore server, as ours does by default. “Offshore developer” can mean your own Australian account.
- KNDR·03What happens in year threeWho changes it when the API changes. What documentation exists for someone who has never seen it. Whether you could hand it to another developer tomorrow.
- KNDR·04Who carries the specification riskIf you have written the spec, buy hours cheaply. If you have not, you are buying discovery, and discovery is done best by someone who can stand in your workshop.
- KNDR·05Does the Privacy Act cover youTurnover over $3 million, or a covered sector. If yes, APP 8 is an obligation on you, not the developer. If no, do not let anyone sell you on it.
What we have not assessed
Offshore project outcomes. We have not measured delivery rates, defect rates or total cost of ownership for offshore engagements, and we know of no published Australian dataset that does so credibly. Anyone quoting you a failure rate for offshore development should be asked where it came from.
Our own outcomes. Kindra has not published measured client results. Our commitments are contractual and stated; whether our builds are cheaper over five years than an offshore alternative is a claim we cannot back with data and have not made.
Rates other than the two public sources above. Recruiter salary guides are more current than the May 2023 ABS survey, but they sit behind a form and we do not quote figures we cannot link. Choosing an automation partner is the checklist version of this page, and it applies to us as much as anyone.
The questions people actually ask.
01You are a local firm. Of course you would say local.
We have said offshore wins on fully specified work and on budgets under our minimum, and we have disclosed that our own servers are offshore by default. If we were writing a brochure, none of that would be here. The argument for local is narrower than the industry makes it: unspecified work, enforceable accountability and continuity. Where those do not apply, go offshore.
02Does the Privacy Act stop us using an offshore developer?
For most businesses under $3 million turnover it does not apply at all, and for covered businesses it does not prohibit offshore disclosure — it makes you accountable for it and requires reasonable steps first. That is a real obligation, not a ban. We are not lawyers; if you are covered, ask one, and ask any developer including us where the data will actually sit.
03Could we use offshore for the build and local for the maintenance?
Yes, and it is often sensible — provided you hold the code, the documentation and the hosting account from day one. The failure mode is a build you do not own, on infrastructure you cannot access, handed to a local firm to reverse-engineer. That costs more than either option alone.
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