Compare
In-house hire vs us, with the real math.
Every founder should eventually build an in-house team. The question is whether that's this quarter's best use of $250,000 — or whether you ship first and hire from strength.
Answer first
The honest verdict
Hire in-house when you have sustained full-time work, funding for the loaded cost, and time for the search. Pick The Contrast to ship now: a whole senior team for less than a third of one US hire's loaded cost, starting this week — and hand over cleanly to your future employees, since the code sits in your repos from day one.
Side by side
The comparison, in one table.
In-house senior hire (US)
- ~$175K average salary; $200–$260K/yr fully loaded (benefits ≈30% of comp — BLS)
- Effective ~$100–$135/hr before recruiting costs
- Recruiter fees $35–$52K; months from search to first commit
- Deepest product context once ramped — the long-term ideal
- One person's skills; team requires multiple hires
The Contrast
- A whole senior team from about $20/hr — a fraction of one loaded hire
- Started this week, not this quarter
- Design + engineering + QA from the first sprint
- Scale up or down monthly — no severance math
- Your repos and IP from day one — clean handover whenever you hire
When to pick hiring in-house
Credit where it's due.
- You have 40+ hours of engineering work every week, indefinitely
- The role is core IP that must live inside the company long-term
- You've raised and can absorb $200K+/yr per engineer plus the search time
Everything else — a product owned end to end by a senior team, at a rate that's on the page — is where we're the stronger pick. Estimate your project on the calculator, no call needed.
Questions
Asked before switching.
What does a US senior developer really cost in-house?
Around $175K in salary (Glassdoor 2026 average), which becomes roughly $200–260K fully loaded — the BLS puts benefits at about 30% of total compensation cost — plus $35–52K in recruiter fees. Effective hourly: $100–135. Our whole team costs less than that one seat.
Doesn't an agency mean losing the knowledge when you leave?
Not if the engagement is built right: your repos, your cloud, your documentation from the first commit — it's in our written promises. When you eventually hire in-house, your employees inherit a documented codebase, not a mystery.
When should I definitely hire instead of outsourcing?
When engineering is your permanent core competency, the workload is sustained and full-time, and you can afford both the loaded cost and the months of hiring. Many of our clients do exactly that later — and keep us alongside for surge capacity.
See the difference for yourself.
A senior team, a transparent price, and every promise in writing — judge us on a 15-minute call.
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