Insights · 9 min read
A plain-English breakdown of monthly dedicated team pricing by region, team size, and seniority, plus what pushes the number up and how to keep it down.
By GGP Editorial
Most pricing pages won't give you a straight answer, so here is one. A dedicated development team — a fixed group of engineers assigned to your product and working as an extension of your company — usually costs between $10,000 and $45,000 a month for a group of three to five people. The spread comes down to two things you can control when you pick a partner: where the engineers sit, and how senior they are.
Dedicated teams are billed monthly, not hourly. That one invoice covers salaries, benefits, office, equipment, and the vendor's margin in a single line item. You don't recruit, you don't run payroll, and you don't buy laptops. You pay one number and get a stable group of people who learn your product and stay on it. For a founder or CTO budgeting a build, that predictability is the point.
A dedicated team is not a freelancer who fits you in between other clients. It's a standing group that works on your project every week, joins your calls, and reports to you the way an internal squad would. The team usually includes the developers themselves plus, depending on what you agree, a project manager, a QA engineer, and sometimes a designer or a part-time architect.
That composition changes the total more than people expect. A bare group of three developers costs less than three developers plus a PM plus QA. Most of the teams our clients actually run are four to six people: a project manager, one or two backend engineers, one or two frontend or mobile engineers, and a QA person. If you're not sure what mix you need, start with the smallest group that can ship and add people once the product direction is clear. You can see how these teams are structured in practice in our write-up on how a dedicated development team works.
Geography drives the biggest swing in price. These are the ranges the industry reports for 2026, shown as blended hourly rates and the monthly cost of a four-person team working a full-time month.
| Region | Blended hourly rate | Four-person team, monthly |
|---|---|---|
| US / Western Europe | $120–$200 | $76,000–$128,000 |
| Eastern Europe | $35–$70 | $22,000–$45,000 |
| Latin America | $35–$70 | $22,000–$45,000 |
| Asia (India, Vietnam, China) | $20–$50 | $13,000–$32,000 |
| Africa | $20–$40 | $13,000–$26,000 |
The monthly figures are arithmetic — hourly rate times roughly 160 hours times four people — and they don't include a management layer or your own internal time. Treat them as planning ranges, not quotes. The Asia band is wide for a reason: rates there vary more by vendor than by country, and a senior engineer at a well-run shop can cost the same as a mid-level person at a weaker one. You are not buying a region; you are buying a specific team.
Seniority is the second lever, and it works inside every region. A senior engineer in Latin America often runs $50–$90 an hour, while the same region's junior people start around $25–$35. A senior-heavy team costs more and usually ships faster with fewer bugs. A junior-heavy team costs less and needs more of your time reviewing. There's no free lunch in either direction. The right answer for most products is one strong lead plus mid-level engineers below them, the same shape we describe in our custom software development cost breakdown.
Rather than quote one number, it's more useful to look at common team shapes.
| Team shape | Who's on it | Typical monthly range |
|---|---|---|
| Small build team | 3 developers | $10,000–$24,000 |
| Standard product team | PM + 3 developers + QA | $16,000–$38,000 |
| Full product team | PM + 4–5 developers + QA + designer | $22,000–$50,000 |
The low end of each range is an offshore team with mostly mid-level people; the high end is a nearshore or Eastern European team with senior engineers. A three-person team in a lower-cost region can genuinely start around $10,000 a month. A senior US-based team of the same size runs several times that, which is why the offshore model exists at all.
A few things move you toward the top of the range faster than anything else.
FinTech, AI, and IoT work costs more because the people who do it well are harder to find. If your project needs payment infrastructure, model deployment, or device firmware, expect the senior people on the team to carry a premium.
Short contracts cost more per month because the vendor has to recover the cost of getting the team up to speed. A three-month deal prices that ramp-up into a smaller denominator. Twelve-month engagements almost always get you a better monthly rate and a more committed team.
Bigger teams are cheaper per person but more expensive in total. The per-person economics improve because one PM and one QA can cover more engineers, but the total number still rises.
If you need the team online during your working hours, you may pay slightly more for it — or you choose a region that already overlaps. GlobeSoft's team in Shenzhen schedules overlap hours with clients in the US, Europe, and Brazil, so the conversation happens live rather than over a 12-hour gap. Our offshore software development guide covers how that handoff works day to day.
The monthly fee is most of the cost, but not all of it. Plan for a few things on top of it.
Your own time. Someone on your side still reviews work, answers questions, and makes product decisions. For a remote team, that's a real commitment — typically a few hours a week, more at the start.
Third-party services. Hosting, payment processing fees, maps, SMS, and any paid APIs are separate from the team's fee. These are usually small compared to salaries, but they add up over a year.
Contract and IP setup. You'll want the ownership of the code in writing. A proper agreement on IP and confidentiality takes a little upfront effort and shouldn't cost much, but don't skip it.
This is where the monthly number starts to look reasonable. An in-house US team isn't just salary. You also pay employer taxes, benefits, equipment, office, recruiting, and the time a manager spends hiring and onboarding. Industry estimates put a three-engineer in-house team at $65,000–$90,000 a month fully loaded. A comparable nearshore dedicated team of three sits around $36,000–$40,000, and an Asia-based team comes in below that.
There's also speed. Hiring three senior engineers can take months in a tight market. A dedicated team can usually start within two to four weeks. For a founder trying to ship this quarter, that difference often matters more than the raw rate.
The trade-off is real and worth naming: a remote team needs you to write clear tickets, hold regular calls, and keep scope steady. Do that and the cost gap is yours to keep. Don't, and you'll spend the savings on rework. Our article on managing a dedicated development team walks through what the first month should look like.
A dedicated team works best when the product will keep evolving — a startup MVP, an AI feature, a platform you'll extend for years. Fixed price works when the scope is locked and won't change. We covered how to choose between the two in our guide to fixed price vs time and materials. The short version: if requirements are still moving, a monthly team protects you from renegotiating a dead spec every few weeks.
To be honest, a dedicated team isn't always the answer. If your project is tiny and one-off — a landing page, a small script, a short-term fix — you're better off with a contractor or a fixed-price engagement. If you're not ready to spend a few hours a week steering the work, a dedicated team will drift. And if your budget is too small for a three-person team, the model doesn't make sense. Dedicated teams pay off when you have real, ongoing work and someone internally who can own the product direction.
Buy the seniority you actually need. Most teams don't need five senior engineers. One senior lead plus mid-level people below them gets you the same output for less money, as long as the lead reviews the work.
Start smaller. Three good people on a focused scope beat six people on a vague one. You can grow the team once the direction is proven.
Commit to a longer engagement. It lowers the monthly rate and stops the vendor from pricing in churn risk.
Reuse what exists. A team that starts from a component library, an existing auth system, or open-source foundations spends less of your money rebuilding basics.
Keep scope steady. The single biggest budget killer on a dedicated team is scope change mid-sprint. Write it down before you start, and change it on purpose rather than by accident.
How is a dedicated development team priced?
Almost always as a fixed monthly rate per team, not per hour. The rate covers the whole group plus overhead. Some vendors invoice per person, but the number you plan around is monthly.
What's the minimum team size?
Usually two to three people. Below that you're better off with a part-time contractor than a "team" in any meaningful sense.
Do I own the code a dedicated team writes?
Yes, under a normal contract you own the source code and IP the team produces. Get this written into the agreement up front.
How fast can a dedicated team start?
Typical ramp-up is two to four weeks for a well-scoped project, depending on how specific your requirements are.
Is a dedicated team cheaper than an agency?
Not automatically. It's usually cheaper than an equivalent in-house team and more flexible than a fixed-price agency build. The right model depends on how stable your scope is.
If you're weighing a dedicated team against other options, share what you're building. We can map the team shape, the monthly range, and the first 30 days so you're comparing real numbers instead of guesses.
Tell us what you are building and where you are today. We typically reply within 24 hours.
