By Rens Gerritsen, Founder · tre plus
Rens Gerritsen is founder of tre plus and helps Dutch companies build dedicated development capacity from Kosovo. From its own office in Pristina, tre plus combines local recruitment knowledge with hands-on experience building and integrating development teams.
Aug 2026
Hiring a software developer usually starts with a salary range. But the number on the payslip is not the same as what a developer actually costs your company. Employer contributions, holiday allowance, pension, recruitment, equipment and the time it takes to find someone make the gap surprisingly large.
According to Indeed, the average base salary for a software developer in the Netherlands in August 2026 is around €4,334 gross per month. In Amsterdam that average is clearly higher, at roughly €4,883 per month. For experienced and specialised developers, salaries go up from there.
Gross salary is not the same as employment cost
Say you pay a developer €5,000 gross per month. That does not make €60,000 a year your real cost.
On top of that come employer contributions, holiday allowance, pension and insurance. And then there are costs that are less visible on a payslip: laptop and workspace, recruitment, HR, onboarding, training, sick leave, holidays and management time.
For a scarce technical role, the months a vacancy stays open add up as well. Not only because of recruitment costs, but mainly because work piles up or has to be covered by more expensive temporary capacity.
That is why we prefer to look at the total cost of capacity: what does it cost your organisation to have one good developer available on a structural basis?
1hiring a developer yourself in the Netherlands
For many organisations, an in-house employee remains the logical first choice. You build knowledge internally, you have full control over the employment relationship and someone becomes part of the organisation.
The challenge is mainly availability and total cost. Good mid-level and senior developers are scarce, salary levels differ a lot per region and specialism, and a recruitment process can take months.
For a structural core role where you can find enough candidates locally, this can still be the best solution.
2working with a freelancer
Freelancers are ideal when you need a specialist quickly or want to add extra capacity temporarily.
On the other hand, Dutch freelance developers often have a considerably higher effective hourly rate than employees on payroll. Freelancers also regularly work for several clients, and building up long-term knowledge is not always the starting point.
For a project, a migration or a specialist assignment that can work perfectly well. For structural capacity, the financial picture usually looks different.
3classic outsourcing
With outsourcing you usually buy capacity or a project from an external supplier. That can be cheaper, but you often give up part of the direct steering and integration.
Who builds the software can change during a project. Communication sometimes runs through project managers or account layers, and the external team does not always work in the same rituals, tooling and culture as your own product team.
For clearly defined projects that can work well. For companies that specifically want to add developers to their existing team, the model is not always ideal.
4dedicated nearshore
Nearshore sits between hiring locally and traditional outsourcing.
At tre plus, developers work from Kosovo directly inside the client's team. They join the same stand-ups, tooling, codebase and planning. The client steers the developer on the work itself; we take care of sourcing, contract, payroll, insurance, office and local guidance.
Because the cost structure in Kosovo is lower than in the Netherlands, the monthly price for medior and senior roles sits 33.3% and 27.6% below the direct employer cost of comparable local capacity, and 43.1% and 38.8% below our representative employer scenario in our 2026 reference calculation. The full calculation is in what a developer really costs per month in 2026.
The starting point is not buying as many cheap hours as possible. It is about one steady person who becomes part of your team for the long run.
So what is the cheapest choice?
That depends on what you need.
If you need a very specific specialist for three months, a freelancer can make sense despite the higher hourly rate. If you are building technology that has to retain knowledge internally for years and you can recruit well locally, an in-house employee can be the best choice.
But when you need development capacity structurally, struggle to recruit locally and still want to keep control over your product team, nearshore becomes interesting.
Not because a developer in Kosovo is simply cheaper, but because you do not have to build a large part of the employer and recruitment layer yourself.
So do not compare a salary with a monthly rate
That is probably the most important mistake in many cost comparisons.
You cannot compare the gross monthly salary of a Dutch developer one-to-one with the monthly amount for an external developer. The first still excludes employer and organisational costs; with the second, those are usually already included.
So always compare the same things:
Total annual cost
Include salary or monthly price, employer contributions, recruitment, equipment, workspace, insurance and other fixed costs.
Available capacity
Holidays, sick leave, open vacancies and turnover all affect how much capacity you actually get.
Time to start
A developer who is cheaper but only starts in five months can end up costing more than capacity that is available within a few weeks.
Continuity
A developer who gets to know the same codebase for years delivers something different from capacity that changes with every project.
Run the numbers for your own team
On our website you can compare the expected cost of local development capacity with a dedicated developer through tre plus.
Do not treat it as a perfect accounting calculation. Salaries, employer costs and benefits differ per organisation. It does quickly show the difference between looking only at salary and looking at the total cost of capacity.
Want to understand how the model works first? Read how Developer as a Service works, or see our explanation of outsourcing development.
And curious what this looks like in practice? DutchDrops built a steady team of two developers through tre plus. Read the client case.
The most important conclusion
The question is not only: what does a developer earn?
The better question is: what does it cost my organisation to have a good developer structurally available, productive and part of the team?
Once you calculate it that way, the differences between hiring locally, freelance, outsourcing and dedicated nearshore become a lot clearer.
We measured how long those roles actually stay open: our market measurement of 957 open developer roles shows where demand sits and how long vacancies remain live.
Methodology
This article keeps four cost layers apart. 1) Gross salary: the amount on the payslip. 2) Employer cost: gross salary plus holiday allowance, pension, employer contributions and insurance. 3) Operational cost: recruitment, HR, workplace, equipment, onboarding and management time. 4) Client fee: the amount an external partner invoices, which already contains the first three layers.
Figures from different sources are not directly comparable. A salary average measures layer 1, a monthly fee measures layer 4. Only compare amounts that measure the same layer, for the same period and the same seniority.
Sector-wide ICT data is not the same as a software developer salary. We use sector data as context only, never as a developer salary.
For the difference with our own from-prices we have used a fully calculated reference scenario since August 2026: for medior and senior roles our from-prices sit 33.3% (medior) and 27.6% (senior) below the direct employer cost, and 43.1% and 38.8% below our representative employer scenario in the Netherlands. The full calculation is in our article on what a developer really costs per month in 2026.
