Is It Affordable and Reasonable to Hire Developers in Estonia?

What to Expect from an Estonian Developer for Hire

At the moment, the Estonian economy continues its development. The IT industry is also not an exception. Its main trend is the development of software products for the state, the banking sector, and electronic commerce within the country. For example, Estonia was the first country that held parliamentary elections in electronic form, according to E-Estonia.com, and recently it introduced a system for the electronic receipt of residence permits. The technologies that are intended for this purpose are in the greatest demand in this country. In general, the Estonian IT sector is represented by domestic companies, whose products are also oriented to the local market.

How Is IT Consulting Popular in Estonia?

The popularity of IT consulting is very high in Estonia due to the tech-oriented business ecosystem, the digitalization of the country government, and the tech-savvy and innovation-centric nature of the people of the country. Estonia is the most connected and technologically vibrant country in Eastern Europe. A tiny but highly tech-savvy population of 1.3 million people has done miracles in IT consulting, development, and digital transformation.

Estonia is an exciting abode of over 4,800 IT companies generating an annual turnover of over €3.6 billion. Those Estonia software sector consultancy Estonia companies offer consulting and development services to local clients as well as the outsourcing services to over 130 countries worldwide. Estonian technical education system is considered as one of the top systems in Europe.

Estonia is the first country that uses e-voting, e-residents, e-government, and many other digital solutions. All departments of government encourage local outsourcing of IT consulting services to provide a better environment for software industry consulting companies Estonia.

Estonia is the top country in terms of the number of per capita Unicorn startup companies that were valued at over $1 billion in the world. Those four unicorn startups include SkypeBoltPlaytech, and TransferWise. At present hundreds of new startups are emerging in the business arena in Estonia. To cater to such a huge business base, consulting firms are in high demand in the country.

What Services Estonian Companies Can Offer?

Being the most connected and leader in digital transformation, Estonian is a bright spot for IT-related services with nearly five thousand IT companies. Estonia software engineering companies accommodate over 5.9% of the country’s workforce powered by over 140 affluent business angels, which contributes hugely to the country’s GDP. Therefore every software development company Estonia makes a great contribution to the national economy. The most demanded IT services in Estonia include:

  • Information technology consulting services
  • Research and development R&D services
  • Professional IT solutions for innovative business ideas
  • IT auditing and system evaluation
  • Mobile application development
  • Web application development
  • Comprehensive eCommerce and e-government solutions
  • Consulting services for startup ideas
  • Blockchain technology-based robust utility service solutions
  • Artificial Intelligence AI and AR/VR solutions
  • Enterprise Solutions for all domains of businesses like Banking, HR, healthcare, and others
  • Industrial automation and smart home solutions
  • Digital payment systems

Software Development Companies in Estonia, Tallinn

Software development companies in Estonia, in Tallinn, in particular, thrive due to numerous dynamics of the country, business ecosystem, and tech-savvy manpower. Tallinn is the core location of Estonia software outsourcing services. Just in a single IT park Tehnopol in Tallinn, more than 150 IT companies are located. The city of Tartu is the second-largest hub for the IT and software companies in Estonia. According to the State of European Tech 2018 report, there are over 20,000 software developers in the country. Still, the demand for tech talent is continuously growing due to the emergence of new software companies in the marketplace.

Among thousands of IT companies, a large number of companies offer SW engineering, software consulting services to the government, startups, and privately-owned companies. But, the bulk of IT consulting and development services are provided to thousands of clients located across 130 countries in the world. The major countries for outsourcing services include the USA, UK, Switzerland, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Australia, etc.

More than 60 countries are using the most robust and most comprehensive e-government solutions developed by the software companies in Estonia. Those solutions are in the use in Estonia for a long time now. Among those solutions, e-voting solutions, e-Estonia, Smart city solutions, Digital ID, e-Residency, e-Tax, e-Health, X-road, and many others are a few to name. Smart Pedestrian Crosswalk SPC and numerous Internet of Things IoT solutions developed by the innovative IT workforce in Estonia are getting traction nowadays.

Software Developer Salary in Estonia vs Ukraine and Their Capitals

We will answer the main question right now and then compare the salary indicators of an Estonia developer for hire with a Ukrainian one. Being a hub of software development and consulting services, Tallinn is running short of software developers for many years now. This pushes the Tallinn software engineer salary upward continuously. The average salary of a software developer in Tallinn, Estonia is higher than in other cities. There is another country in Eastern Europe that can provide quality software development and you will not have a lack of IT specialists there. This country is Ukraine. Due to the favorable geographical position, low cost of living, and as a consequence not high rates of software developers Ukraine has become an attractive destination for software development outsourcing.

Software engineering is the most in-demand employee role in Estonia, especially in Tallinn and Tartu areas, according to the MeetFrank information. There are more than 10,000 ICT jobs are available for hire in the country. A large number of startups and existing companies are always in the search of technical talent for hiring that increases the demand in salary from the software developers, consultants, and ICT engineers. On the other hand, Ukraine mostly offers IT talents than searches for them.

* Ukrainian salaries are provided based on Mobilunity’s Recruitment Team research on the local job markets. All salaries are net and do not include the service fee (in case of hiring on a dedicated team model). The salaries are provided for comparison purposes and could be not entirely accurate. Contact us to know the exact cost of hiring a developer corresponding to the required parameters.

how much does it cost to hire a developer in Tallinn and Kyiv

The reason for the difference in the salary between Tallinn developers and Kyiv is governed by the huge demand, living costs, and the availability of technical talent in the capital cities. For example, Tallinn web developer will earn much more than its colleague from Kyiv. A middle front-end engineer in Tallinn on average has $3,500 monthly meanwhile middle front-end developer in Kyiv works from $2,500 per month. The monthly salary of a middle back-end developer in Estonia, Tallin will be $4,000 on average. In Kyiv, Ukraine the same specialist earns $2,700 per month.

How Much Does It Cost To Hire Developers in Estonia vs Ukraine?

Let’s compare developers’ salaries depending on their skill in different programming languages. Prices for hiring dedicated development team in Estonia, Tallinn dedicated team in particular, with skills in PHP, .Net, JavaScript technologies are a bit different. If you want to find Django developers for hire, or somebody with experience in any other technologies you should compare the average costs before deciding to hire developers in Tallinn or Kyiv.

developers salary comparison in Estonia vs Ukraine


Check the comparison of the salaries:

  • The salary of an Estonian developer for hire with .Net skills is $2,600/month, while a Ukrainian dedicated programmer earns from $2,000/month.
  • The average salaries of middle Javascript developers in Estonia and Ukraine are $2,900/month and $2,500/month accordingly.
  • Remote middle PHP developers earn $2,300/month in Estonia and $2,500/month in Ukraine.

It has to be noted that the rates vary and depend on many factors: the city, the level of a programmer, skills they possess. For example, even a Tallinn web developer with 1  year of experience will earn much less than an experienced developer from Tartu.

In any case, there are good reasons to consider hiring developers from Ukraine and from Ukrainian companies as the trend is that it will be very hard to recruit web developers in 2020. The main reason is that most UA companies offer to hire the already formed in-house team of developers of any level. Moreover, Ukraine has over 190,000 IT professionals and Ukrainian companies have direct access to this largest dev community in Europe.

IT Outsourcing with Mobilunity vs IT Outsourcing in Estonia

Unlike IT outsourcing in Estonia, you can hire developers with us with the help of IT outstaffing model.

IT outstaffing is useful if you need to extend your company with a whole development team. Outstaffing means that the provider creates a development team for your business needs and helps you to manage it.

Being a provider of outstaffing services to businesses worldwide, Mobilunity can easily help with any team extension providing developers and programmers of any level for hire.

Here are the top benefits of hiring developers with us:

  • We recruit only the best professionals and offer them to you;
  • We are able to find a specialist suitable to you within the shortest time (2-4 weeks);
  • Our developers already have all the necessary instruments to implement your project;
  • We are always in touch because of our convenient time zone;
  • We don’t have language barriers.

Hiring a Dedicated Development Team in Estonia or in Ukraine

It is rather obvious that hiring Tallinn dedicated team is cheaper than cooperation with developers from Ukraine, but even if you want to hire developers in Estonia, consider all pros and cons wisely. Baltic countries have advantages and disadvantages comparing to Ukraine as a software development country. So, whether you decided to hire developers in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania or Ukraine never risk your money, as well as the quality of the work that you want to get. Contact us now to hire Chatbot designers: highly qualified, skilled, experienced, and dedicated to your projects! We can assure you that experts from Ukraine who are well-known worldwide for their IT potential and talents won’t let you pay twice!

Hire developers in Estonia or contact us right now in order to receive your best solution!

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