Real payment data

What contractors actually cost by country

Not survey estimates. Median monthly cost from active contracts paid through Ontop. Pick up to five countries.

1Pick countries to compare
2Narrow by functionoptional
Not enough data for that function in every country selected, so those fall back to the country figure.

Contractor cost, monthly

Median and middle range, in USD
Country0 contracts
0USD/mo
00
As an employee, all in0
Moving the money, per year00
Spread across your selection0xbetween the cheapest and the most expensive
Based on active contracts paid through Ontop, period July 2026. This is what companies pay here, not a national average.
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See what hiring in these markets costs you end to end.

Where the numbers come from

Most rate benchmarks are built from surveys or scraped job posts, so they measure what people say they pay. These come from money that actually moved: active contracts paid through Ontop, normalised to US dollars per month. We publish a country only when it has at least 30 active contracts across at least 20 different companies, and no single company accounts for more than 30 percent of them. That last rule matters, because a country where one client does most of the hiring shows you that client's pay policy, not a market.

Why the spread is the real story

Within Latin America the same role can cost three times more depending only on where the person lives. Uruguay runs above the United States. Venezuela sits near the bottom. Choosing the country is a bigger lever on cost than negotiating the rate, and it is the one most teams never examine.

Preguntas frecuentes

How much does it cost to hire a contractor in Latin America?

It depends far more on the country than on the role. Across the markets here the median runs from about 950 USD a month in Venezuela to about 3,374 in Uruguay. Pick two countries above to see the range for each.

Is this the market rate or the average salary?

Neither. It is what companies pay contractors through Ontop, which is a real sample of cross border hiring but not a census of the country. Treat it as a benchmark for what global teams pay, not as a national wage statistic.

Why is the median used instead of the average?

Averages get pulled apart by a handful of very high contracts. The median is the middle of the market, and the quartile range shows how wide that market really is. Both are more honest than a single average.

Does a contractor cost less than an employee?

Usually yes on paper, because there are no employer contributions or statutory accruals. Whether you are allowed to use a contractor is a separate question, and getting it wrong is expensive. The classification test answers that one.