What does a freelance .NET developer cost? Hourly rates in 2026 compared with hiring

You have a backlog, a deadline, and no budget line for a new hire. A freelance .NET developer quotes €95 an hour, and the first thought is: that is more than twice what an employee costs. Is it?

Per hour, yes. Per year, often not. This article shows what freelancers charge in 2026, what an employee really costs per productive day, and where the line between the two lies.

What freelancers charge in 2026

The largest survey of freelancers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Freelancer-Kompass by freelancermap, puts the average hourly rate across all fields at €103 in 2026. That is the first fall since the survey began, from €104 a year earlier, mostly because of a weaker market. For IT freelancers the median is €95, and for software and web development €90.

At eight hours a day, that means €720 to €830 a day. Senior specialists in a niche (Blazor, migrations from .NET Framework, performance) are usually at the upper end or above it.

In the Netherlands and the Nordics, labour is among the most expensive in the EU. Eurostat puts the average hourly labour cost in 2025 at €47.90 in the Netherlands and €51.70 in Denmark, against an EU average of €34.90. Freelance rates follow the same pattern.

Option	Typical price	What you get
Freelancer, direct	Around €90 to €105 an hour in DACH	The developer’s time, nothing else
Freelancer through an agency	The freelancer’s rate plus the agency’s margin	One contract, a replacement if someone drops out
Nearshore studio	Often below local rates, same time zone	A senior who joins your team remotely
Permanent employee	Salary plus employer costs	Someone who stays, and whom you pay whether there is work or not

Why the hourly rate is not the whole story

A worked example with round numbers. A company in Germany hires a senior .NET developer:

Item	Per year
Gross salary (example)	€80,000
Employer social contributions, about 20 %	€16,000
Laptop, licences, training, office	€5,000
Recruiter fee in the first year (example)	€15,000
Total	€116,000

The year has about 260 working days. Take away holidays, public holidays, sick days and training, and around 200 productive days remain. That puts the employee at about €580 a day, or €73 an hour.

The freelancer at €800 a day is about 40 % more expensive per day. But you pay the freelancer only for the days you use. In this example, the line is at about 145 days a year (€116,000 divided by €800). Below that, the freelancer is cheaper. Above it, and for years on end, hiring is cheaper.

You need someone for	Freelancer at €800 a day	Hiring (example above)
A 3-month project, 60 days	€48,000	€116,000 for the first year, then you need the next project
8 days a month for a year, 96 days	€76,800	€116,000
Full time for years	€160,000 a year	€116,000 in the first year, less after that

The example ignores the time to hire, which is often months. During that time the work either waits or does not get done, and that cost never shows up on an invoice. More on it in our article on what to do while you look for a .NET developer.

What to check besides the rate

Two offers at the same hourly rate can be very different deals:

• Hours or days. Is it billed per hour, or per day regardless of how long the day is? Is there a monthly cap?
• Commitment and notice. A minimum term, or month to month?
• Who owns the code. It should be you, from day one, in your repository.
• Travel. Included, billed separately, or not expected at all?
• Invoicing across borders. A B2B service from another EU country is usually invoiced without VAT under the reverse charge mechanism. Your accountant will confirm it for your case.
• Time zone and availability. Same working hours as your team, or answers the next morning?
• Holidays and sickness. What happens to your deadline when the freelancer is away?

Whether a fixed price would be the safer choice is covered in our article on fixed price or time and materials.

A word on false self-employment

Some countries look closely at freelancers who work like employees. In Germany it is called Scheinselbstständigkeit, and in the Netherlands it falls under the Wet DBA. Typical warning signs are working full time for a single client, fixed hours set by the client, and being managed like a member of staff.

This is not legal advice. If a freelancer will work for you full time for a long period, check the arrangement with a lawyer or tax adviser in your country before you start.

When a freelancer is the cheaper option, and when not

It usually is when:

• the work has an end: a project, an upgrade to .NET 10, a migration from Web Forms
• you need specific knowledge for a while: Blazor, performance, taking over someone else’s code
• you need to bridge the months until a permanent hire starts
• you need a senior a few days a month for architecture and code review, not full time

It usually is not when:

• the developer will be the long-term heart of your product, and the knowledge must stay in the company
• the only criterion is the lowest hourly rate. The cheapest offer often turns into the most expensive project.

How we work

This is exactly what we do. ProCoding is a .NET studio in Split, Croatia. We work remotely on Central European Time, so the working day overlaps with most of Europe, and we come on site when it is needed. We work in .NET, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, Entity Framework, SQL Server and Azure, on systems companies genuinely depend on, from calibration software for Bugatti Rimac to a travel platform.

You can work with us through a monthly block of days, cancellable at any time, or with a freelance .NET developer full time for the length of a project. More on joining your team from Croatia in our article on nearshore .NET development. The first step is a free 30-minute call, where we look at the work and how many days it really needs.

Sources

• Freelancer-Kompass 2026: Stundensätze fallen erstmals seit Jahren, freelancermap, 17 March 2026
• IT-Freelancer Stundensatz 2026, freelancermap
• EU hourly labour costs ranged from €12 to €57 in 2025, Eurostat, 31 March 2026