Hire a developer or use a provider: comparing what each one actually buys

The comparison is nearly always made badly, and always the same way: a gross salary on one side, a monthly invoice on the other. The two numbers look alike, so people conclude. Except they do not measure the same thing.

A provider's invoice contains everything: working time, tooling, management, the holidays of whoever produces, the cover when they are ill. A gross salary contains only part of the cost of an employee, and the missing part is rarely small.

We will not give you an average figure here, because an average figure does not describe you. Employer contributions, seniority, region, company size and benefits change the result so much that a national average fits nobody. What we give below is the list of lines to add up, so you can compute your own.

Let us start with what argues against us, because it is real and no agency will tell you.

An employee accumulates domain knowledge that is invoiced nowhere. After a year they know why that odd rule exists, which client asked for what, and what went wrong last time. That memory is an asset, and it belongs to the company for as long as the person stays.

An employee is also continuously available and can be redirected in real time. You can interrupt them, change their day, ask for an opinion in passing. No external contractual model reproduces that properly, and pretending otherwise would be lying to you.

The first point is the most concrete, and the most underestimated: breadth of skills.

A product needs front end, back end, infrastructure, design and sometimes a little data work. One person rarely covers all of that at the same level, so you end up topping up with freelancers, and therefore coordinating. A provider brings those skills as a set, and switches between them as the request of the moment requires.

The second point is the symmetry between starting and stopping. You start when you want and you stop when you want. A hire does not have that property: getting in takes months and getting out is expensive, in money and in energy.

“A hire is a two-year bet. A subscription is a decision retaken every month. Both are defensible, they simply do not commit the same thing.”

If you could only look at one variable, it would be this one. It is decisive and almost never appears in the comparison table.

Against that, a provider starts within the week. This is not a sales argument, it is a difference in kind between buying capacity and employing a person.

It is exactly the logic of senior technical reinforcement: you close a gap now, without prejudging what you will build in house later.

Here are the lines to add up on each side. Do it with your real amounts rather than an average found online, because the result will differ a lot from yours.

On the provider side, the list is two lines: the monthly invoice, and the third-party costs that stay yours, hosting and licences. If there is a third line, ask which one before signing.

The question is almost always framed as a final choice. In practice most companies do both, in a particular order.

They produce with a provider first, because they need to move now and the product is not settled yet. Then, once the workload becomes continuous and predictable, they hire, often starting with someone who takes over what was built. The provider then moves to a support role, or stops.

The reverse happens too, and it goes badly: hiring one person alone on a product that is too broad, then topping up in a hurry with poorly coordinated freelancers. The cost never appears on a budget line, it appears in the delay.

Hiring or outsourcing is not a question of price, it is a question of timing. A provider gives you capacity now and the freedom to stop. A hire gives you memory and availability, in exchange for a delay and a commitment.

If you are hesitating, start with the one that is easy to undo. You can always hire in six months with a product that has moved forward, and a far clearer idea of the profile you actually need.

“Choose the reversible option first. It leaves you the right to be wrong, which the other one does not.”

Two articles to go further: the unlimited development subscription and why fixed-price quotes stop working.