How much does an Indian freelance software developer earn per hour

How much should a freelance developer charge for developing an app or a website?

Software developers are the most precious commodity in the tech world. These days you need them to develop your website, your iOS and Android Apps. The better the software developer the better your website and App and the more the visitors to it. It is important to find a good developer so that you can put your ideas into a code. However, the most important question is how much do they charge you for doing so.

If you are a developer, you should also know how much to charge a client. Depending on your goodwill and your work, you can charge absurd amounts but if you are a newbie developer and don’t price your software skills right, you may lose many prospective customers.

An Indian freelance software developer tried to answer that query on Quora. Suresh Kumar says he has completed many projects and gives his estimate of how much Indian software developers should charge for developing a website or an Android App.

He gives the breakup of expenditure as follows :

1. Internet cost is Rs.1500.00 ($22) per month.
2. Electricity Bill will be around Rs.750.00 ($11) per month
3. Laptop Cost one time investment of Rs.85,000.00 ($1300).
4. Food cost for a month is around Rs.10,000 ($150) (approx ).

The breakup of the development cost includes for 8 hours a day for all working days except Sunday.

1. 1500/22/8 ->  Rs. 8.5 ($0.13) (Per Hour Calculation)
2. 750/22/8 -> Rs.4.26 ($ 0.06)
3. 85K/156/8 -> Rs.68.00 ($1.0.1)
4. 10K/30/8 -> Rs.41.00 ($0.61)

Suresh Kumar says that this development cost comes to Rs.122.00 per hour which is around $1.82. Now comes the hard part of pricing your skills as a programmer. This is one area which every developer prices solely based on his skillset and experience. Suresh Kumar says that he charges $25 per hour for Android App development and $20 for Website development. He says this includes $2 running cost of the project.

In case the client wants the product sooner and is not giving enough time to development surge pricing comes into play. Suresh Kumar says that he charges 1.5x to 3X per hour for such customers because he has to put in more efforts for finishing the work in time.

Another developer, Reinder de Vries, who has six years of experience developing iOS, Android apps and HTM5 websites says that developers should not aim too high in the beginning. He advises newbies to start with $ 25 an hour and work your way up. de Vries says that for a Westerner, it’s not uncommon to ask a $ 100 per hour, for low-wage countries it’s more like $ 25 per hour. That’s based on self-employment, so pre-tax and no social security. Employment hourly fees are obviously lower.

I hope these two gentlemen gave some valuable inputs into how much a programmer should charge for an hour for developing Android, iOS App or a website.