Offshore vs local development
Offshore buys hours at a lower rate. It does not buy fewer hours. The decision turns on how well you can specify the work, because specification is the cost that offshore does not reduce.
Should I hire offshore developers or work with someone local?
What offshore genuinely gives you
A lower hourly rate and access to a much larger pool of people. For well-specified, self-contained work this is a real saving, and plenty of excellent software is built this way.
Time zones can help when the work is a clean handoff rather than a conversation.
Where the saving evaporates
When you cannot specify precisely. Every ambiguity becomes a round trip, and a round trip across time zones costs a day. Ten ambiguities cost two weeks.
This is worst for exactly the people who most want the saving: non-technical owners who know the outcome they want but not the mechanism.
What local actually buys
Shared hours and shared context. Someone who can ask a question and get an answer in the same afternoon, and who can watch how the business runs rather than read a description of it.
For work where the specification emerges from the conversation, that is not a luxury, it is the mechanism.
The honest test
Write down what you want built. If a stranger could build the right thing from that document, offshore is a fair bet. If they could not, you are not buying development, you are buying the process of working out what to build.
The verdict: Offshore is cheaper per hour and neutral per outcome. Choose it when you can specify precisely, and not otherwise.
Last updated 23 August 2026