Game Dev Outsourcing
2026 edition

State of Game Development Outsourcing

Nobody publishes what game outsourcing actually costs. Buyers guess, studios quote blind, and every “industry rate” you can find traces back to someone's estimate. This survey fixes that with numbers from the studios doing the work.

About 4 minutes

Two required fields. Skip anything you would rather not answer.

Aggregates only

Your individual rates are never published. Naming your studio is opt-in.

You get it first

Respondents receive the full report by email before it goes public.

Your studio

Only the first two are required.

What you offer

Tick everything you sell as a service.

Your rates

The part the industry has to guess at. Hourly range you actually charge a client — fill in only the disciplines you sell, leave the rest blank. Published as an aggregate across all respondents, never as your studio's individual rate.

2D art
3D art
Animation
Programming
Game design
Audio
QA & testing
UI/UX
How you price
Your year
Demand vs a year ago
Headcount
Before you send

How the results get published

  • Every figure publishes as a range, median or distribution across all respondents, with the number of studios that answered stated next to it. A small sample labelled as a small sample is useful; a small sample dressed up as an industry truth is not, so the count is always shown.
  • No individual studio's rates are published, quoted or shared, whether or not you opt in to being named.
  • Naming is opt-in and applies only to a list of contributing studios.
  • Aggregates will sit alongside the existing sourced rate benchmark, which today relies entirely on third-party figures from Clutch, GoodFirms and Lemon.io.
  • Reply to the confirmation email at any time to have your response changed or deleted.

Run alongside the directory of 441 game outsourcing studios. Not listed yet? Add your studio — it's free.