Game Outsourcing Cost Calculator
Estimate what an outsourced team costs before you talk to studios. Pick the roles, region, and duration — the calculator prices them against published market rate ranges and gives you a range, never a fake-precise number.
Region shifts where an estimate sits inside each discipline's market range. Individual studios vary widely within every region.
Describe the team and click estimate
These are market estimates
Ranges come from published market rates, not from quotes by the studios listed in this directory — the directory holds no per-studio rate data. Real quotes depend on scope, art style, and the studio's order book.
Where the rates come from
The per-discipline bands are this site's published editorial market ranges — the same figures as the complete cost guide — so the calculator can never disagree with the guide it is based on. They are estimates, not measurements: this directory holds no per-studio rate data, nothing here is a quote from a listed studio, and the result is a budgeting aid rather than a price. For figures that carry a publisher, a sample size and a date, compare against the rate benchmark rather than against other vendors' cost guides, which in this market almost never say where their numbers came from.
If you need figures with a publisher and a sample size behind them rather than an editorial range, the sourced rate benchmark is the page to cite: the hourly bands 1,347 game studios advertise publicly, contractor rates by country, and per-minute audio rates, each with its origin and the date it was read. It is built differently from the bands this calculator runs on, and the two should not be quoted interchangeably.
For live figures on where the supply side actually sits — regions, services, team sizes — see the industry statistics page.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Published market rates run roughly $25-40/hour for entry-level 2D art up to $120-250/hour for senior programming. A small outsourced team — for example two mid-level 3D artists and a mid-level programmer at 40 hours a week — typically lands in the tens of thousands of dollars per month, with the exact figure depending on region, seniority, and scope.
South and Southeast Asia generally sit at the low end of published market ranges, with Eastern Europe and Latin America in the lower-middle, Western Europe in the upper-middle, and North America at the top. Individual studios vary widely within every region, so region alone is a poor basis for choosing a partner.
No. The ranges are editorial market estimates cross-checked against independently published rate guides. This directory does not collect per-studio rate data, so nothing here is a quote — use the estimate to sanity-check budgets, then request real quotes from studios.
Ready for real quotes?
Browse the directory, shortlist studios in your budget region, and contact them directly — no platform fee, no middleman.