Why we publish our rates when every other Indian agency hides theirs

If you've ever tried to hire an offshore software team, you know the drill.

You find a dev shop on Clutch. Their website looks professional. Their case studies are thin but plausible. You fill out their contact form — name, email, project description, budget range — and you wait.

A day later, a sales rep replies. They'd like to schedule a discovery call. The discovery call is 45 minutes of qualifying questions. At the end of it, they promise to send over a proposal tailored to your needs.

The proposal arrives two days later. It's a PDF with stock photos and a summary of your own requirements read back to you. At the bottom, in a tasteful callout, there's a number.

You negotiate. They come down. You negotiate again. They come down again.

And through this entire dance, one question stays unanswered: what does it actually cost to hire a developer from this company?

This is the industry. And it's the industry by design.

Why rates are hidden

Offshore dev shops hide their rates for a few reasons, and none of them benefit you as a buyer.

Arbitrage. If they can find out your budget before they give you a price, they can quote to your budget. A five-person startup and a mid-market e-commerce brand might get quoted wildly different rates for the same Laravel dev — not because the work is different, but because the buyers are.

Negotiation leverage. Published rates are commitments. Unpublished rates are negotiable, which means the first number you hear is almost always inflated, and you're expected to push back. If you're a sophisticated buyer, you might win. If you're not, you pay 40% too much and never know it.

Regional protection. A shop that charges $15/hr to an Indian startup and $45/hr to a US agency for the same developer really, really does not want those two customers comparing notes. Opacity is what makes the two prices coexist.

Fear.This is the most honest answer. Many agencies genuinely believe that if they published their rates — even fair, sensible ones — they'd lose business to a cheaper competitor, or be accused of over-charging by a more expensive one. So they don't.

Why it's bad for buyers

The cost of opacity is mostly paid by buyers, especially sophisticated ones who know they're being played but can't pin down by how much.

Here's what it looks like from the buyer's side:

• Three weeks of meetings before you see a number
• Proposals that arrive written against you, not for you
• A lingering suspicion that whatever you agreed to, another client got a better deal
• A relationship that starts with a negotiation instead of a build

Trust — the one thing you need to successfully work with a remote team — is damaged before the first line of code is written.

Why it's bad for shops, too

Less obviously, it's bad for the shops.

When you don't publish rates, you attract buyers who are primarily price-shopping. The buyers who know what they want — who have a real project, a real timeline, and a real budget — self-select out of your funnel, because they don't have time for a two-week sales process. The buyers who remain are the ones with no budget discipline, no clear scope, and an expectation that they'll haggle you down.

Hiding rates feelslike leverage. It's actually a filter that removes your best customers.

What we do instead

This is awkward to write, but: we publish our rates. On the homepage. In the first screen of scroll.

Here's the whole thing:

• Mid-level developer (2–3 years) — $2,500/month, full time
• Senior developer (4–5 years) — $3,500/month, full time
• Expert (6+ years) — Custom scope, custom quote

That's it. No asterisks. No “starting at.” No “contact us for pricing.” The monthly retainer is a full-time dedicated developer — 160 hours a month, working your hours, in your Slack, committing to your repo.

We're a sub-brand of Neuvo WebTech LLP, an ISO 9001:2015 certified Indian software firm with 50+ engineers. We've shipped 700+ projects in five years. Our business partners are based in California and Illinois. You can call our US number and it rings live on the founder's phone.

Why we do it

Publishing our rates does three things at once.

It tells you we're serious. A shop willing to commit publicly to a number is a shop that's thought carefully about what a fair price is and is prepared to defend it. You don't have to guess whether you're getting the “good” rate.

It filters out the wrong clients. Buyers who were going to haggle us down to $9/hour self-select out of our funnel. Buyers who value transparency self-select in. Over twelve months, this changes the quality of the client mix dramatically.

It builds trust before you even talk to us. When you come to a scoping call having already read the rate, the conversation is about scope, not price. You'd be surprised how much better that conversation is.

What it costs us

Some clients go with cheaper shops. That's fine — they probably weren't going to be happy with us anyway.

Some prospects think the rates are too low and assume we're a sweatshop. They're wrong — our engineers are full-time, well paid by Indian standards, and stay with us for years. But some people can't hear that, and they go elsewhere.

And sometimes we leave money on the table by not charging more to clients who would have paid more. That's real. Published rates mean we can't price-discriminate, and occasionally that costs us.

We think the trade is worth it. If you don't, you're probably not our ideal client — and that's fine too.

One last thing

If you're a US agency or founder reading this, and you're tired of the discovery-call-then-mystery-proposal dance: we're taking new engagements. Book a 20-minute call. We'll talk scope. We'll share sample developer profiles. We'll give you an honest read on whether we're the fit. And if we're not, we'll tell you — in the call, not three weeks later over email.

The rates are the rates. They're right there on the page.

— Pankaj Biswas, Founder of Outsourcify & Neuvo WebTech LLP