Comparison · 2026
Hire a developer or use an agency: what pays off?
The short answer: hire when development is your core business and there is full-time work for several people for years. Use an agency when you need a system built and run, but not an entire development team. An employee costs far more than the salary, and one person rarely covers design, development and operations.
9 min read · Updated 29 September 2026
Many businesses reach the point where the thought arrives: “Shouldn’t we just hire a developer ourselves?” It can be the right decision. But the sum is bigger than a payslip, and it is easy to underestimate what it takes for one person to carry an entire system. Here is the honest version.
What does it really cost to hire a developer?
The salary is the visible part. An experienced developer in Denmark often costs roughly DKK 45,000–65,000 a month before pension. That is a broad approximation, and it varies with experience, location and technology. On top come pension, recruitment, equipment and licences, and not least the time it takes to find and onboard someone. The salary alone therefore runs to roughly DKK 540,000–780,000 a year before anything else is counted.
The salary is a broad approximation. The other items vary from business to business.
| Item | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Salary | Often roughly DKK 45,000–65,000/month before pension for an experienced developer (approximate) |
| Pension and staff costs | Employer pension contributions, insurance, holiday and sick leave |
| Recruitment | Job ads, possibly a recruitment agency, and your own time for interviews |
| Time to hire | Typically 2–3 months before the person starts, plus their notice period |
| Equipment and tools | Computer, software licences, hosting and developer tooling |
| Management | Someone has to prioritise work, give feedback and judge quality |
For comparison, our largest web package, Large, is DKK 54,000 plus DKK 1,200 a month with 36 features, three integrations, hosting, maintenance and backups. It is not the same as a full-time employee, but it shows how much system you can get for a fraction of a year’s salary.
One developer or a whole team?
A modern solution needs several disciplines: user insight, UX and UI design, frontend, backend, mobile, integrations, security and operations. It is rare for one person to be strong at all of them. If you hire one developer, you usually get a good developer, but design, operations and security still have to be handled somewhere. And when that person is on holiday or ill, development stops.
One in-house developer
- Knows your business from the inside
- Always available during working hours
- One skill set; holiday and illness stop the work
- Fixed salary cost regardless of workload
An agency team
- Design, development and operations from one place
- Can scale up and down as needed
- Several people know the solution
- Does not know your business from day one
What happens with holidays, illness and resignations?
This is the part of the sum that rarely makes it into the budget. An employed developer takes holidays, can fall ill and can resign. If your only developer resigns, recruitment starts over, and there can be months where nobody knows the system from the inside. Meanwhile the running still has to happen: security updates, backups, bug fixes and support for your own staff. With an agency that is part of the agreement, and several people know the solution. With us the monthly fee covers hosting, maintenance, updates, support, SSL and backups, whoever is on holiday.
When should you hire in-house?
- Software is your product, for example a SaaS business, and development never stops.
- There is full-time work for several developers for years to come.
- You have, or can hire, a technical lead who can manage and assess the work.
- Product knowledge is so central that it has to live in-house.
If instead you are a business that needs a good system to run the company but does not sell software, an agency is usually cheaper and more robust. You pay for the system you need, not for a full position during the periods when there is nothing to develop. If you are also weighing up freelancers, see freelancer vs agency and developer hourly rates.
The hybrid model: your own product owner, an agency for the rest
Many end up somewhere in between. You have one person in-house who owns the product and knows the business, and an agency that delivers design, development and operations. At WorkPoint one of our designers was embedded in the product teams for two years and built Design System 2.0 with them. If you want steady capacity without hiring, see development on subscription.
Build version one
An agency builds and runs the solution at a fixed price.
Learn what works
You see how much ongoing development is really needed.
Hire if it makes sense
If there is full-time work, you hire, and the agency helps with the handover.
You own the code throughout
Code and data are yours, so nothing has to be rebuilt.
See our fixed pricing, or describe what you need and you get a written fixed-price proposal within 24 hours to compare against.
Questions about hiring a developer
How much does a developer cost per year?
How long does it take to hire a developer?
Can one developer build and run an entire system?
What is the hybrid model?
Can we take the system with us if we hire later?
Is an agency more expensive than an employee in the long run?
Want us to build it for you?
You get a fixed-price proposal within 24 hours.
