Costs · salaries
What overseas talent actually costs per month
Forget '80% savings' as an abstraction — here are the concrete advertised monthly ranges, by role, with sources.
Numbers checked August 2026.
| Role | Monthly range | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Data entry | $600–$900 | Somewhere.com advertised placed range |
| Live chat / customer support | $700–$1,100 | Somewhere.com advertised placed range |
| Backend developer | $2,300–$4,200 | Somewhere.com advertised placed range |
| General VA (Philippines, self-serve job board) | ~$400–$1,000 (commonly cited) | Third-party reviews of OnlineJobs.ph listings — treat as indicative, not verified |
| Overall placement spread | $600–$4,200 | Somewhere.com; savings advertised at 63–78% vs US equivalents |
The expanded role table — sources and arithmetic
The table above covers the roles this market talks about most. In August 2026 we widened the catalog to twenty-four roles, and rather than estimate the new bands we took both sides from named sources and did the arithmetic in public. Every band on a salary page for one of these roles resolves to the two rules below — no figure is estimated, and you can reproduce all of them.
The offshore band is the intermediate tier of OnlineJobs.ph's own published salary guide — the largest Philippine remote-work marketplace publishing rates for its own market — in monthly USD, rounded to the nearest $50. We use the intermediate tier deliberately: the beginner tier prices people who cannot yet do the job unsupervised, and the expert tier is open-ended ("$1,049++"), so neither describes the hire an employer is actually trying to make.
The US comparison is the 25th-to-75th percentile annual wage from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release (May 2025), divided by twelve and rounded to the nearest $50. The middle half of the market is what "a comparable US hire" honestly means; quoting the 90th percentile would inflate every savings figure on this site, and quoting the mean would let a few very large salaries drag it.
| Role | Offshore (PH baseline) | Where the offshore figure comes from | US comparable | Where the US figure comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Executive assistant | $800–$1,400 | our estimate — OnlineJobs.ph publishes no executive-assistant row — its Virtual Assistant row is the generic VA role, which we map to virtual assistant instead | $5,100–$7,850 | 43-6011 Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants |
| Operations manager | $1,000–$1,800 | our estimate — no operations-manager row published | $5,000–$7,500 | our estimate — BLS 11-1021 (general and operations managers) spans corporate general managers, so its upper quartile describes a far larger job than the operations hire this market makes |
| Bookkeeper | $800–$1,500 | our estimate — no bookkeeper row published — OnlineJobs.ph's Accountant row is the separate accountant role we already map | $3,650–$5,100 | 43-3031 Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks |
| Customer support specialist | $800–$1,300 | OnlineJobs.ph "Customer Service" | $3,050–$4,300 | 43-4051 Customer service representatives |
| Content marketer | $850–$1,550 | OnlineJobs.ph "Content Writer" — the closest published row; a content marketer does more than write | $4,500–$7,000 | our estimate — no unambiguous occupation — the role spans writing (27-3043) and marketing (13-1161), and picking either would understate half the job |
| Bookkeeping assistant | $600–$1,000 | our estimate — no bookkeeping-assistant row published | $3,000–$4,200 | our estimate — BLS publishes no junior split for 43-3031, so adopting it would price a bookkeeping assistant identically to a full bookkeeper |
| Virtual assistant | $700–$1,150 | OnlineJobs.ph "Virtual Assistant" | $3,250–$4,850 | 43-6014 Secretaries and administrative assistants |
| E-commerce manager | $850–$1,450 | OnlineJobs.ph "Ecommerce" | $5,000–$8,000 | our estimate — BLS has no e-commerce manager occupation, and the role spans marketing and operations |
| Junior developer | $1,500–$2,800 | our estimate — OnlineJobs.ph publishes both a Web Developer and a Web Developers row with materially different figures, and neither is scoped by seniority | $8,000–$13,000 | our estimate — BLS publishes no junior split for 15-1252 (software developers), and the lower quartile of all US software developers is not a junior wage |
| Sales development rep | $800–$1,350 | OnlineJobs.ph "Sales Representative" | $3,950–$8,350 | 41-3091 Sales representatives of services, all other — shares 41-3091 with lead generation, and BLS does not separate an SDR from a full-cycle rep |
| Graphic designer | $850–$1,600 | OnlineJobs.ph "Graphic Design" | $4,100–$6,800 | 27-1024 Graphic designers |
| Video editor | $900–$1,600 | OnlineJobs.ph "Video Editor" | $4,400–$8,800 | 27-4032 Film and video editors |
| Copywriter | $1,250–$2,200 | OnlineJobs.ph "Copywriter" | $4,850–$8,500 | 27-3043 Writers and authors |
| SEO specialist | $950–$1,750 | OnlineJobs.ph "SEO" | $4,850–$9,050 | 13-1161 Market research analysts and marketing specialists |
| PPC specialist | $1,500–$2,550 | OnlineJobs.ph "Pay-per-Click (PPC)" | $4,850–$9,050 | 13-1161 Market research analysts and marketing specialists — shares 13-1161 with SEO, so their US figures are identical by construction |
| Social media manager | $800–$1,450 | OnlineJobs.ph "Social Media Marketing" | $4,700–$8,350 | 27-3031 Public relations specialists |
| WordPress developer | $1,000–$1,700 | OnlineJobs.ph "WordPress Developer" | $5,350–$10,500 | 15-1254 Web developers |
| Shopify developer | $800–$1,350 | OnlineJobs.ph "Shopify Developer" | $5,350–$10,500 | 15-1254 Web developers — shares 15-1254 with WordPress development |
| Accountant | $1,000–$1,700 | OnlineJobs.ph "Accountant" | $5,600–$9,150 | 13-2011 Accountants and auditors |
| Project manager | $1,150–$2,000 | OnlineJobs.ph "Project Manager" | $6,550–$11,100 | 13-1082 Project management specialists |
| Lead generation specialist | $750–$1,250 | OnlineJobs.ph "Lead Generation" | $3,950–$8,350 | 41-3091 Sales representatives of services, all other |
| Real estate virtual assistant | $950–$1,650 | OnlineJobs.ph "Real Estate Virtual Assistant" | $3,250–$4,850 | 43-6014 Secretaries and administrative assistants |
| Data entry specialist | $600–$1,000 | OnlineJobs.ph "Data Entry" | $3,000–$4,050 | 43-9021 Data entry keyers |
| Web designer | $900–$1,600 | OnlineJobs.ph "Web Designer" | $6,100–$13,250 | 15-1255 Web and digital interface designers — 15-1255 includes senior product designers at US technology companies, which makes this the least reliable saving on the table |
What drives the spread
Three variables move the number more than anything else. Country: Philippine salaries generally price below Latin American ones for equivalent roles; LatAm's premium buys US-hours timezone overlap, which matters for phone-heavy and collaborative work. Channel: agency placements skew higher than self-serve job-board hires for the same role — partly better candidates, partly that agencies anchor salaries high enough to keep placements sticky (their guarantee is on the line). Seniority and English: near-native English plus a specialized skill (development, accounting, design) is what moves a role from the $700 band into the $2,000+ band.
Common questions
How much does a full-time overseas hire cost per month?
Advertised full-time placement ranges run roughly $600–$4,200/month depending on role, seniority, and country. Entry-level roles (data entry, chat support) cluster at $600–$1,100; specialized and senior technical roles reach $2,300–$4,200. Job-board self-serve hiring in the Philippines commonly lands lower than agency placements for equivalent roles.
How much cheaper is that than hiring in the US?
Agencies advertise savings of roughly 60–80% versus equivalent US salaries. As one benchmark, SHRM's most recent published average cost just to recruit a US hire is about $5,475 — before any salary is paid. Treat exact savings percentages as marketing claims that depend heavily on which US salary you compare against.
Do I pay taxes and benefits on top?
In the common direct-contractor model, you pay the monthly rate and the contractor handles their own local taxes. If you want them treated as a legal employee in their country (with statutory benefits), you'd use an employer-of-record, which adds a platform fee — see our compliance guide.
Is it fair to pay these rates?
These are competitive full-time salaries in the local markets — often above local office equivalents, which is why supply is deep. Paying at or above the top of the local band buys you retention; squeezing the bottom of the band is how you end up rehiring in six months.
Sources
- Somewhere.com — How it works — role-level placed salary ranges and savings claims
- OnlineJobs.ph — pricing — subscription cost for the self-serve route
- OnlineJobs.ph — Filipino virtual assistant salary guide — per-role monthly USD by experience tier; the intermediate tier is the offshore baseline for the twenty-four-role catalog
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 — 25th-75th percentile annual wages behind every US comparison figure