European Software Engineers' Salaries - a deep dive
Sharing insights from EuroTechMoney.com after almost 800 contributions
As you already know, I’m managing this project, where I gather data from tech workers in Europe about their salary, taxes, cost of living, quality of life, etc.
And then I share statistics about it on Euro Tech Money
The data is now at almost 800 entries, and it’s becoming quite interesting to see the insights there.
If you haven’t contributed yet, PLEASE DO (you can do it here)
Today I’ll be sharing some results from the data shared so far.
1. Italy deep dive - How poor are Italian devs, really?
a) Cost of Living
Per capita, it’s the 2nd LOWEST in Europe (after Hungary)
But Italy ain’t that cheap? So let’s dive deeper.
I calculate the Cost of Living (CoL) as the difference between salary after taxes and the yearly savings.
Then I can get the per capita CoL by considering the avg CoL, household size and share of household expenses.
Looking at the numbers, here are 2 possible reasons for Italians not spending much (having low CoL):
1. Many Italians live with someone
A partner, their parents or in a home passed down through generations.
This lowers big expenses like rent significantly.
2. They just don’t have money to spend
Which is visible also in the fact they’re the 2nd worst in Europe for Yearly Savings in absolute terms.
This is in stark contrast to devs in Central/Eastern Europe
Who seem to be spending more than Italians (despite the actual lower CoL) while also saving 2x/3x more money each year.
When ranking countries by “lifestyle”, Italy ain’t too bad:
Context: in my data gathering, I also ask people to rate their lifestyle between frugal, comfortable and luxurious.
So I’m able to assign 1, 2 and 3, respectively, to these choices, and produce an average per country.
This is useful to get a better idea of people’s purchasing power.
Italy reports a 1.82 lifestyle score, same as Hungary and similar to Poland or Germany (1.83).
Which is not bad (considering the very low spending amounts reported, mentioned above).
How is that possible?
Here’s my analysis:
1. Italian tech salaries are incredibly low
2nd to last in Europe, worse than Portugal; only better than Hungary.
2. Italian devs don't manage to save almost anything
Only devs in Portugal save less.
3. Yet, they manage to have a relatively comfortable life
Middle of the rank. Without spending too much (2nd lowest CoL per capita in Europe).
The reason for 3. (comfortable life despite no money) is:
1. Italy is a "lifestyle nation"
Some things - which might be considered luxurious in other countries - don't come with a very premium price (food, nature, culture etc).
2. It's also a "collectivist society"
People live together and share costs with their friends, partners, parents, etc.
3. People inherit real estate
Since it used to be a somewhat rich nation, many people inhering homes from their parents and cut costs this way.
2. France
Seems to mimic a similar behaviour to Italy but a bit better:
mid salary
low savings
good lifestyle score
3. Denmark
Seems like a great place and it's one of my personal surprises.
4. Switzerland
Switzerland ranks high on many metrics: saving rates (absolute terms), salary (absolute terms, both after tax and before tax), and lifestyle score.
The most surprising to me is the latter.
Salary and savings in absolute terms being high is obvious
Since it’s the most expensive country in Europe.
But for Lifestyle Score, which has a correlation with purchasing power, I would have expected Switzerland to perform worse
Than countries in Central and Eastern Europe (for example), which, in 2025, offer devs the highest purchasing power in Europe - and that’s basically a fact.
As this commenter on this YouTube video points out:
Anecdotally, most of my friends in Zurich are quite frugal.
A lot of them see Switzerland as a temporary phase in their life where they get to save some money and then retire / semi-retire early somewhere else.
I think the key to this “strange” result is the avg household size reported by Swiss devs
If you look at eurotechmoney.com, you’ll see that avg household size is:
1.5 people for Switzerland
1.9 for Poland
This plays a significant role.
Basically, Polish devs (in these stats) are more likely than the Swiss ones to be supporting a family with their salary.
I'm quite sure that if this parameter was to be the same across countries (every dev in Europe supporting the same number of people with his/her salary), Poland would rank 1st in Lifestyle score, and Switzerland wouldn't make the top 3.
Check out this other comments' thread on that same YouTube video
For more insights on raising a family in Switzerland vs Central/Eastern Europe:
From my experience, this is spot on.
I hear the same things from everyone I know who’s lived in both Switzerland and Central/Eastern Europe.
Another reason could be that Swiss devs usually can more easily afford things like expensive travel, skiing, cars, shopping etc (but usually don't go out for food, nor hire labour/help).
5. Sweden
Swedish people really repel luxury! The most frugal devs in Europe.
6. Netherlands
Often considered as one of the best tech hubs in Europe, doesn't seem that great after all:
average savings
low lifestyle score
unimpressive salaries
I guess it's because big tech's presence there is not that big in the end.
And local companies don't pay much.
Plus, taxes and CoL aren't low (meaning it's not good for remote devs).
Taxes - Where do European devs pay the highest and lowest taxes?
Here are the top 3 and the bottom 3 👇
Top 3 (lowest taxes):
Switzerland - 23%
Romania - 24%
Poland - 26%
Bottom 3 (highest taxes):
Germany - 39%
Netherlands - 37%
UK - 37%
As I've mentioned other times, Switzerland has really good taxes for employees:
contained rates
spent well
some of it it's even easy to cash out before retirement.
A caveat is that health insurance is private and it costs about 3.5-6k CHF per year.
So technically you could add a couple of percentage points to the above 23% (I get the tax rates by comparing salary after taxes and salary before taxes).
Plus, it might also not cover all of your healthcare expenses (depending on what you need), and usually you should account for 4-9k USD per year for healthcare in Switzerland.
Devs in Poland and Romania can pay less than 24-26% if they work on b2b contracts (10-15% total rates).
Which is quite a common setup for devs in the region.
But taxes are higher when they work as full-time employee (common in big tech).
That’s why the resulting rate is somewhere in the middle.
Comparing Poland and Switzerland for big tech engineers (tax-wise):
In Poland, even in big tech, tax rates don't go much higher than 30%, since RSUs are taxed at flat 19%.
In Switzerland, as you go beyond $250k, you start to pay 35%+ tax.
In Warsaw, in big tech, at $100k (which makes you richer than making $250k in Zurich) you're paying ~30% tax. And that includes health insurance, which is not included in the above Swiss 35% rate.
Germany, Netherlands and the Uk... Well :)
At least (I hope) German and Dutch devs get some good public services, not so sure about the UK and what are they paying taxes for exactly.
Interesting to see that Sweden ranks 4th lowest tax in Europe, with an average of 30% rate (seems low? maybe it’s because most of the Swedish contributors don’t have a very high salary).
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s article, where I’ll share which countries currently have the HIGHEST amount of openings for top-paying tech jobs in Europe
If you haven’t done it already, please contribute to eurotechmoney.com - so we continue to get better statistics like these shared in today’s article
You can do it here
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