How much does it cost to outsource to the Philippines? The honest answer is that it depends on four things: the model (freelancer, BPO, dedicated staffing or your own entity), the role, the seniority, and what is actually included in the number you are quoted. Anyone who gives you a single figure before asking those four questions is selling you a headline, not a budget.
For orientation, third-party industry guides published for 2026 put fully-loaded rates for Philippine staff at roughly US$8–18 per hour, or about US$1,000–4,000 per month for a full-time role, with the spread driven mostly by role and seniority. The same guides report savings of 50–70% against equivalent local hires in the US, Australia and the UK. Those are not BuildNextTeam prices — we do not publish a price list, and our pricing page explains why — but they are a fair place to start.
The rest of this guide takes that range apart: what sits inside a fully-loaded monthly cost, who pays for each piece under each model, what moves the number, what people forget to budget for, and how to compare quotes built on different bases.
Why a range is the only honest answer
The models explain most of the spread. A freelancer on Upwork or OnlineJobs.ph quotes an hourly rate that can sit below the bottom of that range, with no local engagement behind it: no statutory contributions, no leave, no office, no one to call when the person stops answering. A traditional BPO quotes per seat or per ticket for a process it runs with its own, often shared, staff. A dedicated staffing provider quotes one monthly rate for a full-time person who works only for you, engaged and housed by the provider. Your own Philippine entity means local salary plus every statutory cost on top, plus the cost of running your own local entity in a country where you do not otherwise operate.
The five-model comparison on our why-BuildNextTeam page sets those side by side. For cost purposes the point is simple: a US$6-an-hour freelancer and a US$15-an-hour dedicated employee are not the same product at different prices. They are different products.
Within any one model, the role does the rest. A virtual assistant handling inbox and calendar sits near the bottom of the range; a customer support representative with a year or two of experience sits a little higher; a qualified accountant or mid-level developer sits at or beyond the top. The complete guide to outsourcing to the Philippines covers the models themselves in more depth.
What a fully-loaded monthly cost is actually made of
“Fully loaded” means the total cost of having a person productively at work for a month, not just their pay. When a provider calls its rate all-inclusive, this is the list it should include. When a rate looks unusually low, this is the list to check it against.
| Cost component | What it covers | Freelancer | Traditional BPO | Dedicated staffing | Your own entity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base salary | Pay, set by role and seniority | You, as an hourly rate; no local engagement | Inside the per-seat or per-outcome price | Inside the monthly rate | You, via your entity |
| 13th-month pay | Mandatory extra month of pay each year, usually accrued monthly | Not payable; freelancers are not employees | Provider | Provider, inside the rate | You |
| SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG | Statutory contributions with company-paid shares | Not payable | Provider | Provider, inside the rate | You, once registered locally |
| Leave and public holidays | Service incentive leave (five days minimum) and roughly 18–20 public holidays a year | You pay only hours worked, and get no cover | Provider, across a shared pool | Provider; you plan cover with your account manager | You |
| HR and payroll admin | Contracts, payroll runs, government filings, performance process | Nobody | Provider | Provider, inside the rate | You, or a local payroll firm |
| Office seat and equipment | Desk, power, internet, backup, hardware | The freelancer, from home | Provider | Provider, inside the rate | You: lease, fit-out, hardware |
| Talent sourcing | Sourcing, screening, testing, replacing | You, in your own time | Provider | Provider; some charge a placement fee, some include it | You, or an agency fee |
| Account management | A named contact who runs the relationship | Nobody | Provider’s team lead or SLA manager | Provider, inside the rate | Not applicable |
| Provider margin | Overhead and profit | Marketplace platform fee | Inside the price | Inside the rate | None, replaced by your set-up and running costs |
Two rows deserve a closer look. Thirteenth-month pay is mandatory under Philippine labour law and is typically accrued at a twelfth of salary each month, so a provider that quotes salary without it is under-quoting by roughly 8%. SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG have company shares that a legitimate provider pays on top. A freelancer carries neither, which is part of why freelance rates look low and part of why a freelancer is not an employee.
The right-hand column matters if you are considering your own entity. Every line is yours, and the lines that are cheapest for a provider with a hundred people in one office — sourcing, HR, the office itself — are the most expensive for a company with three. That is why companies of 5–200 staff usually use a provider, and why the staff leasing model exists as a middle ground.
Five things that move the number
Providers who price per role will tell you roughly the same thing: five factors set most of the rate. Our pricing page lists the ones we use, and they are not unusual.
1. The role. The function sets the band. Administrative and virtual assistant work, first-line support, data entry and back-office processing sit in the lower part of the market. Bookkeeping, accounting, marketing, design and sales support sit in the middle. Software engineering, senior accounting and specialist IT sit at the top; the accounting and finance and IT and technology role pages describe what those bands typically cover.
2. Seniority. Within any role, years of experience, supervisory responsibility and a track record with companies like yours move the rate up. Paying for seniority you do not need is the most common way to overspend; paying for less than you need is the most common way to end up re-hiring.
3. English and specialist skills. English is an official language and the medium of instruction in the Philippines, which consistently ranks among the top Asian countries on the EF English Proficiency Index, so strong written and spoken English is the norm rather than a premium. Native-level phone fluency for a US or UK voice queue, or specialist skills — Xero or QuickBooks certification, a particular CRM, a specific programming stack — do carry a premium, because the pool is smaller.
4. Shift and time zone. The Philippines is UTC+8 with no daylight saving. Australia’s east coast is 2–3 hours ahead, so an Australian business day is a normal Philippine day. The UK is 7–8 hours behind, so a UK morning overlaps a Philippine afternoon. US Eastern is 12–13 hours behind and US Pacific 15–16, so full alignment to US hours is a Philippine night shift. Night work typically attracts a differential in the Philippine market and is harder to source for, so expect a premium.
5. Office or home. Office-based staff cost the provider more — a desk, power, redundant internet, backup generation through typhoon season (roughly June to November), security and on-site supervision — and the rate reflects it. Home-based staff are cheaper on paper and carry more variance in connectivity and data security. The office-based versus work-from-home guide works through which suits which role.
Some providers add two more: team size, since a larger team usually brings the per-seat rate down, and any paid software the role needs.
The costs people miss when they compare quotes
Most mistakes in outsourcing budgets are not in the rate. They are in the lines that never make it onto the spreadsheet.
Your own management time. Whoever manages the person will spend real hours on it — more in the first three months, fewer later, never zero — at that manager’s loaded rate. This is the largest hidden cost. It is bigger for freelancers, where you manage everything, than for a dedicated employee with a provider handling HR, and bigger again if nobody on your side owns the relationship. The guide to managing a Philippine offshore team covers keeping it proportionate.
Turnover and re-hiring. Each departure means sourcing again, a fresh learning curve, and the mistakes made during it. Freelance arrangements turn over most. Dedicated employees in a well-run office turn over least, in our experience, because they have a career, colleagues and a stable local engagement rather than a gig. When a provider quotes a low rate, ask what it does about retention.
Tooling. The provider’s rate covers a desk and a computer. It rarely covers your seats in Zendesk, Slack, Xero or your CRM, your phone system, or the licences a designer or developer needs. Budget for them per head, as you would for a local hire.
Security. Managed devices, VPN or zero-trust access, least-privilege permissions and proper offboarding cost money whether the person sits in Bohol or Boston. The Data Privacy Act of 2012 governs personal data in the Philippines, and your own jurisdiction’s obligations for customer data still apply.
Currency. If the provider quotes in US dollars, it carries the peso risk and you carry your own currency’s movement against the dollar, which for Australian and UK buyers can shift an annual budget by a few percent either way. If the quote is in pesos, the exchange risk is yours. Ask which, and whether the rate is fixed for a term.
An illustrative 12-month comparison: US support hire vs Philippine dedicated hire
The comparison below is illustrative, not a quote. It uses the third-party savings range above and ordinary reasoning about what each side has to pay; it does not use BuildNextTeam prices, and your role will differ. It compares a mid-market US customer-support hire — salary plus payroll on-costs — with a Philippine dedicated employee doing the same job through a staffing provider.
| Line item over 12 months | US in-house support hire | Philippine dedicated employee (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Salary plus on-costs (payroll taxes, benefits, insurance) | A mid-market US support salary plus on-costs; call it 100 on an index | Inside the provider’s monthly rate |
| 13th-month pay, SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG | Not applicable | Inside the rate |
| Talent sourcing | Agency fee, or weeks of a manager’s time | Included by some providers; a placement fee with others |
| Office seat, hardware, utilities | Yours, or a remote-work stipend | Inside the rate |
| Your SaaS seats and phone system | Yours | Yours |
| HR and payroll administration | Yours | The provider’s |
| Your management time | In person | Mostly on video, plus night-shift scheduling if you need US hours |
| Turnover exposure | Standard for a US support role | Lower in a stable office; higher home-based or freelance |
| Indicative 12-month total on the same index | 100 | Roughly 30–50, if the 50–70% savings third-party guides report hold for your role, before your own management time |
The point of the table is not the last row. It is that every line above it has to be on both sides before the last row means anything. If a provider’s quote leaves out sourcing, leave cover or a desk, the number moves. If your local comparison leaves out payroll on-costs, talent sourcing and the office, it moves the other way, and the saving looks larger than it is.
Two cautions. A night-shift premium for US hours narrows the gap somewhat; an Australian or UK company gets the saving with no premium. And the first three months cost more than the rate on both sides, because nobody is fully productive while learning your products and systems.
Why the cheapest hourly rate is usually the most expensive per outcome
Per-hour pricing invites you to compare a number that is easy to see against outcomes that are hard to see. Three things tend to happen with the cheapest option.
The person is shared, part-time or juggling clients from home, so the hours you pay for are not the same as attention. Quality drifts, you find out from a customer, and the rework and escalations land on your team at your team’s loaded rate, which is many times the hourly saving.
The person leaves. Low rates go with low loyalty in every market, and every departure resets your training investment to zero. A support representative who has learned your products for six months and then leaves has cost you the six months, not just the rate.
And you become the manager, the HR department and the IT desk. What you saved on the rate you spend in your own evenings.
None of this means the most expensive option is best. It means the right comparison is cost per outcome — per resolved ticket, per reconciled month, per qualified lead — over a year, and a dedicated person who knows your business usually wins that comparison against a rotating cast of cheaper ones. The virtual assistant versus dedicated employee guide applies this to the most common version of the choice.
How providers price, and what to ask before you sign
There are four common pricing bases. Each answers a different question, and mixing them up is how people compare a US$7 freelancer to a US$2,500 employee and think they are comparing prices.
| Pricing basis | Typical for | What it includes | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per hour | Freelancers, some VA agencies | The person’s time, usually nothing else | Minimum hours, platform fees, unbilled admin, who covers absence |
| Per seat or per outcome | Traditional BPO | A process run by the provider, often with shared staff and SLAs | Set-up fees, minimum seats and terms, change-request charges |
| Cost-plus | Staff leasing; EOR platforms such as Deel or Remote | A salary you set, plus a fixed fee or percentage markup for the local engagement | Whether sourcing, office, hardware and HR are inside the markup or extra |
| All-inclusive monthly | Dedicated staffing | Salary, statutory costs, HR, office, sourcing and account management in one number | Whether placement is a separate fee; term and notice; how increases work |
Whichever basis you are quoted, ask the same eight questions:
- What exactly is in the rate, line by line, and what is charged separately?
- Is there an upfront, placement or set-up fee?
- How is the person engaged, and who pays 13th-month pay and statutory contributions?
- What happens to the rate at regularisation, at the annual review, and on promotion?
- What are the minimum term and notice period, for both sides, and what happens if the first hire is not right?
- Is the person exclusive to me and full-time, and where do they physically work?
- What is the shift differential for my hours, and which currency is the rate in?
- Who covers the person’s leave and public holidays, and how?
The answers tell you more about total cost than the headline rate does. Our pricing page walks through how the pieces come together in a dedicated model, and the BPO versus dedicated staffing comparison covers the trade-offs at the model level.
How to budget for year one and year two
Year one has three layers. The monthly rate times twelve is the easy one. On top of it sit the per-head costs that are yours under any model — software seats, telephony, security tooling — and any one-offs such as a placement fee, a visit to the office, or hardware if the provider does not supply it. Underneath sits management time, which you should estimate honestly and then double for the first quarter.
Build in two kinds of increase.
Regularisation. Philippine labour law allows a probationary period of up to six months, after which an employee is regularised. Many providers set the rate for the role from day one; some adjust it at regularisation. Ask which, in writing.
Annual reviews. Expect the rate to rise at each anniversary. Salary growth in the Philippine market, changes to statutory contribution rates and inflation all feed into it, and a provider that never raises pay is a provider whose good people leave. Budget for a modest annual increase, and treat a provider that can explain its review process as a better risk than one promising a flat rate forever.
Finally, budget for the second hire. Most companies that outsource one role well outsource a second within the year, and a larger team usually brings the per-seat cost down. Plan the headcount, not just the first person.
Where BuildNextTeam fits
BuildNextTeam is a dedicated staffing provider: full-time employees only, working from our offices in Bohol, Philippines, for companies in the US, Australia and the UK, and operating for more than eight years. We source, screen, engage your staff locally, run payroll and statutory contributions, and provide HR and the office; you lead the day-to-day work — tasks, training, KPIs — with a named account manager on our side.
On cost, we do one thing that makes the questions above easier: one all-inclusive monthly rate per person, with no upfront fee. We do not publish prices, because a list would mislead you for all the reasons in this guide. The pricing page explains how the rate is built, and how it works covers the process from role brief to start date.
If you want a freelancer for ten hours a week, or a provider to run a process at scale, we are not the right fit, and this guide should help you find the model that is. If you want a full-time person who works only for you, request a quote with the role, the seniority and the hours, and you will get a number built for exactly that.