Outsourcing in Eastern Europe
A Data-Led Country Comparison guide
Every comparison of countries for outsourcing in Eastern Europe reaches a quick conclusion. Very few show their working.
This one ranks eleven countries in Eastern europe on four datasets that you can open and check yourself.
- Eurostat’s hourly labour cost figures for 2025, Eurostat’s measure of ICT specialists as a share of employment
- The EF English Proficiency Index 2025,
- the formal status of each country inside or outside the European Union, the euro area and Schengen.
We have removed every ranking that we cannot verify.
Location indices published in 2015 and 2016 are of no use to anyone scoping a programme in 2026, and the World Bank’s Doing Business report for years the standard reference for business environment scoring was discontinued in September 2021 after an investigation into data irregularities, and replaced by Business Ready in 2024.
Anything built on those foundations should be treated with suspicion, including earlier versions of this page.
The conclusion, stated at the outset: Bulgaria.
- It has the lowest hourly labour cost of any European Union member state
- it joined the euro area in January 2026
- it applies flat ten per cent corporate and personal income tax
- its outsourcing sector employs over a hundred thousand people.
The rest of this page explains how that conclusion was reached, where Bulgaria loses to its neighbours, and which country you should choose if your requirement is different from the typical one.
Outsourcing in Eastern Europe : The Full Comparison: Eleven Countries on Verified Data
Hourly labour costs are Eurostat figures for 2025 on a single consistent measure, the whole economy excluding public administration, for enterprises with ten or more employees. English rankings are from the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, covering 123 countries. ICT specialist share is Eurostat 2025 data. Countries are ordered by labour cost, cheapest first, which puts Bulgaria at the top on the measure that matters most to a buyer.
Country | EUR/hour 2025 / In EU | Currency / CIT | English (EF EPI 2025) | ICT % of employment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Bulgaria | EUR 12.0/hour, lowest of all 27 member states (Eurostat 2025)
YES
| Euro since 1 Jan 2026 10% Flat | 18th, 594, High | 4.8% |
Serbia | 12.8 NO, Candidate | Dinar
15% | 25th, 578, High | Not available |
Romania | 13.6 YES | Leu 16% | 11th, 605, Very High | 2.7% |
Hungary | 15.2 YES | Forint 9% | 22nd, 590, High | 4.6% |
Lithuania | 17.8 YES | Euro since 2015 16% | Not in top 30 | 5.7% (highest here) |
Croatia | 18.4 YES | Euro since 2023 18% | Not in top 30 | 4.9% |
Poland | 19.1 YES | Zloty 19% | 15th, 600, Very High | 4.5% |
Czechia | 19.8 YES | Koruna 21% | 23rd, 582, High | 4.7% |
Slovakia | 19.8 YES | Euro since 2009 21% | Not in top 30 | 4.4% |
North Macedonia | Not published No — candidate | Denar 10% Flat | 17th, 595, High | Not available |
Ukraine | Not published No — candidate | Hryvnia 18% | 45th, 526, Moderate | Not available |
EU average | 34.9 | 5.0% |
Bulgaria
12.0 (lowest in EU)
In EU : YES
Currency
Euro since Jan 2026
CIT
Serbia
12.8
In EU : No, Candidate
Currency
CIT
15%
Romania
13.6
In EU : Yes
Currency
Leu
CIT
16%
Hungary
15.2
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
4.6%
Lithuania
17.8
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
16%
Croatia
18.4
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
18%
4.9%
Poland
19.1
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
19%
4.5%
Czechia
19.8
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
21%
4.7%
Slovakia
19.8
In EU : Yes
Currency
CIT
21%
4.4%
North Macedonia
Currency
CIT
10% Flat
Ukraine
Currency
CIT
EU AVERAGE
34.9
5%
Two absences in that table are deliberate. We have not published a prime office rent row, because the figures for Sofia disagree between Colliers and CBRE and no research firm publishes Plovdiv separately, where our own centre operates and in any case rent is absorbed by the provider and is close to irrelevant to what you pay. We have also not published capital city populations, because the verified figures come from census years ranging from 2021 to 2026 and are not comparable.
Earlier versions of this page carried both rows with precise-looking numbers and no sources. They have been removed rather than refreshed.
Outsourcing in Eastern Europe : Country by Country: Who Should Choose What
Romania: choose it for English
Romania is the strongest English-language market in the region at eleventh globally with a score of 605, in the Very High band, and its hourly labour cost of EUR 13.6 is the second lowest in the Union. It has two significant weaknesses.
ICT specialists represent just 2.7 per cent of Romanian employment barely half the EU average of 5.0 per cent, the lowest of any country in this comparison for which Eurostat publishes data. And Romania remains outside the euro area, so contracts carry leu exposure.
ABSL Romania reported sector attrition of 16 per cent for 2023, the highest of the three CEE markets with published figures. Choose Romania when English fluency is the binding constraint and currency risk is acceptable.
Hungary: the lowest corporate tax, at a cost
Hungary’s nine per cent corporate income tax is the lowest in the European Union and its personal rate is a flat fifteen per cent. Hourly labour cost is EUR 15.2, third lowest in the Union. Against that, Hungary is outside the euro area, holds a High-band English ranking of twenty-second at 590 below Bulgaria and its labour costs in national currency rose 8.9 per cent in 2025, among the fastest in the EU.
The corporate tax advantage accrues to a company incorporating in Hungary, which is a different question from what an outsourcing buyer pays.
Lithuania: the deepest technology talent pool
Lithuania has the highest ICT specialist density in this comparison at 5.7 per cent of employment, above the EU average, and it has used the euro since 2015.
Its hourly labour cost of EUR 17.8 is 48 per cent above Bulgaria’s, and its total population is 2.89 million, which caps how large a programme it can absorb. Lithuania is a strong choice for small, highly technical teams and a poor one for volume operations.
Croatia: euro area, higher cost, fast inflation
Croatia joined the euro area in 2023 and posts a respectable 4.9 per cent ICT specialist share. Its hourly labour cost of EUR 18.4 is 53 per cent above Bulgaria’s, and Eurostat recorded Croatian labour costs rising 11.6 per cent in 2025, the second-fastest increase in the euro area after Bulgaria. A population of 3.88 million limits scale.
Poland: the largest market, at a premium
Poland is the region’s heavyweight, with a population of 36.3 million and a business services sector that is the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. English is strong at fifteenth globally with a score of 600, and ABSL Poland reported voluntary attrition of 13.7 per cent for 2023.
The problem for a cost-sensitive buyer is straightforward: at EUR 19.1 per hour, Polish labour costs 59 per cent more than Bulgarian, and Poland remains outside the euro area. Choose Poland when you need very large scale in a single European location and the premium is acceptable.
Czechia and Slovakia: the most expensive in the comparison
Both sit at EUR 19.8 per hour, 65 per cent above Bulgaria, the highest in this group. Czechia offers a 4.7 per cent ICT share and twenty-third place on English at 582; Slovakia offers 4.4 per cent and has used the euro since 2009.
Slovakia also carries the third-highest non-wage cost share in the EU at 28.6 per cent of total labour cost, against an EU average of 24.8 per cent. Neither offers a cost argument against Bulgaria; both are chosen for reasons of existing corporate footprint rather than economics.
Serbia: the closest on cost, and why we still say no
Serbia deserves a direct answer because it is the only genuine cost competitor. At EUR 12.8 per hour it is 6.7 per cent above Bulgaria and cheaper than every EU member state except Bulgaria itself; its average gross monthly wage of about 163,470 dinars, roughly EUR 1,395 in May 2026 according to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, is marginally below the Bulgarian average. English is High band at twenty-fifth. Corporate tax is fifteen per cent.
Serbia is not in the European Union. It is a candidate country in negotiation, which means personal data processing there requires the same Standard Contractual Clauses and Transfer Impact Assessment machinery as an offshore location on another continent, and the dinar carries currency exposure.
For a six or seven per cent saving on labour cost, that is not a trade we would recommend, and it is the single clearest illustration of why EU membership does real work in this comparison rather than being a badge.
North Macedonia and Albania: low cost, limited scale
North Macedonia posts a genuinely strong English result at seventeenth globally with a score of 595, marginally ahead of Bulgaria, and applies flat ten per cent corporate and personal tax. Albania’s average gross monthly wage of about 90,119 lek, roughly EUR 900 in the first quarter of 2026 according to INSTAT, is materially below Bulgarian levels.
Both are EU candidates rather than members, so the data protection position is the same as Serbia’s, and both are small 1.82 million and 2.34 million people respectively on Eurostat’s 2026 figures. They are viable for small teams where EU data residency is not required.
Ukraine: a serious market with serious risk
Ukraine deserves an honest entry rather than a scoring line. Its IT sector remains substantial: the National Bank of Ukraine recorded IT services exports of USD 6.45 billion in 2024, down 4.2 per cent on 2023, and the Lviv IT Cluster’s IT Research Ukraine 2025 counted 303,000 IT specialists, of whom 245,000 remain inside the country and 58,000 work from abroad.
The operating risks are documented by the same survey: 75 per cent of companies have had staff mobilised, and 23 per cent have opened international offices. The population is approximately 39 million with around 3.9 million internally displaced according to IOM figures for 2026, and English sits at forty-fifth globally in the Moderate band.
Ukraine can deliver excellent technical work, and many firms do so successfully with distributed continuity arrangements. It is not a location we would recommend for a first outsourcing engagement or for a process that cannot tolerate interruption.
The Verdict, and How to Read It
If your requirement is the common one cost-efficient delivery inside the European Union, with multilingual capability, EU data residency and no currency exposure Bulgaria wins on the published evidence. It is the cheapest labour market in the Union at EUR 12.0 per hour, the only country in the region that combines that with euro area membership, and it applies flat ten per cent corporate and personal tax over a sector of 105,436 people.
If your priority is | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
Lowest cost inside the EU | Bulgaria | EUR 12.0/hour, lowest of all 27 member states (Eurostat 2025)
|
No currency risk | Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia or Lithuania | The four euro area members in this group. Bulgaria is the cheapest of them by 48 per cent or more.
|
Strongest English | Romania | 11th globally, score 605, Very High band — but ICT specialists are only 2.7 per cent of employment |
Deepest technology talent | Lithuania | 5.7 per cent ICT specialist share, above the EU average |
Very large scale in one location | Poland | 36.3 million population and the region’s largest business services sector, at a 59 per cent cost premium to Bulgaria |
Lowest corporate tax | Hungary | 9 per cent CIT, though labour costs are 27 per cent above Bulgaria |
Absolute lowest cost, EU membership not required | Serbia or Albania | Serbia EUR 12.8/hour; Albanian wages below Bulgarian. Both require SCCs and a Transfer Impact Assessment for EU personal data. |
Lowest cost inside the EU
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
No currency risk
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
Strongest English
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
Deepest technology talent
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
Very large scale in one location
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
Lowest corporate tax
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
Absolute lowest cost, EU membership not required
CHOOSE
BECAUSE
One caution that applies to every row. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey found that only 34 per cent of companies now select outsourcing vendors primarily on cost, down from 70 per cent five years earlier.
Country selection sets the floor on your price; it does not determine whether the work gets done well. A well-run operation in the region’s third-cheapest country will outperform a badly run one in its cheapest, and the country tables on this page cannot tell you which you are buying.
Bulgaria as the strongest overall winner in the European Union For outsourcing in Eastern Europe.
The lowest labour cost in the EU, verified
Eurostat’s labour cost data for 2025, published on 31 March 2026, puts Bulgaria’s average hourly labour cost at EUR 12.0 the lowest of all twenty-seven member states, against an EU average of EUR 34.9.
Bulgaria therefore operates at roughly 34 per cent of the European average while sitting inside the single market, the customs union, the GDPR perimeter, Schengen and the euro area.
The comparison with its regional competitors is more instructive than the comparison with the EU average.
On the same Eurostat measure and the same year, Bulgaria is :
- 37 per cent below Poland at EUR 19.1
- 39 per cent below Czechia and Slovakia at EUR 19.8 each
- 35 per cent below Croatia at EUR 18.4
- 33 per cent below Lithuania at EUR 17.8
- 21 per cent below Hungary at EUR 15.2
- 12 per cent below Romania at EUR 13.6.
Against Western Europe the gap is a different order of magnitude: Germany stands at EUR 45.0 and France at EUR 44.3, making Bulgarian labour approximately 73 per cent cheaper.
Euro area membership since 1 January 2026
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, becoming the twenty-first member of the euro area, at an irrevocable conversion rate of 1.95583 leva to the euro.
The Council of the European Union adopted the final legal acts on 8 July 2025, and the euro became sole legal tender on 1 February 2026.
For a euro-denominated buyer this removes currency risk from the contract entirely.
Romania, Poland, Hungary and Czechia continue to operate in the leu, the zloty, the forint and the koruna respectively, which leaves you carrying exchange rate exposure across a multi-year commitment or paying to hedge it.
Croatia, Slovakia and Lithuania are in the euro area but their hourly labour costs are between 48 and 65 per cent higher than Bulgaria’s.
Bulgaria is the only country in the region that is simultaneously the cheapest labour market in the Union and a euro area member.
Bulgaria and Romania both completed full Schengen accession in 2025, which removes the remaining friction on staff and management travel.
Tax and the regulatory position
AIBEST, the Bulgarian industry association, reported in its Annual Industry Report 2025, covering 2024, that the sector employed 105,436 full-time equivalents across 833 companies.
- 388 in business process outsourcing
- 412 in IT outsourcing
- 33 in research and development.
Operating revenues grew 7.6 per cent, total industry labour costs reached EUR 3.624 billion, and the wider ICT sector contributed 9.6 per cent of Bulgaria’s gross value added.
Two things in that report deserve to be said plainly rather than buried.
Employment grew only 0.2 per cent on the 104,404 full-time equivalents recorded for 2023, and revenue growth decelerated from 13.7 per cent.
Bulgaria’s sector is maturing, not booming.
For a buyer, maturity is the more useful property: a hundred thousand experienced people means trained supervisors, established practice and a functioning labour market, which is a materially different proposition from being an early mover in a thin one.
Bulgaria : A mature BPO sector, and its honest limits
Corporate income tax and personal income tax are both flat at ten per cent, among the lowest combinations in the European Union.
Hungary’s nine per cent corporate rate is marginally lower, but its labour cost is 27 per cent higher, so the total position favours Bulgaria comfortably.
The regulatory argument matters more than the tax one.
Because Bulgaria is an EU member state, personal data processing for European clients requires no cross-border transfer mechanism: a standard Article 28 data processing agreement under the GDPR is sufficient.
Processing in a third country without a European Commission adequacy decision requires Standard Contractual Clauses, and since the Court of Justice of the European Union’s Schrems II ruling, clauses alone are not enough European Data Protection Board Recommendations 01/2020 require a Transfer Impact Assessment and supplementary measures where the assessment demands them.
That distinction is what separates Bulgaria from Serbia, which is the only country in the region that comes close on cost.
Where Bulgaria does not win
On English, Bulgaria ranks eighteenth of 123 countries with a score of 594 in the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, in the High band. Romania is eleventh at 605 and Poland fifteenth at 600, both in the Very High band. If English proficiency were the only criterion, Romania would win this comparison.
On the depth of the technology labour market, Eurostat’s 2025 data puts ICT specialists at 4.8 per cent of Bulgarian employment, slightly below the EU average of 5.0 per cent, and below Lithuania at 5.7 per cent and Croatia at 4.9 per cent. Bulgaria does sit above Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and far above Romania at 2.7 per cent but it is mid-table in the Union rather than a leader, and we would rather say so than inflate it.
On cost trajectory, the advantage is narrowing quickly. Eurostat recorded Bulgarian hourly labour costs rising 13.1 per cent between 2024 and 2025, the largest increase anywhere in the euro area, against an EU-wide increase of 4.1 per cent. Bulgaria will remain the Union’s cheapest member state for some years at that rate, but the practical implication for anyone scoping a programme now is to fix rates over a multi-year term rather than assume today’s pricing persists.
Why We Choose Bulgaria?
We reached the conclusion above before we wrote it down, in the sense that our headquarters and our European delivery centre are both in Plovdiv.
Bulgaria is not a satellite for us; it is where the company is run from.
Readers are entitled to weigh that when assessing our verdict, which is why every figure on this page comes from Eurostat, the European Central Bank, the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute, AIBEST or EF rather than from us.
The measure we would most want you to test
AIBEST recorded voluntary attrition of 13 per cent across the Bulgarian sector in 2024 — the lowest of the three Central and Eastern European markets with published figures, against 13.7 per cent in Poland and 16 per cent in Romania on ABSL data for 2023. Our own employee turnover was 1.7 per cent in 2024.
That is our internal figure, calculated annually, and we would rather you asked us how we calculate it than took it on trust. Set against a 13 per cent national sector benchmark from the industry association, the gap is not a rounding difference, and it is the single number we would put forward first.
Every agent is an employee rather than a freelancer, with social contributions paid. We hold ISO 27001:2013 and 27701 for information security and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management, maintain a Data Protection Officer in Europe, and are rated above 4.6 out of 5 on Glassdoor.
What we deliver from Bulgaria
- Multilingual customer support outsourcing & technical support across 15 European languages
- Data annotation for computer vision
- Multilingual data labelling
- Personal Data Processing Solution
- Human validation services
- Document processing
- Invoice processing
- co-sourced or dedicated teams where you keep day-to-day direction while we handle recruitment, employment, facilities and supervision.
Further detail on the country is in our guide to business process outsourcing in Bulgaria and on our Bulgaria delivery page. If your requirement points outside Europe instead, our comparison of nearshoring versus offshoring sets out when that is the better answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Among European Union member states, Bulgaria, at an average hourly labour cost of EUR 12.0 in 2025 against an EU average of EUR 34.9 on Eurostat figures.
Serbia is marginally cheaper in the wider region at EUR 12.8 but is not an EU member, which means processing EU personal data there requires Standard Contractual Clauses and a Transfer Impact Assessment.
Yes. Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 as the twenty-first member of the euro area, at an irrevocable conversion rate of 1.95583 leva to the euro, and the euro became sole legal tender on 1 February 2026.
Romania, Poland, Hungary and Czechia continue to use their national currencies.
Romania has stronger English, ranking eleventh globally with a score of 605 against Bulgaria’s eighteenth at 594.
Bulgaria is 12 per cent cheaper on hourly labour cost, is in the euro area, applies a lower flat tax, has a much deeper technology labour market with ICT specialists at 4.8 per cent of employment against Romania’s 2.7 per cent, and records lower sector attrition.
Choose Romania if English fluency is the binding constraint; otherwise Bulgaria is the stronger overall position.
Poland offers greater scale, with 36.3 million people and the region’s largest business services sector, and slightly better English at fifteenth globally.
Bulgaria costs 37 per cent less per hour EUR 12.0 against EUR 19.1 on 2025 Eurostat data and is in the euro area while Poland is not.
For very large single-site programmes Poland has the depth; for cost-efficient delivery Bulgaria wins clearly.
Within EU member states, yes, with a standard Article 28 data processing agreement and no transfer mechanism required.
This covers Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia and Lithuania.
It does not cover Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia or Ukraine, which are candidate countries rather than members and therefore require Standard Contractual Clauses plus a Transfer Impact Assessment under European Data Protection Board Recommendations 01/2020.
Yes, and faster than in Western Europe.
Eurostat recorded hourly labour costs rising 13.1 per cent in Bulgaria and 11.6 per cent in Croatia between 2024 and 2025, against 4.1 per cent across the EU as a whole; in national currency terms Romania rose 10.6 per cent, Hungary 8.9 per cent and Poland 8.8 per cent.
The regional cost advantage is real but narrowing, which argues for fixing rates over a multi-year term.
Ukraine retains a substantial IT sector, with USD 6.45 billion of IT services exports in 2024 according to the National Bank of Ukraine, though that was down 4.2 per cent on 2023, and roughly 303,000 IT specialists of whom 58,000 now work from abroad.
The documented risks are material: 75 per cent of surveyed companies have had staff mobilised and 23 per cent have opened offices outside the country.
It can work well with proper continuity arrangements, but it is not a sensible choice for a first engagement or for an uninterruptible process.
Because the indices commonly cited in this context are either obsolete or unverifiable.
The World Bank discontinued its Doing Business report in September 2021 after an investigation into data irregularities, replacing it with Business Ready in 2024.
The most recent Kearney Global Services Location Index and Tholons Services Globalization Index editions we could locate are from 2023, and their country-level rankings sit behind paywalls we could not verify.
We would rather rank countries on official datasets you can open yourself than borrow a score we cannot check.
Discuss Your Requirement
The useful conversation is about the work rather than the map: what the process is, whether it touches personal data, which languages you need, what hours it must cover, and how well it is documented today.
Tell us that and we will tell you which country fits including when the answer is one we do not operate in.
Request a quote or contact our team. Lines are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week: United States +1 (833) 246 7264, United Kingdom +44 (800) 048 5681.
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