Hire, Augment or Outsource
Compare in-house hiring, staff augmentation and an outsourced team for the roles you need: total cost, the month hiring breaks even, and which model fits your situation.
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- Salaries from BLS, May 2025
Hire, Augment or Outsource Calculator
The roles you need
Up to ten roles. Salaries come from BLS and you can overwrite them.
BLS Software Developers, median. Edit it.
BLS Computer and Information Research Scientists, 75th percentile. Edit it.
What drives the result
Three things decide which model wins. Check them before you trust the totals.
How long you need people
Recruiting, benefits and ramp-up land early. The longer the need, the more those costs spread out and the cheaper hiring gets per month.
The rates you compare
BLS salaries plus 45.9% benefits, against a monthly augmentation price and your agency’s hourly rate. Use real quotes where you have them.
Knowledge and control
Cost is only part of the score. If the know-how must stay with you, the fit leans to hiring even when it costs more.
Questions
Staffing model questions
Where do the salaries come from?
From the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025, US annual wages by occupation. Junior uses the 25th percentile, mid-level the median, senior the 75th and lead the 90th. Roles without their own BLS code use the nearest occupation, named under each salary. You can overwrite any salary with your own figure.
Why does in-house hiring cost so much upfront?
Benefits and payroll tax add 45.9% to wages (BLS), each hire costs $5,475 on average to recruit (SHRM), and new people are half productive for the ramp-up months you set. Those costs spread out over long projects, which is why hiring gets relatively cheaper the longer people stay.
What is the difference between staff augmentation and outsourcing here?
Augmented engineers join your team and work under your direction; you pay a monthly price per engineer. An outsourced team delivers the work for you at an agency’s hourly rate and manages itself, though you still spend time coordinating with it.
Where does the staff augmentation price come from?
It is HorizonLux’s own planning price per engineer per month, marked “est.” until it is confirmed. If you have a quote from another provider, change the prices in the assumptions.
How is the best fit chosen?
With points: 30 for the cheapest model and 15 for the second, then points for project length, how much knowledge must stay, urgency, how the team works together and why you need people. The results list every point, so you can see why one model leads.
What happens if someone leaves?
From month 13 the in-house cost includes replacing leavers at the BLS quit rate for the information industry, about 15% a year. Each replacement costs another hire and another ramp-up.
Can we start with one model and switch later?
Yes. Augmenting first and hiring the roles you keep lets you start without a recruiting round. The break-even month shows when hiring starts to cost less than augmentation if everyone stays on.
Related tools
Engineers without a recruiting round
Add AI engineers to your team
Bring the roles you just priced. We will check the numbers with you and tell you which of them we can fill, and how soon.