Tool
What your engineering team costs, and what a smaller one would save.
Enter the team you have. The calculator turns it into an employer cost per month, then shows what a right-sized team saves after notice and severance, and how many months it takes to pay back.
Data last updated . Updated yearly with the benchmark.
How the numbers are built
Employee cost is the gross salary for each level, multiplied by the statutory employer cost for the country: 17.17 monthly salaries a year in Belgium, 15.27 in the Netherlands and 14.74 in Germany. Freelance and agency capacity is costed at the published average rate for the country over 18 billable days a month. Pensions, cars, meal vouchers and bonuses are not included, so the real figure is higher, not lower. The derivation and every source are on the Benelux engineering cost benchmark.
The payback is the exit cost divided by the monthly saving. It is usually shorter than founders expect and the timeline is usually longer. Both are covered in the Renault procedure piece and the WMCO and UWV piece, and in how I run a restructuring.
Frequently asked
Where do the calculator's numbers come from?
From the Benelux engineering cost benchmark on this site. Salaries come from published salary guides, employer charges from the Belgian, Dutch and German social security rates for 2026, freelance rates from published rate surveys, and notice and severance from statute. Every source is linked on the benchmark page.
Why does the calculator cut freelancers before employees?
Because that is usually the cheapest order. A freelancer costs roughly 2 to 3 times an employee per month and can be stopped with about a month's notice, while an employee exit carries statutory notice and sometimes severance. If your freelancers hold knowledge you cannot lose, the real order will differ.
Is the exit cost legal advice?
No. The exit cost band uses statutory notice periods, the Dutch transition payment and the German severance option for an individual exit, plus the waiting time of a collective procedure where the cut is large enough. Social plans, outplacement, settlements and individual contracts change the number. Get an employment lawyer before you plan a cut.
Why is there no benchmark for cloud spend per engineer?
Because no credible one is published. The calculator shows your cloud spend per engineer, and if you enter monthly revenue it compares the bill with the 6 to 12 percent of revenue that EY reports for a typical SaaS company.
Does the calculator store what I type?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser. The site records that the calculator was used, with the country and a headcount band such as 10 to 24, and nothing you type.
The number is the easy part
The calculator tells you what a smaller team costs. It does not tell you which team can still ship. That is what the diagnosis is for: 3 weeks reading the code, the delivery data and the people, ending in a written plan that may or may not include me.