Europe's tech market is highly competitive in 2026 – particularly for emerging skills like data engineering, cybersecurity, and AI engineering.
The pool of available candidates is stretched, time-to-hire is increasing, and so are the compensation packages needed to secure the best people.
India offers a compelling alternative.
Decades of investment in STEM education and emerging tech skills have produced a deep well of exactly this kind of talent, with cities like Bangalore now established tech hubs.
This is something that Duarte Martins has seen first-hand, working with tech teams in India across several companies: "India's tech ecosystem has expanded rapidly – including engineers specialised in areas like real-time systems and mobile optimisation that are increasingly critical to global product and engineering work."
Which means access to great candidates, faster hiring, and typically lower employment costs – it's easy to see why so many European companies have built teams there.
As Sunny Chatterjee, Total Rewards Director at Showpad, puts it: "Few locations have a lower time-to-hire figure than India, largely caused by talent density. In a world where the opportunity cost of a vacant role is sky-high, quickly filling seats with quality talent is a huge differentiator."
But making confident compensation decisions for India isn't always straightforward.
Reliable benchmarks are limited, and what exists doesn't always reflect the reality of the tech talent market.
If you're trying to ensure pay is fair and competitive for your India employees (and consistent with how you pay across the rest of your team) you need an accurate picture of what the differential actually is between salaries in India and in Europe.
Here’s what our data shows.
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Across Europe and the UK we see low differentials when comparing salaries to India overall, with an average differential of 0.38x. The differential here represents how much cheaper talent is in India compared to Europe as the base market – a differential of 0.38x represents 62% lower salaries in India than in Europe.
That's a significant gap, but the overall figure only tells part of the story.
The gap between European and Indian tech salaries shifts considerably depending on which European country you're using as your baseline.
Danish tech salaries show the largest differential at 0.30x, with tech roles in India paid 70% less than in Denmark. Ireland (0.33x), Luxembourg (0.31x), and the UK (0.36x) all follow closely.
At the other end are Greece (0.52x), Croatia (0.52x), and Hungary (0.51x) – still a significant gap, but much closer to Indian market rates than their Western European counterparts.
It’s worth noting that this only highlights the difference in base salary – if you’re considering hiring in India for cost reasons, then it’s also important to consider the total cost-to-company.
Duarte Martins highlighted this when we spoke to him about these findings. “Considering total cost-to-company can significantly affect these comparisons too,” he says. “In India, base salary is often around 60% of total employment cost before taxes, with the rest in statutory contributions and benefits.”
"Considering total cost-to-company can significantly affect these comparisons too. In India, base salary is often around 60% of total employment cost before taxes, with the rest in statutory contributions and benefits."
Duarte Martins
Senior Compensation & Benefits Manager
Because Ravio's dataset is made up predominantly of European tech companies, the distribution of Indian employees tells us something useful in itself – it shows where European companies are actually hiring in India.
Bangalore accounts for 32% of Ravio's Indian dataset, followed by Pune (13%), Mumbai (12%), Kochi (12%), and Noida (9%) – so it’s these cities that European tech companies are most commonly hiring in.
And typical salaries also vary considerably across these cities.
Using Bangalore as the base, we can see that it sits in the middle – a popular location for hiring, but not the most expensive place for employee costs.
Telangana (1.40x), Gurugram (1.21x), and New Delhi (1.31x) all carry a significant premium, while Chennai (0.90x), Thiruvananthapuram (0.82x), and Noida (0.81x) sit notably lower.
For Anzhela Radchenko, Total Rewards Lead at Ideals, the variation in city-level salaries reflects a broader reality: India is too large and diverse to benchmark as a single market.
“Compensation levels can vary significantly between different regions of India,” Anzhela explains. “At Ideals, we account for these differences by grouping states and regions into three clusters based on factors that influence the cost of labour in particular regions – like size and quality of the talent pool, presence of large employers, educational infrastructure, and more.”
"India is an extremely large and diverse market that cannot be easily generalised. What works in one region won't necessarily translate to another."
Anzhela Radchenko
Total Rewards Lead at Ideals
Showpad, a sales enablement platform headquartered in Belgium, has two hiring hubs in India: Bangalore and Pune.
Total Rewards Director Sunny Chatterjee shares how they approach compensation there:
Which roles they hire for: Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Customer Support – with a particular focus on machine learning and AI-adjacent roles. These are high demand roles in Europe, and India has a strong supply of this talent, meaning clear paybacks in terms of time-to-hire and quality of talent.
"Each organisation needs to decide whether it wants to adhere to global standards or fully align with location-based pay. The only way to ensure perceived fairness and consistency is by transparently communicating your Reward principles and governance – and many organisations aren't ready for that today."
How they approach compensation for Indian employees:
"Countries with high income inequality, such as India, show exponential percentage increases in benchmark midpoints across job grade progression – whereas Western countries show more linear increases. It's something you need to account for when building pay bands."
The differential between India’s tech salaries and Europe’s also varies by function – it isn't uniform across the business.
Administration shows the largest gap, with Indian salaries at 0.30x their European equivalent – meaning Administrative staff in India earns around 70% less than their European counterparts.
Operations (0.32x) and IT (0.34x) follow closely behind.
At the other end, Marketing shows the smallest differential at 0.47x – Indian marketing salaries are around 53% lower than in Europe.
What this variation suggests is that a single India multiplier applied across your workforce won't hold up.
As Sunny Chatterjee, Total Rewards Director at Showpad, explains: "Economic factors like wage inflation and income inequality mean compensation in India requires a more bespoke approach. Over-relying on a global framework leads to a lack of success in retaining talent there."
One practical step that has helped Anzhela Radchenko, Total Rewards Lead at Ideals, with defining fair and competitive compensation for roles in India is supplementing external benchmarks with insights gathered directly from the hiring process.
"Available salary data for India is scarce, and can sometimes vary significantly across providers," she explains. "Candidate salary expectations and recruiter feedback have proven a valuable and practical indicator of market rates for the talent we're targeting."
"Our goal is to align compensation with local market conditions as accurately as possible. We complement external data with insights gathered directly from our hiring processes to get the most complete picture of the compensation landscape in India."
Anzhela Radchenko
Total Rewards Lead at Ideals
When we break the differential between salaries in India and Europe down by career track, a clear pattern emerges: the gap compresses as you move up the seniority ladder.
Executive roles sit at just 0.75x – meaning senior talent in India earns around 25% less than their European counterparts, compared to a 0.29x differential for the Support track.
It appears that senior talent commands closer-to-global rates regardless of location.
This compression at senior levels reflects something Duarte has seen consistently in practice. "The fact that senior leadership compensation in India is more globally aligned than many expect reinforces that executive roles increasingly compete in a global talent market."
Breaking it down by career track and function shows that the differential varies considerably by function at every level – so a single location multiplier per track isn't enough to benchmark accurately.
The most striking example is Management-level Data roles, where Indian salaries sit at just 0.23x (or 77% less) their European equivalent.
At the other end, Executive Operations comes close to parity at 0.89x, with Engineering not far behind at 0.71x – reflecting the global market for senior technical leadership much more closely.
If you're building location pay policies or benchmarking specific roles in India, you need granular benchmarks at the right function and level to get an accurate picture of fair and competitive compensation.
For Anzhela at Ideals, this means going beyond function-level assumptions entirely.
"Rather than applying a simple multiplier or aligning roles only within a function, we evaluate each role individually and analyse how compensation for that exact role is represented in the local market," she explains.
"This allows us to establish benchmarks that accurately reflect regional conditions while maintaining a consistent methodology across the organisation."
"Countries with high income inequality, such as India, show exponential percentage increases in benchmark midpoints across job grade progression – whereas Western countries show more linear increases. It's something you need to account for when building pay bands."
Sunny Chatterjee
Total Rewards Director at Showpad
The picture that emerges is that there's no single "India differential" – it varies significantly depending on which markets, functions, and levels are relevant to your business.
That nuance matters whether you're thinking about cost planning, building location pay policies, or ensuring fairness across a global team.
Many companies come to India hiring with cost savings as the primary driver – but as Duarte Martins notes, that framing can obscure the bigger picture. "Companies sometimes approach India mainly from a cost perspective, which undervalues the expertise of teams that increasingly support highly skilled global product and engineering work."
The data reflects that: Indian tech talent is in demand globally, and compensation reflects it – particularly at senior levels, where the differential narrows considerably.
Getting this right starts with accurate, tech-specific benchmarks for salaries in India's market – and understanding how those benchmarks shift depending on where else in the world your employees are based.
The Ravio dataset includes over 7,000 individual salaries for employees based in India, mostly from European tech companies with Indian team members. Our overall dataset is made up of 1,500 companies and 500,000 individual employee datapoints.
Differentials have been calculated by matching median salaries across locations based on an employee’s Ravio job title and Ravio job level. This allows for a like-for-like comparison, controlling against skewed median salaries in case a particular region has a higher density of senior talent or specific job roles.
Once we have these differentials per job position, we aggregate them into a regional differential by weighting them by the number of employee matches. This further prevents skew, as a large pay differential for a role with only 5 employees will have much less impact than a medium-sized differential for a role with 300 employees. This allows for the most accurate representation of the job market.
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