Uruguay Software Outsourcing Statistics (2026)

Uruguay exported US$1.350 billion in software and IT outsourcing services in 2025, up 68.8% from 2021. An estimated 6,800 people worked primarily as software developers that year, according to GSC's analysis of the country's Continuous Household Survey (ECH).

The figures below cover exports, employment, education, pay, and software providers. Each section identifies the source year and what the figures count.

Last updated: September 10, 2026 · Suggested citation: GlobalSoftwareCompanies, “Uruguay Software Outsourcing Statistics (2026),” last updated September 10, 2026.

Jump to: Exports and market · Workforce and companies · ICT education · Developer compensation · Software providers · Connectivity and working time · Methodology

Export growth, workforce estimates, and employee pay provide different views of Uruguay's software industry.

Uruguay software export and outsourcing market statistics

Uruguay XXI groups software and IT outsourcing exports under Software & ITO. The category is broader than outsourced custom software development, but it provides a consistent series for tracking export growth.

Software & ITO exports reached US$1.350 billion

Uruguay XXI recorded US$1.350 billion in Software & ITO exports in 2025, up 2.6% from 2024 and 68.8% from 2021. The compound annual growth rate over those four years was 14.0%.

Growth slowed in 2025.

Uruguay XXI derives the series from the balance-of-payments category for computer services. It measures exported services and excludes domestic software sales.

Software & ITO exports rose from US$800 million in 2021 to US$1.350 billion in 2025. Growth slowed to 2.6% in the final year. Source: Uruguay XXI; growth calculated from the published values.

Services exports reached US$7.386 billion

Uruguay exported US$7.386 billion in services in 2025, 3% more than in 2024. In Uruguay XXI's summary, services accounted for 31% of combined exports of goods, services, and trading activity.

Global-services exports reached US$4.145 billion, up 1% in a year. Software & ITO was the largest technology component. Adding US$153 million in telecommunications exports brings the combined information and communications technology (ICT) total to US$1.503 billion.

Direct calculation produces two useful shares:

• Software & ITO: US$1.350 billion / US$7.386 billion = 18.3% of services exports; and

• Software & ITO plus telecommunications: US$1.503 billion / US$7.386 billion = 20.3%.

Uruguay XXI's report labels the ICT total as 18% of services exports. That label is arithmetically inconsistent with the values printed in the same report; 18% corresponds instead to Software & ITO alone after rounding. The shares shown here use the values printed in the report.

The United States received 78% of ICT exports in 2024

CUTI's 2024 destination data, reproduced by Uruguay XXI, assigns 78% of ICT exports to the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 10% and Chile at 4%.

Rounding brings the published shares to 101%. They describe CUTI's broader ICT export category in 2024; they cannot be applied to Software & ITO alone or to 2025 exports.

For working-hour overlap and delivery practices, see nearshore software development in Uruguay.

Uruguay software workforce and company statistics

Three workforce figures answer three distinct questions:

• 6,815: a household-survey estimate for people whose main occupation was software developer;

• 12,963: modeled employment across every occupation in the Software & ITO sector; and

• 33,799: a broader official estimate for people working in ICT-related occupations.

The developer and sector-job estimates are for 2025; the broader ICT figure is for 2024.

The approximately 6,800 main-occupation developers, 12,963 modeled sector jobs, and 33,799 people in broad ICT occupations describe different populations. The broad ICT figure is for 2024; the other two are for 2025.

Approximately 6,800 people worked as software developers

GSC estimates that approximately 6,800 people worked primarily as software developers in Uruguay in 2025, based on 104 ECH survey respondents. The calculation uses the survey's weights, which specify how many people each respondent represents. It covers the software-developer occupation, CIUO-08 code 2512.

The estimate covers people currently working primarily as software developers. It excludes software work in secondary jobs and does not measure the wider population with programming skills or people available for recruitment. The Montevideo share records where respondents live; their employer or delivery team may be elsewhere.

This is a survey estimate, not a census count. GSC has not calculated a margin of error; see the methodology notes below.

A broader software occupation group contains approximately 18,700 people

Including analysts and other related software occupations increases the 2025 estimate to 18,671 employed people.

This broader estimate draws on 282 survey respondents across the five occupations above. The 6,815 estimate covers only the software-developer occupation.

Software & ITO supported an estimated 12,963 jobs

Uruguay XXI estimated 12,963 Software & ITO jobs in 2025 across 204 companies in its sector model.

Uruguay XXI describes the company count as a minimum estimate, focused mainly on medium and large businesses. It models Software & ITO employment using export propensity, or the share of sales exported. These jobs include both technical and nontechnical work.

Across all global services, the same source estimates 664 companies and 34,256 jobs in 2025. More than 75% of global-services employment was concentrated in software and business services together. The 34,256 figure must not be described as software employment or a developer population.

Broad ICT occupations reached 33,799 in 2024

Uruguay XXI's analysis of the ECH records the following series for people working in broad ICT-related occupations:

Employment in this broader category rose 16.5% from 2020 to 2024. Its occupation coverage and year differ from GSC's narrower 2025 estimates.

ICT education statistics

INE's 2024 tertiary-education table combines university and non-university tertiary programs, public and private institutions, and degree and postgraduate study. The ICT category recorded 3,997 entrants, 11,255 enrolled students, and 975 graduates.

Entrants are new students during the year; graduates completed their programs; enrollment counts students studying that year. These groups overlap, so adding the rows would double-count people. ICT also extends beyond software-development programs. The table does not show where graduates later work or whether they remain in Uruguay.

Earlier annual totals cover different institutions and programs. Those changes limit year-to-year comparisons, so this article presents the 2024 figures on their own.

Developer compensation statistics

ECH measures monthly take-home pay after taxes and social-security deductions. Stack Overflow reports annual compensation before deductions, converted to US dollars, and can include bonuses and perks. The two sources therefore answer different pay questions.

Neither figure is a provider's hourly rate or the employer's total cost. For those calculations, see software development costs in Uruguay.

Weighted median net monthly employee pay was UYU 80,000

Among private salaried software developers who reported positive pay, the weighted median monthly take-home amount was UYU 80,000 in the 2025 ECH. The measure covers salary or wages received in the previous month from the highest-paying salaried main job, after taxes and social-security deductions.

The middle half of the weighted pay distribution runs from UYU 55,000 to UYU 108,000, the 25th and 75th percentiles in the table. The median is its halfway point by share of employees; the mean is the weighted average.

These results draw on 55 respondents and exclude self-employment income. The sample cannot support separate junior, mid-level, or senior pay ranges. Because UYU 80,000 is take-home pay, adding a flat percentage would not give the employer's total cost.

Stack Overflow's Uruguay median was US$55,000 among 17 respondents

GSC's analysis of the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey covers full-stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop or enterprise application developers in Uruguay. After filtering compensation responses, the final sample contained 17 respondents.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. With only 17 retained respondents, a few high or low compensation reports can shift the results substantially. Differences in roles and employers also matter, so this is context for comparison, not a national salary benchmark.

Software provider statistics

GSC analyzed 201 public profiles of software providers associated with Uruguay, using data dated May 2026. The findings describe this group of providers, not every software business in the country. Some profiles omit fields such as founding year or hourly rates.

Current company profiles appear in the directory of software development companies in Uruguay.

Montevideo appeared on 95% of documented profiles

Among the 201 profiles, 191 list Montevideo as the primary location, three list Punta del Este, and the remaining profiles identify other locations individually.

The 95.0% Montevideo share reflects the primary location listed on each profile. Companies may have staff and offices elsewhere.

About 82% of profiles reported fewer than 50 people

All 201 profiles contain a reported employee band.

The first three rows contain 164 profiles, or 81.6% of the documented set. The original profiles use overlapping 50–99 and 50–249 bands. These are kept separate because the data does not show how to redistribute the companies between them.

The company-size bands are publicly reported; GSC has not checked them against payroll records.

The median profile founding year was 2015

Founding year is available for 188 profiles. The median is 2015; 28.7% predate 2010 and 19.1% date from 2020 onward.

Founding years describe company age. They provide no measure of current financial strength or delivery quality.

US$50–99 was the most common published hourly band

Complete public hourly bands are available for 137 profiles.

Taking the midpoint of each complete band and then the median gives US$74.50 per hour. This summarizes the advertised ranges, not actual invoices. A project quote also specifies the team, scope, and services included, along with taxes and other charges.

Common service tags included web and mobile development

Service tags overlap because one profile can display several capabilities.

GSC selected these profiles for their focus on custom software, so that tag would add little to the comparison. The other tags show which services providers advertise. They do not establish how much work a company delivers in each area or verify its skills.

Connectivity and working-time statistics

Agesic's 2024 survey records internet access in urban households. URSEC separately reports fixed-broadband connections by access medium.

Urban household internet access reached 94%

The survey's main access measures are:

• 94% of urban households reported internet access;

• 73% reported fixed broadband;

• fixed broadband ranged from 55% among the lowest-income fifth of households to 89% among the highest-income fifth;

• 92% of people had used the internet in the prior three months; and

• 84% used it daily.

URSEC's December 2024 table records 1,049,564 fiber connections, equivalent to approximately 94% of the fixed-broadband mix shown by access medium. Wireless accounted for about 5%; LMDS about 1%; and DSL represented 2,028 connections.

These national access figures do not measure the reliability of a particular company's connection.

Uruguay remains on UTC−3 throughout the year

Uruguay does not make a seasonal clock change. Most US locations do. With both teams working 09–17 locally, normal-hour overlap is:

The calculation excludes breaks, holidays, leave, and on-call work. Actual availability depends on the locations and schedules of the named people.

The operating trade-offs behind these windows are covered in the guide to time zone challenges in outsourcing.

Methodology and limitations

The main limits concern who each dataset covers and how its estimates were calculated.

Official evidence

Export values come from Uruguay XXI's 2025 services report, based mainly on Banco Central del Uruguay data. Company and employment estimates come from its 2025 global-services report. That report treats the company count as a minimum and models Software & ITO employment using the share of sales exported.

Education figures come from INE's national yearbook, using Ministry of Education and Culture data. Agesic measures internet access among households and people; URSEC counts connections.

ECH occupation and pay derivation

GSC uses the annual ECH file and INE's main-occupation classifications. The occupation estimates apply the survey's annual person weights. The narrow and broader occupation groups are defined in the workforce tables above.

The pay analysis covers private salaried software developers with positive net monthly pay. The pay figures also use survey weights, so respondents do not all contribute equally to the results.

The reported sample sizes count actual respondents. GSC has not calculated margins of error that account for the survey's full sampling design, so the estimates should not be read as exact population counts or pay levels.

Provider and Stack Overflow evidence

Provider findings describe the public profile set dated May 2026. GSC has not independently verified those fields against company accounts.

The Stack Overflow analysis uses selected development roles and filtered compensation responses from the public 2025 survey. Its small, voluntary Uruguay sample limits how widely the results can be applied.

Comparison rules

Five rules govern reuse of the data:

• Exports, company revenue, and provider billing remain separate.

• Occupation estimates, sector jobs, students, and profiles remain separate.

• Net monthly pay, annual reported compensation, gross salary, employer cost, and provider rates remain separate.

• Provider percentages retain the documented-set denominator.

• Every time-sensitive statistic keeps its source period.

Employment routes and their legal boundaries are covered separately in the guide to hire software developers in Uruguay.

Uruguay's export, workforce, and pay figures answer different questions; the definitions below keep the comparisons consistent.