Pay
Developer pay in Sweden and around the world: what the 2025 data says
Salary talks feel awkward mostly because one side has the data and the other side guesses. This report puts the public numbers in one place so a software engineer can name a figure and back it up.
Data pulled 24 Sep 2026.
Sources
- Statistics Sweden (SCB), the official wage structure statistics for 2025. Table
LoneSpridSektYrk4ANgives percentiles by occupation, andLonYrkeRegion4ANandLonYrkeAlder4ANgive averages by region and age. Occupation codes are SSYK 2012: 2512 is software and systems developers, 2511 is systems analysts and IT architects, and 1311/1312 are IT managers. Figures are gross monthly salary in SEK for private-sector salaried employees (privatanställda tjänstemän). - Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, the public results file (about 49,000 responses, licensed under ODbL). It is filtered to people who are employed full-time, individual contributors, and in developer, architect, AI/ML, data, DevOps or cloud roles, and reports total yearly pay converted to USD by Stack Overflow. Download the 2025 results zip from survey.stackoverflow.co (the public results CSV, about 140 MB).
reproduce.pycan also download it from the URL in the script. SCB data is fetched live from the SCB PxWeb API.
Sweden: official figures (SCB, 2025, gross monthly SEK)
| Occupation | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software and systems developers (2512) | 39,800 | 46,500 | 53,600 | 63,000 | 73,200 | 55,900 |
| Systems analysts and IT architects (2511) | 43,800 | 52,500 | 60,000 | 70,900 | 81,300 | 62,300 |
| IT managers, level 2 (1312) | – | 59,700 | 74,500 | 87,800 | 107,200 | 78,800 |
| IT managers, level 1 (1311) | 54,400 | 66,200 | 75,300 | 93,700 | 121,700 | 83,700 |
Stockholm pays more.The average for developers in the Stockholm region is 59,700 SEK, compared with 55,900 nationally (+6.8%). For architects it's 65,900 compared with 62,300 (+5.8%). West Sweden averages 54,400 for developers and South Sweden 53,100.
Pay rises with age, which roughly tracks experience. Developers average 49,500 SEK at ages 25–34, 56,900 at 35–44 and 61,800 at 45–54. Architects average 51,800, 61,700 and 67,300 for the same age bands.
Growth is slowing. The developer median rose from 51,200 (2023) to 53,000 (2024) to 53,600 (2025), an increase of 1.1% in the last year.
Sweden: survey cross-check
Swedish Stack Overflow respondents with 8–15 years of experience (122 answers in SEK) report 600,000 at the 25th percentile, a 700,000 median, 803,000 at the 75th and 998,000 at the 90th, all in SEK per year. Divided by 12, the median is about 58,000 a month, which matches SCB's Stockholm average. Survey respondents lean senior and urban, so treat the survey as the Stockholm, experienced end of the market.
Around the world (8–15 years of experience, total yearly pay in USD)
| Country | Responses | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 1032 | 127,000 | 161,100 | 204,250 | 300,000 |
| Switzerland | 72 | 123,993 | 142,592 | 172,660 | 221,947 |
| Israel | 33 | 114,715 | 141,188 | 155,895 | 190,016 |
| Ireland | 30 | 102,383 | 118,335 | 170,396 | 199,197 |
| Canada | 188 | 80,254 | 107,249 | 135,156 | 176,194 |
| Denmark | 39 | 93,312 | 104,510 | 124,416 | 143,079 |
| United Kingdom | 288 | 81,515 | 102,106 | 132,057 | 183,791 |
| Norway | 33 | 84,003 | 101,792 | 118,593 | 127,488 |
| Australia | 83 | 84,512 | 100,765 | 122,055 | 162,523 |
| Germany | 524 | 71,697 | 87,591 | 104,413 | 116,015 |
| Netherlands | 138 | 71,146 | 87,011 | 104,413 | 144,439 |
| Finland | 39 | 60,071 | 82,950 | 93,537 | 112,302 |
| Spain | 114 | 53,570 | 74,830 | 90,201 | 109,368 |
| Sweden | 126 | 61,792 | 73,375 | 83,904 | 103,963 |
| Portugal | 53 | 54,527 | 71,929 | 95,132 | 136,898 |
| France | 181 | 58,007 | 69,609 | 83,531 | 116,015 |
| Poland | 91 | 51,851 | 65,496 | 87,328 | 109,160 |
| India | 192 | 24,410 | 38,010 | 56,376 | 81,368 |
What a developer actually costs a Swedish employer (2026 rates)
Salary is only part of what a company pays. On top of gross salary a Swedish employer pays:
- Employer social fees (arbetsgivaravgifter): 31.42% of gross salary for employees born 1959–2002 (Skatteverket, 2026).
- Occupational pension (ITP1, under a collective agreement): 4.5% of monthly salary up to 7.5 income base amounts (52 125 SEK/month in 2026, from an income base amount of 83 400 SEK), and 30% of the part above that.
- Special payroll tax on pension premiums (särskild löneskatt): 24.26% of the pension premium (Skatteverket).
- Collective insurances (sick pay top-up, life, work injury, severance) are also paid under collective agreements. They are small and vary by agreement, so they are left out of the totals below, which therefore slightly understate the real cost.
| Monthly salary | Employer fee 31.42% | ITP1 pension | Payroll tax on pension 24.26% | Total monthly cost | Cost vs salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53 600 (Median developer, Sweden (SCB 2025)) | 16 841 | 2 788 | 676 | 73 906 | 1.38x |
| 59 700 (Average developer, Stockholm (SCB 2025)) | 18 758 | 4 618 | 1 120 | 84 196 | 1.41x |
| 63 000 (75th percentile, Sweden) | 19 795 | 5 608 | 1 361 | 89 763 | 1.42x |
| 70 000 (70k SEK) | 21 994 | 7 708 | 1 870 | 101 572 | 1.45x |
| 73 200 (90th percentile, Sweden) | 22 999 | 8 668 | 2 103 | 106 970 | 1.46x |
| 80 000 (80k SEK) | 25 136 | 10 708 | 2 598 | 118 442 | 1.48x |
Above 52 125 SEK a month, each extra krona of salary costs the employer about 1.69 kronor, because the 30% pension rate kicks in. A 5 000 SEK/month raise at senior level costs the company about 8 435 SEK a month. Companies without a collective agreement are not required to pay ITP, but most tech employers offer a matching pension because candidates expect it. Ask whether the offer includes ITP1 or an equivalent, since an offer without it is worth several thousand SEK a month less.
Employer cost across countries (2026 rates)
Countries split the cost of pensions and social insurance differently. Sweden puts most of it on the employer, so Swedish gross salaries look lower. The US and Switzerland put more on the employee, so their gross salaries look higher. The table uses the Stack Overflow 2025 median pay for developers with 8–15 years of experience and adds what the employer must pay on top of it.
| Country | Median pay (USD) | Employer extra on top | Total cost to employer (USD) | What the extra covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden | 73,375 | 41.4% | 103,782 | 31.42% social fees, plus ITP1 pension and the 24.26% tax on it |
| Germany | 87,591 | 20.1% | 105,240 | Half of pension, unemployment, health and care insurance, with caps |
| Norway | 101,792 | 16.1% | 118,181 | 14.1% social fees (zone I), plus the 2% minimum pension |
| United Kingdom | 102,106 | 15.7% | 118,177 | 15% National Insurance above £5,000, plus the 3% minimum pension |
| Switzerland | 142,592 | 9.1% | 155,599 | 5.3% old-age/disability, 1.1% unemployment, plus half of the minimum pension (age 35–44) |
| United States | 161,100 | 7.7% | 173,466 | 6.2% Social Security (capped at $184,500), 1.45% Medicare, federal unemployment |
Two things stand out. The first is that a Swedish senior developer costs the employer about the same as a German one, even though the Swedish salary is about 16% lower. The second is that the pay gap to the UK and Norway shrinks from about 39% to about 14% once the employer's extra costs are counted.
The table only includes what law or near-universal agreements require. It leaves out several costs. In the US, health insurance is the big one: the employer's average share of family coverage was $20,143 in 2025 (KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey), about 12.5% of the median salary. It also leaves out US state unemployment tax, German accident insurance and sick-pay levies, Swiss accident insurance and family allowances, the UK Apprenticeship Levy (0.5% for large employers), and Swedish collective insurances. Converted at the ECB rates on 24 Sep 2026. Sources are Skatteverket, the German Federal Ministry of Health and Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Skatteetaten, GOV.UK, the Swiss AHV/IV information office, and the IRS. employer_cost.py reproduces the table.
What this means for an employer hiring in Sweden: a foreign company hiring in Sweden, directly or through an employer-of-record service, pays these Swedish costs. For example, a 70,000 SEK/month salary costs the employer about 101,600 SEK a month, or roughly USD 123,000 a year. That is still below the cost of the same senior developer in the UK or the US.
Caveats
- SCB's percentiles cover every experience level within an occupation. Stockholm percentiles in this report are not published by SCB. Where used, they are estimated by applying the regional average's ratio to the national percentiles.
- Survey pay is self-reported, and Stack Overflow converts it to USD at its own rate. Countries with fewer than 40 responses (Norway, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel) have wide error bars.
- Neither source separates AI-specialist pay from general development.
Data pulled 24 Sep 2026. The code that reproduces every number is linked from this page.
Why my experience fits the senior band
Oneflow AB, Stockholm, April 2017 to December 2024: JavaScript Developer, then Full Stack Integration Engineer, then Engineering Team Lead (October 2021 to December 2022, about 14 months), then Senior Software Engineer. Weavler AB, Stockholm, January 2016 to March 2017: Full Stack Developer.
Durations are counted from the start month to the end month: 7 years 8 months plus 1 year 2 months, 8 years 10 months in total. That total sits in the 8–15 year survey band for individual contributors, which I use as the reference for a senior individual contributor role.
Why the break doesn't set me back
Since December 2024 I have been on a career break for personal and family-care reasons. My senior and team lead work at Oneflow falls in the last three years before the break. Since then the way I work has moved forward. The projects began one after another, slowly at first. After a while the connections between them started to evolve and the work settled into one system. I direct coding agents and review what they produce. The projects below are that work.
Each project aimed at a real problem of mine, and each one works a different part of software engineering: desktop apps, systems programming in C, Rust compiled to WebAssembly, API validation, and machine setup. I wrote the first proposals. Coding agents then drafted much of the detailed design, architecture and code, and I steered and reviewed it.
What ties them together is the claim I made in ensembly issue 1 (opened 24 July 2026) and stated publicly on 30 July 2026: in any field and any workforce, the only loops that will last split the work in two. In one part, a person checks the state of things and approves only the steps that need them. In the other, agents do the rest on their own. I reached this independently, from reading, building, and watching how agents actually perform. That claim also shapes what I build in public: I choose the problems, tools and ideas that give a strong signal and are likely to last. ensembly puts both parts into code: a game-style view where a person checks chores and payments and approves the steps that need them (PR 10), and a task graph ranked by urgency and importance, where PERT and Monte Carlo runs find the critical path for the agents (PR 2). Frontier-lab research is working on the same handoff (Anthropic, METR). The product I see doing this best today is Grok Bot: agents plan, check and carry out the work in the background, and I step in only to approve the steps that need a person.
- collab-finder is a Tauri, Rust and React desktop app for job search. It finds roles that fit and builds an application pack for each, and a rejection changes its ranking only when it carries specific feedback. Submitting, CAPTCHA and BankID stay with the person, which is the same split as in ensembly issue 1.
- skills and plugins hold reusable agent playbooks, commands and hooks, and collab-finder loads the skills. Original plugins in that repository:
- eva-emptiness reasons when the map is missing: prior, probe, simulate, score, then act or ask.
- premflow keeps notes, wins, tasks, and coaching, driven through the premflow command-line tool.
- arch-machine lets an agent check and set up an Arch Linux machine from a minimal base, and adds larger pieces such as security modules only after explicit confirmation.
- mission-map takes a checkable goal and a graph of stages, marks the critical path and the next step, and does not say what will happen.
- uncertainty-laws covers rough checks for uncertain decisions: expected value, base rates, ruin, and Kelly.
- odysseus-navigator gives a judgment: one bottleneck, one mistake, and one next step.
- pulse-memory takes in short tagged memories instead of dumping everything, and resolves contradictions.
- layout-content-view checks that web layout, content, and view stay stable, and was first tried on this site.
- thepulimaangani checks Tamil poetic metre in the browser, using a Rust parser compiled to WebAssembly with a React UI.
- elomaxz is an MVU framework for C, and the packedbox command-line tool uses it.
- adaptate keeps API types, runtime required-field checks and OpenAPI in one Zod schema.
- packedbox, arch-machine and shellyxz.sh cover the bootstrap, the Arch profiles and the shell setup.
- This site holds the CV and the public pages, and its visitor routes are listed in a verify map that the checks run against.
skills, elomaxz, adaptate, and ensembly are MIT licensed, as are two plugin folders (layout-content-view and pstack-map). arch-machine is under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The other repositories are public but have no license.
Target range
USD 85k–94k / year (SEK 840k–936k; 70k–78k per month)
This target is derived from the monthly salary below, converted at the stated rate. It is not the Sweden survey price tag (84k–94k (SEK 831k–931k)) in the table above.
70,000–78,000 SEK per month × 12 = 840,000–936,000 SEK per year. Converted at the ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates for 24 Sep 2026, which give 9.9098 SEK per USD: 840,000 / 9.9098 ≈ USD 84,800 and 936,000 / 9.9098 ≈ USD 94,500, shown as USD 85k–94k.
70k–78k SEK/month is between the SCB 75th (63,000) and 90th (73,200) percentile for developers and around the 75th–90th percentile band for IT architects (70,900 / 81,300); per year, 840k–936k SEK is between the Swedish survey 75th (803,000) and 90th (998,000) percentile for 8–15 years. A 70,000 SEK monthly salary is 101,572 SEK total monthly cost in employer_cost.py.