Nearshore web development in Latin America: 7 countries compared for US companies

The short answer

All seven countries share at least six hours of a 9-to-5 day with New York and at least three with Los Angeles, all year. Colombia, Mexico and Costa Rica sit closest to US Central time; Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay run one or two hours ahead of New York. On English, the EF English Proficiency Index 2025 ranks Argentina "high", Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica "moderate", Brazil and Colombia "low" and Mexico "very low", though test takers who work in IT score above their national figure; in Mexico they reach "high". Brazil and Mexico have the largest developer communities; Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile have the most developers per person.

The country narrows the field; it doesn't choose the team. Use the tables below to shortlist on time zone and contracting, then test the actual people. For the vetting and contract steps in one country, read our guide to hiring a web team in Colombia; for how we work with US teams ourselves, see our nearshore page.

The seven countries at a glance

Figures read on 17 October 2026. Developer counts are GitHub accounts located in each country in the first quarter of 2026, from the GitHub Innovation Graph; "per 1,000 people" divides them by the World Bank's 2025 population estimates.

EF ranks 123 countries and regions; the global average score is 488. The rest of this guide explains what each column can and can't tell you.

Time zones: who changes clocks, and how much of your day you share

The US moves its clocks forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November; in 2026 that was 8 March and 1 November, according to NIST. Six of the seven don't change their clocks (in Mexico, only the northern border does), so their offset to the US shifts by an hour twice a year. Chile changes its own clocks too, in the opposite season.

• Colombia keeps UTC−5 all year, the legal time set by its national metrology institute.
• Mexico stopped seasonal clock changes when its Ley de los Husos Horarios took effect on 30 October 2022. Most of the country, including Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, stays on UTC−6. Quintana Roo (Cancún) is on UTC−5, Sonora and Sinaloa on UTC−7, and municipalities on the northern border, such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, still change clocks with the US.
• Costa Rica is on UTC−6 and last observed daylight saving time in 1992.
• Argentina is on UTC−3 and last changed clocks in 2009. Uruguay is on UTC−3 and stopped in 2015.
• Brazil ended daylight saving time by Decreto 9.772 of 2019, and we found no decree bringing it back for the 2026–27 summer. São Paulo, Rio and Brasília are on UTC−3, but the country has four time zones: Manaus is on UTC−4 and Acre on UTC−5.
• Chile is the exception. Santiago runs on UTC−4 and moves to UTC−3 from midnight after the first Saturday of September to midnight after the first Saturday of April: from 6 September 2026 to 4 April 2027. Magallanes (since 2016) and Aysén (since 2025) stay on UTC−3 all year.

The historical dates and regional zones come from the IANA time zone database (North America file), the source phones and calendar software use.

This is how many hours of a 9-to-5 working day each city shares with three US cities. "Winter" is US standard time (1 November 2026 to 14 March 2027); "summer" is US daylight time.

Two practical consequences. A West Coast team gets the most overlap from Mexico and Costa Rica, six or seven hours, against three or four from the Southern Cone. And Santiago's offset to New York changes four times a year, so book recurring meetings in a named time zone ("America/Santiago", "America/New_York") rather than a fixed UTC offset, and the calendar will handle every change.

English: what the EF index does and doesn't tell you

The national score hides the number that matters to you. EF also publishes scores by city and by job function, and in all six countries with job-function scores, test takers who work in IT beat the national figure: by 14 points in Argentina, 32 in Colombia and 119 in Mexico.

Sources: EF EPI 2025 fact sheets for Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The 2025 edition was the latest when we checked.

Mexico's IT workers score 119 points above its national figure, enough to move from EF's "very low" band to "high". Costa Rica's IT score of 604 sits in the "very high" band. EF's bands run from very low (under 450) to very high (600 and above), and EF maps them to CEFR levels: "moderate" and "high" both correspond to B2.

Read these as signals, not measurements. The index is built from people who chose to take EF's free online test, more than 2.2 million adults in 2024, so it describes test takers, not the workforce. A lead developer who runs a review in English with you is worth more than any national score; test that directly, in a live working session and a written recap.

Developer communities: how big each pool is

GitHub's Innovation Graph counts developer accounts by the country they connect from. In the first quarter of 2026, Brazil had 8.3 million, more than the other six countries combined, and Mexico 2.9 million. All seven grew by roughly 30% to 37% on the first quarter of 2025, against 25% for the US.

Per person, the ranking flips. Uruguay has 47 accounts per 1,000 people, Costa Rica 45 and Chile 41, against 22 in Mexico; the US has 95.

The Innovation Graph datasheet lists the caveats: the count includes accounts that may no longer be active, assigns location by IP address (so VPNs distort it) and covers only GitHub. Students and hobbyists count the same as senior engineers. Use it to compare the size of communities, not to count hireable developers.

The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 shows how thin survey data gets at country level. Of 49,019 responses, 822 came from Brazil, 284 from Mexico, 222 from Argentina, 202 from Colombia, 131 from Chile, 52 from Uruguay and 25 from Costa Rica.

Why this guide doesn't quote developer rates

We couldn't find a primary dataset that gives comparable rates for web developers across these seven countries. Stack Overflow's 2025 salary results break pay out by country only for the US, Germany, India, the UK and France, and the response counts above are too small to fill the gap. Rate cards on agency sites are marketing, not data.

Local prices are a poor guide too. Our website cost estimator shows what providers publish for local clients in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, and a studio that serves US clients prices for different scope, process and risk. The reliable comparison is written proposals for the same brief; our website brief builder produces one you can send to every finalist.

Contracts and payments in each country

For a US company, paying a studio or freelancer in any of the seven is a foreign vendor payment, usually in US dollars by international transfer or through the vendor's payment platform. Your accounts team collects a Form W-8 (W-8BEN-E from a foreign entity, W-8BEN from an individual), and the IRS generally sources service income by where the work is performed. Our Colombia guide walks through the payment checks in detail; they apply in every country.

What changes by country is the vendor's side, and it affects the paperwork they'll ask you for.

Argentina: currency rules have loosened, but they change often

Argentina's central bank (BCRA) has rewritten its foreign-exchange rules several times since April 2025:

• Comunicación "A" 8226, in force from 14 April 2025, let resident individuals buy foreign currency for savings without the BCRA's prior approval.
• Comunicación "A" 8330, of 18 September 2025, removed the USD 36,000 annual cap on the mechanism that exempts individuals from selling their service-export income on the exchange market.
• Comunicación "A" 8417, of 9 April 2026, extended that exemption to every type of service exported by individuals.

In practice, an Argentine freelancer you pay in dollars can generally keep them in dollars, under the conditions in the BCRA's rules. These exemptions are written for individuals ("personas humanas"); an Argentine company that invoices you works under different rules, so ask how it receives and converts payments and whether that affects its timing. The BCRA's site was returning errors when we checked, so the links above go to archived copies; confirm the current text before relying on it.

Colombia: export of services is VAT-exempt, with paperwork

Under article 481 of the Estatuto Tributario, services provided in Colombia and used exclusively abroad by companies with no business in Colombia are exempt from VAT, and the exporter must keep documents that prove the operation. That's why a Colombian vendor will ask for a signed contract or purchase order naming your US company.

Brazil: exported services stay outside ISS and the new IBS and CBS

Brazil's municipal service tax doesn't apply to exports of services under article 2 of Lei Complementar 116/2003, unless the result of the service happens in Brazil. The 2025 tax reform, Lei Complementar 214/2025, makes exports of services immune from the new IBS and CBS taxes (article 79) and defines an exported service as one supplied to a resident abroad and consumed abroad (article 80). Expect a Brazilian vendor to ask you to confirm where the work is used.

This is a high-level summary for a buyer, not tax advice; the vendor's accountant handles their side, and yours should confirm withholding and reporting for your company.

Public holidays: plan for two calendars

Holidays cost more schedule than time zones do. These are the holidays set by national law in five of the countries; Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay publish their own official lists, so ask finalists there for the year's calendar.

Mexico's labor law doesn't list Holy Thursday or Good Friday, and Brazil's federal law doesn't list Carnival, so whether a team works those days is the company's decision. Ask for the team's actual calendar, not the legal minimum, and put both countries' holidays in the project schedule from day one.

IP: the US rule and the local default

On the US side, a commissioned website is rarely a "work made for hire". The Copyright Office's Circular 30 limits commissioned works for hire to nine categories, with a signed written agreement, and a transfer of copyright needs a signed writing under section 204 of the Copyright Act. So the contract should assign the copyright, whatever country the team is in.

The local default matters because the work is created under local law, and it differs:

• Brazil leans toward the client for code. Article 4 of Lei 9.609/1998, the software law, gives the rights in a program developed under a services contract made for that purpose to the contracting party, unless the contract says otherwise. It covers software, not the visual design, so the contract still needs an assignment for design files.
• Colombia leans toward the creator: the economic rights pass only for the uses, term and territory the contract names. Our Colombia hiring guide explains the clauses that fix it.
• Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay each have their own copyright statute and rules on authors' moral rights. Have counsel who knows the vendor's country review the assignment.

Whatever the country, the clause should name the uses (reproduce, modify, publish, sublicense), say worldwide and for the full term of protection, cover everyone who works on the project, subcontractors included, and list what stays licensed, such as fonts and open-source libraries. This is general information, not legal advice.

How to evaluate a nearshore partner

These checks are specific to working across a border; our guide to comparing design studios covers portfolio, process and scoring for any provider.

For larger projects, pay for a short pilot, such as one page template, before committing the whole budget.

Which country fits which project

If you're an agency looking for build capacity under your own brand rather than a vendor for your own site, our guide to white-label web development covers models, prices and contracts.

What to do next

Shortlist two or three countries on overlap with your team's hours, send the same written brief to finalists in each and compare the proposals line by line. Dardo is one option in Colombia: a team of three in Bogotá that takes on scoped web design and web development projects, and agencies hire us for white-label development; our published starting prices are on the pricing page.