Today, the most popular offshore location is India, which combines very attractive wage rate differentials, a good country-level proficiency of the English language, and a relatively mature IT services industry. Various estimates give India between 80 percent and 90 percent of the total offshore outsourcing software services market. A recent survey by NASSCOM, India’s leading software and services industry association, found that almost two out of five Fortune 500 companies currently outsource some of their software requirements to India.

While India is currently the leading offshore destination, there are over 30 countries considered to be offshore software development locations. Incoda's OSD Supplier Directory contains custom software suppliers from the following countries:

• Argentina
• Armenia
• Bangladesh
• Belarus
• Brazil
• Bulgaria
• Canada
• China
• Costa Rica
• Czech Republic
• Egypt
• Hungary
• India
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• Israel
• Latvia
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• Nepal
• Pakistan
• Philippines
• Poland
• Romania
• Russian Federation
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Thailand
• Ukraine
• Viet Nam

Ireland and Israel offer strong infrastructures and multilingual workforces, but at higher prices than India. Canada offers a less attractive labor rate spread with the U.S. but it provides comfort with its near-shore location and its longstanding trade history with the U.S. Pakistan and Bulgaria offer the most attractive wage spread and good English proficiency but they lack the experience in offshoring as compared to the other countries in the top tier. Learn more about how individual countries compare with one another by reading the article "Comparison of the Leading Offshore Software Development Countries" in the OSD Learning Center.

Many countries have an IT industry or trade association that provides information about their specific software development market and a list of assocation members. Please select the link for a list of IT Trade and Industry Associations in the leading offshoring countries.