Hire PHP and Laravel developers in Brazil

How much does it cost to hire a PHP / Laravel developer in Brazil?

Laravel and PHP engineers from Brazil cost $3,500 per month at mid-level and $4,900 at senior, full time. PHP salaries are lower everywhere, which makes the arbitrage smaller than for React or Java — we will say that plainly rather than pretend the savings are identical across stacks.

What you compareU.S. hireThrough HireBrazilDevs
Monthly cost, senior $12,200 loaded $4,900
Recruiting fee15–25% of first-year salaryNone
Time to first candidates3–6 weeks5–15 business days
Notice periodAt-will, plus severance in practice30 days
Payroll and benefitsYours to runOne invoice

U.S. figure: BLS median for software developers ($133,080, May 2024) adjusted by our estimated multiplier for PHP / Laravel (0.88×), plus 25% for payroll tax and benefits. The BLS figure is official; the multiplier is our estimate. Full methodology.

Why Brazil for PHP / Laravel

PHP still runs a large share of Brazilian small-business software, agencies and e-commerce, and Laravel consolidated that world into something modern. The pool is enormous and the quality range is wide — wider than any other stack we hire for — so the screening here is stricter, not looser.

What a PHP / Laravel engineer will own

  • Laravel applications: queues, jobs, Eloquent, the parts that break at scale
  • Modernize legacy PHP — procedural code, PHP 5, no tests — without a rewrite
  • WooCommerce and custom e-commerce backends
  • API layers in front of a database designed by someone who left in 2016

How we screen PHP and Laravel developers

Every candidate goes through the same three checks before you see the profile.

  1. Refactor a fat controller — we watch where they choose to put the logic
  2. Eloquent query that loads a thousand rows to count them; fix it
  3. Introduce tests into an untested legacy file

Stack they typically work with

LaravelMySQL / PostgreSQLRedisLivewirePHPUnitDocker

Related skills

Teams that hire PHP and Laravel developers usually pair them with one of these. The rate is the same for all of them.

Pricing

Mid-level engineer

3–5 years of experience

$3,500 /month

Full time · about $22/hour equivalent

Ships well-scoped features independently. Needs a defined backlog.

U.S. equivalent costs about $12,604/month loaded — you save 72%.

Tech lead / staff engineer

10+ years of experience

$6,400 /month

Full time · about $40/hour equivalent

Sets architecture, leads a squad, interfaces with your stakeholders.

U.S. equivalent costs about $19,896/month loaded — you save 68%.

Frequently asked questions

Is PHP a reasonable choice for a new product in 2026?

For a CRUD-heavy business application with a small team, Laravel is a defensible and fast choice. For real-time or ML-adjacent products, it is not, and we will tell you so before selling you the engineer.

Tell us the role. We come back with candidates.

A 20-minute call to scope the role, then vetted profiles within five business days. No fee to talk, no retainer, no exclusivity.

Get candidates See pricing