By Eastern Europe I mean Central and Eastern Europe.

I think this is an interesting debate and conversation to have.

And 2026 is a good time to have it.

Traditionally, Western Europe has been the most sought after option: higher pay, higher standard of living, more opportunities.

But in the past 10 years, the tide has turned quite significantly.

Western Europe in 2015-2025:

• Safety and quality of life have decreased
• Pay has been stagnating, cost of living went up
• Taxes have stayed high, in some cases increased

Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe:

• No shortage of 100k+ remote jobs with US and WE companies
• Often low taxes, especially for b2b contractors/freelancers
• Big tech companies opening and expanding offices
• High street safety, good quality of life

I think either here on Reddit or elsewhere, you might have already noticed a "bull time" for working in tech in Poland, Czechia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and so on.

And that was for good reason.

At the same time, if you have actually spent time in CEE, you know that not everything is perfect there either.

Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were pretty good for devs too, back in the days. But today? There's other issues compromising the quality of life there.

Taxes used to be quite good in Romania. Now? Starting to get worse.

Poland has stayed quite consistent and solid. But, cost of living has almost reached Western Europe's levels, Russia is nearby, quality of hospitals and other public services still lags to Western and Northern Europe.

Serbia is great too, but infra is sometimes so-so, lots of car accidents, unstable political situation, and more.

So it's not black and white.

Moreover, Western Europe still offers international companies a good place to invest: cheaper than the US, high quality universities with top tier talent, relatively stable governments.

To gain clarity, I asked European tech workers (mostly developers) to anonymously share their incomes, spending and career data with me.

Based on this, I created a "composite score", which takes into account 3 things:

1. How much people save in Euros each year
2. How much they spend (1 = frugal, 2 = comfortable, 3 = luxurious)
3. How many people does their income support

Here's the top 10 countries, and their numbers:

Rank	Country	Composite Score	Annual Savings (€)	Avg. People Supported	Lifestyle Level	Submissions
#1	Serbia	75.4 / 100	€24,643	2	2.07 / 3	29
#2	Romania	67.9 / 100	€32,442	1.8	2 / 3	38
#3	Poland	65.2 / 100	€33,129	1.9	1.89 / 3	65
#4	Switzerland	59.9 / 100	€47,258	1.5	1.9 / 3	69
#5	United Kingdom	47.1 / 100	€38,977	1.5	1.83 / 3	58
#6	Netherlands	41.9 / 100	€32,539	1.5	1.84 / 3	61
#7	Germany	38.2 / 100	€20,175	1.6	1.88 / 3	151
#8	Denmark	31.4 / 100	€27,490	1.3	1.89 / 3	45
#9	Hungary	27.8 / 100	€12,942	1.6	1.83 / 3	81
#10	Spain	24.8 / 100	€21,244	1.5	1.75 / 3	84

Notice something?

I do: the first 3 are all in Central and Eastern Europe.

If I accepted countries with less than 25 data entries: Finland, Bulgaria and Lithuania would be 5th, 6th and 7th.

Which would basically mean that 5 (or 6, if you include Finland) out of the top 7 would be in CEE.

The above numbers are not exactly the average developer numbers, more like the top 10%. But that's true across countries, so it's apples to apples, in this sense.

As you can see, devs in CEE can afford to have families, comfortable lifestyles, and save good money.

In Western Europe? Harder to do that. And what you get in return of your tax money? Uncertain (especially pensions).

But, I wanted to dig deeper, so I also started asking data about:

• Perceived happiness
• Satisfaction from tax-paid services

And this created another rank (still little data for it to be very significant, but gives the idea):

Rank	Country	Composite Score	Happiness Factor	Infra Factor	Submissions
#1	Czechia	80.8 / 100	8.25	7.5	4
#2	Austria	78.3 / 100	8.25	7.25	4
#3	Netherlands	75.5 / 100	7.77	7.77	13
#4	Switzerland	73.6 / 100	7.43	8.14	14
#5	Poland	69.9 / 100	7.78	7.19	16
#6	Finland	67.5 / 100	7.75	7	4
#7	United Kingdom	63.9 / 100	7.71	6.71	7
#8	Serbia	56.4 / 100	8.22	5.11	9
#9	Bulgaria	55 / 100	7.75	5.75	4
#10	Romania	54.8 / 100	7.59	6	17

The composite score here takes into account both the infra factor (tax paid services quality) and perceived happiness.

It does create a more nuanced picture.

Here's my conclusions:

• Switzerland, Poland and the Netherlands, seem to be the countries where you manage to strike a good balance between money and quality of life.
• UK, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria can be good if you're a top 1% earner and are OK with a bit of compromises on other areas.
• Germany, France, Spain seem to be OK: not the best, not the worst.
• Scandinavia I don't have too much data.
• Italy and Portugal aren't very good.

What do you think?

Total number of people contributing to the data is, as of now, 1107.

Recently saw a "German-Market is brain-dead" from one year ago.

Mentioned German companies being shit, and big techs not hiring in Germany, but rather in Poland or Romania.

I think this was more true 2/3 years ago than it is today.

I run a job board that tracks all big tech hiring in Europe (as well as six-figure remote), and currently Germany is the 2nd country in Europe with the most hiring :/

Rank	Country	Jobs Listed
#1	United Kingdom	3510
#2	Germany	1424
#3	Ireland	1423
#4	Netherlands	718
#5	France	711
#6	Spain	588
#7	Poland	543
#8	Sweden	395
#9	Italy	310
#10	Romania	240

In terms of where these jobs are in Germany, here's the list of the top 10 cities in Europe with the most big tech / HFT / high-paying scaleups:

Rank	City	Jobs Listed
#1	London	2939
#2	Dublin	1294
#3	Amsterdam	647
#4	Berlin	525
#5	Paris	435
#6	Munich	409
#7	Warsaw	397
#8	Stockholm	339
#9	Madrid	248
#10	Bucharest	199

So basically 1/3 in Berlin, 1/3 in Munich, and 1/3 in other cities and/or Germany-remote.

German market is rebounding. At least comparatively to few years ago and to other European countries, within top-paying companies.

In general, the entire Western Europe area is rebounding.

One or two years ago, Amsterdam, Paris, German cities, they all sat below Warsaw, in this ranking.

But now things have stabilised a bit, and there's been a bit of rebounding.

----

EDIT

Many of you asked about data per capita. So I added a filter for that, here's the above ranks per capita (jobs per 1M residents):

🌍 Top 10 Countries by Big Tech Jobs Density (per 1M residents)

Rank	Country	Jobs / 1M
#1	Ireland	276.0
#2	United Kingdom	52.3
#3	Netherlands	40.8
#4	Sweden	37.8
#5	Switzerland	25.2
#6	Denmark	23.1
#7	Finland	22.9
#8	Germany	17.1
#9	Poland	14.6
#10	Romania	12.8

🏙️ Top 10 Cities by Big Tech Job Density

Rank	City	Jobs / 1M
#1	Dublin	2,208
#2	Amsterdam	715
#3	Zurich	402
#4	Stockholm	347
#5	London	334
#6	Munich	274
#7	Warsaw	217
#8	Paris	208
#9	Helsinki	153
#10	Berlin	143

What is even more important to mention IMO: the job board used to track engineering jobs only. Now it tracks product, design, business and ops too (still inside high-paying tech companies).

This partially explain why Germany and other Western European countries 'rebounded': cause that's where a lot of sales and product jobs are.

So I added a filter to select job type: if you filter to engineering jobs only, Warsaw climbs back to the 3rd spot (same as in the past couple of years).

But, Germany stays up: 3rd spot, even just for engineering jobs (up from 5th-6th last year).

So I think a bit of rebound in 2026 for big tech in western europe is real, at least a bit.