Most Vietnam vs India outsourcing comparisons are written by a vendor in one of the two countries, and the vendor's country wins. The Philippines is usually added as a third column with a line about English. This one is written by a vendor too, so here is the disclosure: MOHA Software is a Vietnamese company, based in Hanoi, with a Japanese entity in Yokohama. We sell engineering teams in Vietnam.
To keep ourselves fair, every number below comes from a public source you can open. Where the public data runs out, we say so, and one section covers the situations where Vietnam is the weaker choice.
This Vietnam vs India vs Philippines outsourcing comparison is for a CTO, VP of Engineering or founder in the US, UK, Australia or Singapore who needs an offshore engineering team and has to pick a country first.
Vietnam vs India outsourcing at a glance, with the Philippines
| Criterion | India | Vietnam | Philippines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kearney Global Services Location Index 2023 (78 countries) | 1st | 7th | 12th |
| EF English Proficiency Index 2025 (123 countries and regions) | 74th, score 484, low proficiency | 64th, score 500, moderate proficiency | 28th, score 569, high proficiency |
| EF 2025 speaking score | 500 | 461 | 539 |
| Industry headcount, latest association or government figure | About 6.0 million direct tech employees (Nasscom, FY26 estimate) | Nearly 1.26 million ICT workers, hardware included (Ministry of Information and Communications, end of 2024) | 1.89 million in IT-BPM, of which 190,000 in IT and digital services (IBPAP, 2025) |
| Time zone | UTC+5:30 | UTC+7 | UTC+8 |
| What the country is known for | Scale, very large vendors, captive centers of multinationals | Engineering-heavy product work in mainstream stacks | Spoken English, contact center and back-office operations |
Sources: Kearney GSLI 2023, EF EPI 2025, Nasscom Strategic Review 2026, IBPAP industry overview 2026, Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology.
The headcount row needs care. The three figures do not measure the same thing, and we explain the differences below. Don't divide one by another.
What the Kearney index says about each country
Kearney's Global Services Location Index is the outside ranking buyers quote most. The 2023 edition is the latest one published. It scores 78 countries on 52 metrics in four groups: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, business environment, and digital resonance.
India is first. Kearney puts India, China and Malaysia in the top three "thanks to their immense cost advantage, abundant talent pool, and strong skills."
Vietnam is seventh. Kearney's Asia Pacific release calls it "a strong Asian outsourcing destination" and points to the presence of major technology companies.
The Philippines is twelfth, three places lower than in 2021. Kearney describes it as "the business process outsourcing (BPO) engine of Asia" and attributes the slip mainly to Mexico and Colombia gaining ground as nearshore locations for the United States.
All three countries sit in the top 12 of 78, so none is a risky pick at country level. Keep in mind that the index measures attractiveness for services in general, call centers and shared services included. It does not tell you who writes better software.
English: the Philippines leads, but look at the city scores
The EF English Proficiency Index 2025 is based on test results from 2.2 million adults in 123 countries and regions. It reflects the people who took EF's test, so treat it as a signal and not as a census of engineers.
On the national ranking the order is clear. The Philippines is 28th with a score of 569 (high proficiency), Vietnam is 64th with 500 (moderate), and India is 74th with 484 (low). The global average is 488.
The detail pages are more useful than the headline, because you hire in a city and for a job.
| EF EPI 2025 detail | India | Vietnam | Philippines |
|---|---|---|---|
| National score | 484 | 500 | 569 |
| Speaking | 500 | 461 | 539 |
| Score for people working in IT | 487 | 500 | 581 |
| Main tech cities | Bengaluru 569, Hyderabad 554, Chennai 534, Pune 502 | Hanoi 532, Da Nang 509, Ho Chi Minh City 508 | Manila 603, Cebu City 585 |
Source: EF EPI 2025 country pages for India, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Three readings of that table:
- The Philippines leads on every line. If people on your side will talk to the offshore team by voice all day, or if the team talks to your customers, this is a real advantage.
- India's national score undersells its tech hubs. Bengaluru scores 569, the same as the Philippines as a whole. India's low ranking comes from a very large and uneven country, not from the cities where vendors hire.
- Vietnam reads better than it speaks. EF gives it 522 for reading and 461 for speaking, the lowest speaking score of the three. That matches what we see day to day: written specs, tickets and pull request comments work well, and live calls depend heavily on who is in the room.
For Vietnam, the practical answer is structural. Put strong English speakers in the PM and tech lead seats, and run the rest of the communication in writing. When you talk to us, ask who those two people would be for your team.
Talent pool: three numbers that are not comparable
India is in a different size class. Nasscom's Strategic Review 2026 estimates direct tech sector employment at about 6.0 million in FY26, up from 5.8 million a year earlier, on industry revenue of about $315 billion. That figure covers IT services, business process management, engineering R&D, software products and hardware.
The Philippine number looks large too, but most of it is not software. IBPAP counts 1.89 million people in the IT-BPM industry in 2025 and $40.3 billion in revenue, and calls the country the second largest delivery location after India. Inside that total, contact center and business process services employ 1.68 million people. IT and digital services employ 190,000. (IBPAP's segments overlap, so they do not add up to the total.) IBPAP also reports that 65 to 70% of the industry's buyers are in North America.
Vietnam's official figure is broad in a different way. The Ministry of Information and Communications reported nearly 1.26 million workers in the ICT sector at the end of 2024, across 73,788 digital technology companies. That count includes hardware and electronics manufacturing. The same report says about 1,900 Vietnamese digital technology companies earn revenue abroad.
For software specifically, the most detailed public count we could open is older. TopDev's Vietnam IT Market Report 2022 put the number of developers and IT engineers in the software industry at 480,000, with about 57,000 IT students graduating each year. TopDev also wrote that only about 35% of those graduates met what businesses required. We quote that last number on purpose: a graduate count tells you how many people enter the market, not how many are ready for your codebase.
What this means for a buyer:
- If you need hundreds of engineers, or a niche skill in volume, India is the only one of the three where that is routine.
- If you need a product team of 5 to 50 engineers in web, mobile, backend, QA, cloud or applied AI, all three countries can supply it. At that size the national pool stops mattering. You are buying one specific team.
Time-zone overlap with the US, UK, Australia and Singapore
None of the three countries uses daylight saving time. The table shows shared hours if both sides work a plain 9:00 to 18:00 day. We calculated it from the UTC offsets.
| Your location | India (UTC+5:30) | Vietnam (UTC+7) | Philippines (UTC+8) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | 6.5 hours | 8 hours | 9 hours |
| Sydney / Melbourne | 3.5 to 4.5 hours | 5 to 6 hours | 6 to 7 hours |
| London | 3.5 to 4.5 hours | 2 to 3 hours | 1 to 2 hours |
| New York | None | None | None |
| San Francisco | None | None | None |
For Singapore and Australia, Vietnam and the Philippines come close to a shared working day. For the UK, India has the best overlap and Vietnam gets a usable morning window in London.
For the US, no country in this group overlaps a standard day, so somebody shifts. India needs the smallest shift for the East Coast. During US summer time, the end of the office day at 18:00 falls at 8:30 in New York for a team in Bengaluru, 7:00 for a team in Hanoi and 6:00 for a team in Manila. On the West Coast the pattern flips. Late afternoon in San Francisco is early morning in Hanoi and Manila, which makes a daily handoff call possible.
The Philippines handles US hours differently: its industry sells mostly to North America, and night-shift work is common in its contact centers. For engineering teams, we think a fixed daily handoff slot plus written updates works better than asking developers to work nights for years.
What the cost data can and cannot tell you
Buyers search for offshore software development rates by country and find tables of hourly figures. Most of those tables have no source, mix freelancers with companies, and blend juniors with seniors. We don't publish rates, ours or anyone else's, and we would not build a country decision on those tables.
All three are sold on cost. Kearney credits India's top rank partly to its cost advantage and lists Vietnam among the offshoring leaders built on labor cost. IBPAP describes the Philippines as having "one of the lowest costs of service delivery globally." Against the US, UK, Australia or Singapore, they belong to the same low-cost group.
For Vietnam there is a public salary survey. ITviec's IT Salary & Recruitment Market Report 2025-2026, based on 1,839 respondents, gives a median of 37.8 million VND per month for back-end developers. That is about $1,560 at the World Bank's 2024 average exchange rate of roughly 24,165 dong per dollar. The same survey shows the median rising from 12.4 million VND in the first year to 54.9 million VND beyond eight years of experience. This is market salary data. It is not a vendor fee and it is not MOHA's price.
We could not find a free public survey for India or the Philippines with a comparable method, so we are not printing a three-country salary table.
Our view: the gap between two vendors in the same country is often wider than the gap between countries. Seniority mix, how much PM and QA time is included, and what happens when someone leaves move the yearly cost more than the flag does. When you read a quote, look at the seniority behind each seat and what the monthly fee includes before you look at the total.
The same caution applies to attrition. We found no public dataset that measures all three countries the same way, so we give no numbers. Ask us how we handle a departure on a client team.
Where each country is strongest
India: scale and breadth. With about 6 million people in the sector, India has the largest vendors, the widest range of enterprise skills, and a large base of captive centers run by multinationals. The trade-off for a small buyer is attention. A 10-person team is a small account at a very large vendor.
Philippines: voice and operations. The EF scores and the IBPAP breakdown say the same thing. Customer support, back-office processing, healthcare operations and similar work are what the country does at scale, mostly for North American buyers. Software teams exist, but IT and digital services are about a tenth of the industry's headcount.
Vietnam: engineering teams for product work. Vietnam does not have India's scale or the Philippines' spoken English. What it offers is a workforce concentrated in engineering, mid-sized vendors for whom a 10-person team is a meaningful client, and a near-full working day shared with Singapore and Australia. Many Vietnamese vendors, including us, also work for Japanese clients, who expect detailed specifications and regular written reporting. Those habits carry over to Western clients.
When Vietnam is the weaker choice
We would rather lose a deal early than win a project that does not fit. Vietnam is the weaker choice in these cases:
- The work is voice. Phone support, sales calls or any role where accent and spoken fluency are the product. The Philippines is the better choice, and the EF speaking scores show why.
- You need very large numbers fast. Staffing several hundred engineers in a few months, or dozens of specialists in a narrow enterprise platform, is a job for India's scale.
- Your vendor policy requires a very large provider. If your procurement rules demand a very large firm or a legal entity in your own country, India's largest vendors meet that bar more easily than most Vietnamese companies.
- Your team is on the US East Coast and wants live collaboration through the day. India is a little closer by the clock. A nearshore team in Latin America is closer still, and we compare those options in nearshore vs offshore software development.
- Nobody on your side wants to write things down. Vietnamese teams do their best work from written specs and tickets. If your process runs on hallway conversations and long unstructured calls, you will feel the speaking gap.
Which country fits which situation
| Your situation | Good fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Product team of 5 to 50 engineers, buyer in Singapore or Australia | Vietnam | 5 to 8 shared hours a day; engineering-focused pool; your team is a meaningful account |
| Product team for a UK company | Vietnam or India | India has more overlap with London; Vietnam works with a fixed morning slot in London and written handoffs |
| Product team for a US company that already works async | Vietnam or India | No country overlaps a US day, so written process matters more than location |
| Hundreds of engineers, or a rare enterprise skill in volume | India | A sector of about 6 million people and the largest vendors |
| Customer support, voice, back-office operations | Philippines | Highest English scores of the three; an industry built on this work |
| Support operations plus the software that runs them | Philippines for operations, Vietnam for engineering | Each country does the part it is strongest at |
| AI features, chatbots or automation built by a small team | Vietnam | Product engineering work where a focused team and close attention matter more than scale |
The table reduces to one rule: start from the work, then the clock, then the size. If the work is conversation, choose the Philippines. If the size is in the hundreds, choose India. If it is a product engineering team and your day overlaps with Asia, or your team is comfortable working in writing, Vietnam is a strong fit.
If your profile fits Vietnam, why talk to MOHA
We run delivery from Hanoi, which has the highest city score in Vietnam on EF's 2025 index (532). Our Japanese entity, MOHA Japan LLC, is in Yokohama.
Our published work shows what the fit looks like in practice:
- For StarHub in Singapore, a 16-person team built an AI chatbot for customer support using Python, C#, Docker and Google Cloud. It is the "Philippines for operations, Vietnam for engineering" row of the table in a single project: software that takes routine queries off human agents.
- For the RSPCA, the UK animal welfare charity, we delivered a contact center integration with Vonage Contact Center, an SMS API and intelligent routing with Salesforce, on a tight budget. Our case study reports a 30% improvement in customer satisfaction and a new SMS option for donations.
- For Soundbrenner (the project lists Hong Kong and Germany as client locations), a five-person team worked on The Metronome by Soundbrenner, a native mobile app in Kotlin, Java, Objective-C and Swift.
The clients are in Singapore, the UK, Hong Kong and Germany, and the two projects that list a team size had 16 and 5 people. That is the profile this article says Vietnam fits.
If you want a long-running team that works only on your product, our offshore development center in Vietnam is the model to look at. If you need a few engineers inside your existing team, see staff augmentation. For AI features, see our AI development work. If you are unsure which model applies, staff augmentation vs full outsourcing covers the difference.
FAQ
Is Vietnam cheaper than India for software outsourcing?
Public data does not support a clean ranking. Kearney credits both countries with a labor cost advantage, and we found no public survey that measures engineer salaries in both the same way. Seniority mix and what a monthly fee includes change the yearly cost more than the country does.
Which country has better English: Vietnam, India or the Philippines?
On EF's 2025 index the Philippines is clearly first (569, high proficiency), Vietnam second (500, moderate) and India third (484, low). City scores change the picture: Bengaluru scores 569 and Hanoi 532. For engineering work, the English of the PM and tech lead matters most.
Which is best for a US company: Vietnam, India or the Philippines?
For support and operations, the Philippines, which sells mostly to North America. For engineering, none of the three overlaps a US working day. India is closest to East Coast mornings, and Vietnam and the Philippines line up with West Coast late afternoons.
How does Vietnam vs Philippines software development compare?
The Philippines has stronger English and one more shared hour with Australia and Singapore. Vietnam has the larger pool concentrated in engineering: IBPAP counts 190,000 people in Philippine IT and digital services, while TopDev counted 480,000 developers and IT engineers in Vietnam's software industry back in 2022. For product engineering we would pick Vietnam. For anything involving voice, we would pick the Philippines.
Next step
If your situation matches the Vietnam rows in the table above, contact us to discuss your project. Tell us what you are building, where your team sits and how many people you think you need.
