In 2026, two in five companies are turning to outsourcing to attract new skills and save costs. This way, they free up resources to focus on their core business goals. At the same time, outsourcing is becoming a large part of the economy’s income for some countries.
In this article, we’ll review outsourcing statistics driving the market in 2026. Keep reading to find out the key industry and regional trends.
Before you get to the complete list, here are the most notable outsourcing trends:
Let’s start our overview with some brief facts about the outsourcing industry.
The global outsourcing market generated $854.6 billion in 2025
The industry will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.46% during the forecast period. The outsourcing market will reach a total market size of $1.11 trillion in 2030.
Source: Research and Markets
The global tech services market hit $42.4 billion in annual contract value in Q2 2026, its fastest growth on record
Second-quarter contract value rose 43% year over year. That is the highest growth rate the ISG Index has ever recorded, and the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Across the first half of 2026, the combined market reached $81.3 billion, up 35%.
Traditional managed services grew 2.7% to $10.9 billion in the quarter, while cloud and as-a-service contracts grew 65% to $31.5 billion. Infrastructure-as-a-service alone rose 78% to $25.8 billion.
Within managed services, IT outsourcing generated $7.7 billion in the quarter, down 3%. Business process outsourcing generated $2.3 billion, up 34% year over year. Overall, through 2025, BPO contract value was down 22% year-to-date.
For comparison, during the first three quarters of 2025, IT outsourcing reached $24.6 billion in annual contract value (+5% year-to-date), making up 83% of all global outsourcing contracts. Business process outsourcing generated $5 billion in ACV (-22% year-to-date).
Historically, in 2023, IT services outsourcing reached $30.4 billion (13% increase year-on-year). However, business services outsourcing was already declining by 14%, generating $10.3 billion in ACV.
ISG forecasts 2.1% growth in managed services and 30% growth in cloud-based services for the full 2026 year, having raised its cloud forecast from 25%.
Source: ISG Index
70% of organizations have brought some previously outsourced work back in-house over the past five years
While outsourcing continues to grow, many companies are also selectively moving certain functions back internally, a practice called insourcing.
Of those who have insourced previously outsourced work:
Primary reasons for bringing work back in-house include gaining better control over service quality (68%), building strategic capabilities internally (64%), and eliminating vendor markup costs (56%).
42% of companies turn to outsourcing to gain better access to skilled talent
Additional key drivers behind outsourcing decisions include:
Cost reduction as the primary outsourcing driver has dropped from 70% in 2020 to 34% in 2024
In 2020, 70% of organizations that outsource identified cost reduction as the primary driver. In 2022, this number dropped to 48%, and in 2024, it fell to 34%.
Organizations using outcome-based outsourcing models are even less focused on cost as the primary driver. Only 30% of them cite it as their main reason for outsourcing. While cost efficiency remains important, organizations now prioritize access to skilled talent more.
55% identify lack of benefit tracking as the top challenge in outsourcing programs
According to Deloitte outsourcing statistics, the most common challenges organizations face with outsourcing are actually internal management issues, not vendor performance problems:
78% of organizations now operate their own offshore service centers alongside outsourcing relationships
Global In-house Centers (GICs), also called captive centers or capability centers, are company-owned service delivery centers located in different countries, often in regions offering cost advantages and skilled talent. These centers deliver services across functions like IT, finance, HR, customer service, and even research and development.
Of organizations with GICs:
GICs complement outsourcing by allowing organizations to keep critical knowledge in-house while maintaining lower cost structures than domestic operations.
56% of organizations plan to increase their outsourcing investments, while only 14% plan to reduce
Despite growing interest in bringing some work in-house or establishing offshore centers, traditional third-party outsourcing continues to grow. Investment outlook for outsourcing shows:
As of 2026, 80% of executives plan to maintain or increase investment in third-party outsourcing.
67% of organizations now use outcome-based outsourcing relationships
Two years ago, only 45% adopted outcome-based services (also called managed services or operated services). Traditional staff augmentation, where businesses rent workers by the hour, now represents only 29% of outsourcing arrangements.
92% expect their outsourcing vendors to bring AI capabilities as part of service delivery
2026’s outsourcing statistics suggest that companies expect third-party vendors to improve their services and deliver value by embedding AI technologies and solutions into their operations.
The highest levels of expectation for AI-powered outsourcing are found in:
1. Utilities (89%)
2. Energy (87%)
3. Media and telecom (87%)
4. Real estate (85%)
5. Automotive (84%)
1. IT/Digital (87%)
2. Human Resources (87%)
3. Tax (84%)
4. Sales and Marketing (82%)
5. Finance (81%)
Despite high expectations for AI-powered outsourcing, the tangible benefits remain modest. Only 25% of organizations are seeing actual cost reductions in vendor services due to AI implementation. However, 1 in 2 organizations experienced efficiency and productivity gains.
Source: Deloitte outsourcing report
81% of companies want outsourcing providers to be strategic collaborators
Three out of four companies want help pursuing transformational outcomes, such as new business models and technological innovations like AI.
In the next two years (2026-2027), companies expect high impact from modern sourcing in four key areas:
The top goals for adopting modern sourcing include faster speed to market for new products and services, redeploying internal staff to other activities, predictable costs, improved stakeholder experience, and cost savings and efficiency.
Source: KPMG
57% of all G2000 companies had at least one outsourcing contract
The highest level of outsourcing adoption (92%) occurred in the top 50 companies in the Forbes ranking. The lowest (36%) was in the 1501-2000 positions. So, service providers still have the opportunity to enter this market.
Of the G2000 outsourcing customers, 92% delegated IT support services, and 59% business processes.
Source: ISG
30% of organizations plan to increase their external IT spending in 2026
According to Whitelane Research, which surveyed close to 7,000 IT sourcing relationships across more than 2,500 organizations for its 2025/2026 European study, spending intentions divide as follows:
Scalability is the leading reason organizations give for outsourcing at 53%, ahead of focus on core business at 44% and access to talent at 43%.
Where organizations bring work back in-house, knowledge retention is the main driver at 59%, followed by cost efficiency at 51%.
Source: Whitelane Research
The outsourcing market comprises two sub-sectors: IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO).
ITO includes cybersecurity, software development, AI, data and analytics services, etc. BPO covers legal, HR, financial, customer, and marketing support. Let’s have a further look.
The global IT outsourcing market will reach $634.18 billion in 2026
The IT services outsourcing market will grow steadily at a CAGR of 6.20% from 2026 to 2030, reaching $806.55 billion by 2030. For comparison, the market stood at $588.38 billion in 2025.
BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance), healthcare, and IT & telecom generate the most significant revenues for IT outsourcing.
Thus, the BFSI industry outsources the most and spent 30.29% of the sector’s total value, i.e., about $155 billion in 2024. Healthcare IT services spending, in turn, amounted to $120 billion.
77% of businesses that outsource do it for their IT functions
Historically, they spent an average of 8.1% of their budget on IT outsourcing services in 2023. It is 1.7% more than in 2019. On average, 76% of IT work now reaches companies through third-party delivery models of some kind, including external providers and shared services.
Companies most often use external service providers in the following IT areas:
90% of organizations plan to increase AI-related investment in their IT sourcing relationships
37% expect a significant increase over the next two to three years and 53% a moderate one.
Adoption has moved quickly. Only 4% of organizations report no AI use in their IT sourcing relationships, against 18% in the previous year’s study.
Source: Whitelane Research
The cybersecurity outsourcing market hit $1.6 billion in 2025
In its previous reports, Gartner predicted that by 2025, a lack of talent will be the cause of over half of significant cyber incidents.
That’s why 93% of organizations planned to outsource parts of their workflows to security vendors over 2024-2025.
Security services accounted for 42% of companies’ total risk management costs today. They spent on consulting, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support. In total, these costs reached $90 billion in 2024, up 11% from 2023.
Source: Gartner, PRNewswire, Data Insights
64% of organizations outsourced at least part of their app development in 2023, up 8% from 2019
Of them, 46% said they had increased the work delegated to outsourcing companies, and only 8% had decreased it.
59% of small and medium-sized businesses outsourced app development
Small businesses delegated about 45% of their IT work to outsourcing vendors. In turn, 68% of large companies do so, but with only 39% of their tasks in the ratio.
The most frequent clients of outsourced app development companies are the following industries:
Retail and utilities delegate app development at roughly twice the rate of the public sector.
About 69% of businesses have the same or lower costs for outsourcing app development than when handling it in-house
On the other hand, only 54% of outsourcing customers say that the quality of the development services they receive is better or on par with their internal efforts.
Source: Computer Economics
The business process outsourcing industry reached $434.99 billion in 2026
Forecasts say that the market will grow at a CAGR of 3.08% between 2026 and 2030, hitting $491.15 billion. The United States leads with $166.40 billion in 2026. For comparison, the industry stood at $415.73 billion at the end of 2025.
2018
0.27
-
2019
0.28
↑ 3.7%
2020
0.27
↓ 3.6%
2021
0.3
↑ 11.1%
2022
0.33
↑ 10%
2023
0.35
↑ 6%
2024
0.37
↑ 5.7%
2025
0.42
↑ 5.39%
2026
0.43
↑ 4.6%
2027*
0.46
↑ 4.5%
2028*
0.47
↑ 2.2%
2029*
0.48
↑ 2.1%
2030*
0.49
↑ 2.1%
* Projected values
Within this industry, customer service outsourcing generates 32.27% of revenue. Other large segments are finance and accounting (27.27%) and HR (21.82%).
68% of executives who outsource do so for business functions
The most outsourced services are:
56% of organizations now outsource front-office functions like sales, marketing, and customer service
Organizations are moving beyond traditional back-office outsourcing to delegate customer-facing and revenue-generating activities. It represents approximately a 10% increase compared to the 2022 findings.
Additionally, 46% now outsource research and development activities, another core business capability traditionally kept in-house. This expansion into front-office and R&D outsourcing is common globally and across industries, with real estate, energy, and consumer products showing the highest levels of adoption.
Source: Statista, Grand View Research, Deloitte
The global legal process outsourcing (LPO) market reaches $38.4 billion in 2026
It will grow at a CAGR of 31.4% between 2023 and 2030. The industry’s projected revenue will total $117.89 billion in 2030. The market stood at $13.67 billion in 2022 and $22.5 billion in 2024, which makes LPO the fastest-growing outsourcing segment.
Asia Pacific led the LPO market in 2023 with over 71% global revenue share
Among them, India and the Philippines are the most popular destinations for legal services.
The e-discovery segment accounts for 22% of LPO income
Other popular services include litigation and patent support, contract drafting, management, and compliance help.
Source: Grand View Research
The F&A BPO market stood at $70.2 billion in 2025
By 2030, the global financial and accounting business process outsourcing (F&A BPO) will grow at a CAGR of 9.3% to reach $110.74 billion.
69.2% of the F&A BPO market belongs to large enterprises. Among them are Accenture, Infosys Limited, Capgemini, and IBM Corporation.
Source: Grand View Research
Asia Pacific countries are the leaders in outsourcing attractiveness based on the Global Services Location Index. India, China, and Malaysia are at the top.
The GSLI ranks countries by digital resonance, business climate, skills availability, and financial attractiveness. Here are the top 5 rankings for each factor:
The United States ranks 8th with the lowest financial attractiveness. But it’s 1st for the highest human skills availability and 2nd for the best business environment and digital resonance after Singapore.
Let’s check out the outsourcing statistics by country in detail.
The United States holds the largest share of global IT outsourcing by revenue
The local market will reach $234.11 billion in 2026, up from $218 billion in 2025 and $185.5 billion in 2024. It will grow at a CAGR of 6.24% to hit $295 billion by 2030.
The US accounts for 38.4% of the global BPO market revenue
The same goes for business process outsourcing, where the US leads with a projected income of $166.40 billion in 2026, up from $159.75 billion in 2025 and $134 billion in 2024. However, growth here stays low, at only 3.39% per year. As of October 2025, the US business outsourcing sector employed 658k people, +84k from 574k in 2024.
66% of US companies outsource at least one business process
It is over 300k American jobs. One of the main reasons for outsourcing outside the United States is to save money on wages and health insurance. For instance, the benefits account for 29.6% of employers’ potentially saved costs.
For example, when it comes to choosing a white label SEO outsourcing provider, 74% of business owners consider an SEO provider’s reputation “very” or “extremely” important. Specifically, 83% of respondents stated that SEO providers should be able to help them “access new customers”.
Source: IBISWorld, Bureau of Labor Statistics
APAC regions make up 23% of the total global IT outsourcing revenue. Forecasts show it will exceed $129.78 billion by the end of 2025 and grow by 7% from 2025 to 2030. The most prominent market players here are India, China, and the Philippines. Let’s take a closer look.
Being one of the largest outsourcing destinations, the Indian IT outsourcing market reached $12.41 billion by the end of 2025, up from $10.51 billion in 2024. With a CAGR of 11.41%, it will almost double to $21.31 billion by 2030.
The US supplies 62% of the revenue for Indian outsourcing. The UK also contributes 17%, Europe 11% and Asia 8%.
Source: Statista
India’s technology industry reaches $315 billion in FY26, with headcount growing 2.3%
Revenue rose 6.1% year over year, with IT services accounting for $149 billion of the total. AI services already represent $10-12 billion.
Employment moved at a different rate. The sector added roughly 135,000 net jobs in FY26, taking the workforce to about 5.95 million, or 2.3% growth against 6.1% revenue growth.
Source: NASSCOM
The IT outsourcing market in China reached $31.31 billion in 2025 (+8.39% from 2024). Business process outsourcing (BPO) was worth about $24.30 billion (up by 4.96% from the previous year).
If looking at historical data, in 2023, the fastest growth was in the following sectors:
At the end of March 2023, the sector had created 15.15 million jobs, with 64.7% of the workforce comprised of university graduates. In the first quarter alone, the industry added 177,000 new employees.
Source: Statista
IT services account for 17% and business services for 84%. The industry employed 1.9 million people in 2025 and projects 1.96 million for 2026, with revenue reaching $42.3 billion.
North America supplies 70% of revenue, with Europe and APAC contributing 15% each. Banking & finance leads the service mix at about 25%, with media & telecom and retail each at 14-18%.
The Philippines lowered its 2028 employment target by up to 650,000 roles
In July 2026, the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines completed a midpoint review of the six-year roadmap it published in 2022. That roadmap projected $59 billion in revenue and 2.5 million workers by 2028.
The revised figures are lower on both counts. IBPAP now projects revenue between $43.3 billion and $50.5 billion, and employment between 1.85 million and 2.14 million full-time workers. Against the original plan, the employment target fell by 360,000 to 650,000 roles.
IBPAP identified AI adoption as the leading reason for the revision, alongside changing buyer behavior and heightened global competition. As association president Jack Madrid put it, “We need to review where we are and be honest about what we can achieve realistically.”
Source: IBPAP
Between 2018 and 2022, the European IT outsourcing market grew from €13.8 billion to about €21.8 billion in contracts per year (12% CAGR)
77% of EU companies that outsource IT do so within the European Union. They also actively delegate to other European countries (17%), India (17%), the UK (14%), or the US and Canada (11%).
The UK generates the largest revenue in the European region
By the end of 2025, the UK outsourcing market amounted to $44.5 billion. Here is a detailed list of the top countries by revenue in IT outsourcing:
UK
$44.5bn
7.18%
$62.96bn
Germany
$32.15bn
5.7%
$42.41bn
France
$27.52bn
5.65%
$36.21bn
Spain
$11.73bn
6.25%
$15.88bn
Netherlands
$11.58bn
5.81%
$15.35bn
Italy
$10.53bn
5.17%
$13.55bn
Switzerland
$7.59bn
6.36%
$10.32bn
Sweden
$6.36bn
6.38%
$8.66bn
Denmark
$5.34bn
6.39%
$7.28bn
Poland
$4.11bn
7.75%
$5.97bn
Finland
$4.11bn
5.8%
$5.45bn
Belgium
$4.08bn
5.51%
$5.33bn
Austria
$3.27bn
5.76%
$4.33bn
Norway
$3.06bn
5.68%
$4.03bn
Czechia
$2.42bn
6.39%
$3.3bn
Ireland
$1.78bn
6.24%
$2.4bn
Ukraine
$1.23bn
8.96%
$1.89bn
Notably, Ukraine and Poland will see the largest growth in the IT outsourcing industry over the next 5 years. Eastern Europe will become a significant hub for hiring IT specialists, which will determine the future of outsourcing.
During 2018-2022, the EU outsourcing market created 17,481 jobs. In contrast, the region lost 92,027 jobs (0.23% of all) due to outsourcing abroad.
Source: Eurostat
Outsourcing generated over $35 billion for LATAM economies in 2025
LATAM’s IT outsourcing market reached $18.45 billion by the end of 2025, up from $15.92 billion in 2024. Forecasts suggest that it will grow at an annual rate of 7.12% and hit $26 billion by 2030.
Business process outsourcing is also stable at $16.59 billion in 2025, up from $14.76 billion in 2024. However, the growth rate here is lower (3.63%): by 2030, the market will hit $19.82 billion.
Brazil and Mexico lead the LATAM outsourcing market, with 70% of the region’s revenue
Here are the top LATAM countries leading by revenue in IT outsourcing:
Brazil
$6.76bn
7.14%
$9.55bn
Mexico
$6.05bn
6.88%
$8.44bn
Colombia
$803.10m
7.37%
$1.15bn
Chile
$765.52m
6.59%
$1.05bn
Peru
$622.06m
7.26%
$883.3m
Cuba
$511.21m
4.1%
$625.03m
Argentina
$486.38m
7.41%
$695.23m
Source: Statista
US small businesses spent an average of $198,550 on outsourcing services in 2022
And 83% of small businesses will maintain or increase their spending.
52% of small businesses use professional outsourcing agencies regularly
Most often, they look for external providers with expertise in:
Small businesses turn to outsourcing to reduce expenses, fill skill gaps, and scale up their business.
Source: Clutch
That wraps up our outsourcing statistics report for 2026. The industry keeps growing, and the range of work companies delegate keeps widening. As we covered earlier, 92% of G2000 outsourcing customers delegate IT operations, and 59% delegate business processes, and contract value is growing at the fastest rate on record.
What changed in 2026 is the balance between the two halves of the market. Business process outsourcing returned to growth at 34% year over year after a 22% decline through 2025, while IT outsourcing contract value fell 3%. AI now appears in almost every sourcing relationship, though only a quarter of organizations report measurable cost reductions from it.
In fact, the outsourcing industry has become a contributor to many global economies. Thus, firms get the services faster and cheaper, and developing countries boost their growth.
If you decide to start outsourcing or look for remote experts for your project, don’t hesitate to contact us. Here at DOIT Software, we know how to hire IT professionals across the US, LATAM, and Eastern Europe, so we can provide recommendations tailored to your needs.
The short answer is yes. Adoption keeps widening, and organizations now hand over categories of work that used to stay in-house, including customer-facing and research functions.
At the same time, many of those organizations are bringing selected work back and running their own offshore centers. Outsourcing now operates alongside insourcing and captive centers inside the same company. The three run in parallel.
About 77% of companies outsource at least part of their IT. Most often, it’s cybersecurity and software development services.
Around 69% of companies report the same or lower cost for outsourced app development than for handling it internally, while only 54% rate the quality as better or on par.
The IT outsourcing market reached an estimated $854.6 billion in 2025. It accounts for 83% of the annual contract value of global outsourcing.
Companies often outsource manufacturing to Asian countries. For example, Dell to Lebanon, India, Poland, Malaysia, and China.
Citi and Oracle delegate IT operations to Eastern Europe, India, and the Philippines. American Express and AT&T also outsource customer service to the Philippines.
