Know what QA really costs.

The testing budget is only part of it. Add the engineering time, waiting and rework to see the full picture.

Your team, your numbers.

Start with your setup. Adjust as you go.
Loads salary starting points. Adjust them to match your team.
Annual, fully loaded: salary, employer tax and benefits.

Estimated total annual QA cost

per year · conservative assumptions
QA budget £120,000
Engineering time
Overhead

Estimates use your inputs and adjustable cost assumptions. Regional salaries and currency rates are fixed reference values; results are not a savings guarantee.

Adjust and see the working

Process and assumptions.

Context switching: 10% of QA time. Waiting on QA: 8% of engineering payroll when internal or outsourced QA is present. Rework effort: 1.0×. Release delay: 5% of engineering payroll, multiplied by 1.5 with outsourced QA.

Separate from the QA total

Production incident exposure.

£240,000per year

An annualised estimate of the cost of defects reaching production. This is kept separate from your QA total.

Include lost revenue, credits, remediation and engineering time.

Where the money goes.

QA budget £120,000
Internal QA salaries2 QA staff × 60,000 loaded
£120,000
Engineering time
Engineer time spent on QA20 engineers × 15% of their time
Rework after QA15% of releases need fixes, at 1.0× effort
Overhead
Context-switching drag10% productivity penalty on QA time
Engineer idle time (handoffs)8% of engineering time waiting on QA cycles
Release-delay costCost of slower cadence while testing blocks release
Total annual QA cost
How the estimate is calculated

QA budget. Internal QA headcount × loaded annual salary, plus monthly outsourced spend × 12.

Engineering time. Engineering payroll × the share of time on QA. Rework is modelled as payroll × the share of releases needing rework × the selected effort multiplier.

Overhead. Context switching applies to QA labour; waiting and release delay apply to engineering payroll using the selected assumptions. These are modelled costs and may overlap in your own accounting.

Regional defaults. Salary starting points are from Antidote’s May 2026 market workbook. They are editable assumptions, not live salary data.

Currency. GBP is the model’s base currency. Fixed reference rates from 3 Aug 2026: £1 = $1.3483 = €1.1688. Switching currency converts both inputs and outputs.

Scope. This estimates your current QA costs. It does not predict savings or quote Antidote pricing. Production incident exposure is calculated separately.

Start with one journey.

Pick the flow that costs you most when it breaks. We agree the targets up front. You judge the result.

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