A 1C programmer: in-house, freelancer or company — what to choose and how much it costs in Almaty

If there are enough 1C tasks for a full working day every month, an in-house programmer is more cost-effective. If customizations are needed from time to time (a report, a print form, loading from Excel, exchange with a website), it is cheaper to pay a company or a private specialist for specific tasks. A salary benchmark: as of 1 October 2026, in most hh.kz vacancies with a stated salary, Almaty employers offered 1C programmers with one to three years of experience from 300 000 to 600 000 ₸ per month net. On top of this amount, the company pays mandatory payroll charges and also covers vacation, a workstation and time to find a replacement. Below is a comparison of the three models by money, risks and responsibility, and a procedure for setting a task so that it can be estimated honestly.

Three models of working with a 1C programmer

• In-house programmer — an employee under an employment contract. You pay the salary every month regardless of workload, but they know your database and are available during working hours.
• Freelancer — a private specialist, usually working remotely. You pay per task or per hour. Everything depends on one person.
• Company — a 1C Company partner or another contractor with a team. You pay for estimated hours, under a contract with technical specifications, or with a package of hours. The organization is responsible for the result, not a specific contractor.

Comparison: in-house programmer, freelancer or company

	In-house programmer	Freelancer	Company
How you pay	Salary every month plus employer payments	Per task or per hour	Estimated hours, by specifications or with a package of hours
When it pays off	Constant full-time workload	One-off tasks with a clear result	Irregular tasks, but deadlines and a guarantee matter
Start speed	Immediately, if the employee is not busy with something else	Depends on their workload	Depends on the queue; the deadline is fixed in the contract
Vacation, illness, departure	Tasks wait; on resignation, one month's notice	No replacement	The task is handed to another specialist
Continuity	Knowledge stays with one person unless you require documentation	Risk of being left without source code and documentation of customizations	Documentation, source code and handover can be secured in the contract
Responsibility	You set tasks and accept work yourself	Under a contract with an individual or sole proprietor	Under a contract with an organization: deadlines, acceptance, bug fixing
Rights to customizations	With the employer, unless the contract says otherwise	Must be stated in the contract	Must be stated in the contract

The hourly rate by itself says little. Compare the full cost of solving the task: how many hours, what the work includes, who is responsible for errors and what happens if the contractor disappears.

How much an in-house 1C programmer costs in Almaty

Salaries in hh.kz vacancies

On 1 October 2026, almaty.hh.kz had 25 vacancies with “1C” in the title in the “Programmer, developer” category. A salary was stated in eight of them.

Required experience	Vacancies with salary	Employer's offer per month
No experience	1	from 250 000 ₸ net
1–3 years	6	in four: from 300 000 to 600 000 ₸ net; in two: 200 000–500 000 ₸ and from 500 000 ₸ before tax
3–6 years	1	550 000–700 000 ₸ before tax
Senior, lead, senior developer	0 of 7	salary not stated

How to read these figures:

• These are employer offers in job ads, not actual salaries. The sample is small, so take it as an order of magnitude, not an exact median.
• “Net” is the amount after deductions from the employee's salary; “before tax” is the accrued amount. They cannot be compared directly.
• Employers look for experienced developers who independently handle integrations and large customizations without an open salary range: their salary is discussed at the interview.

What the employer pays on top of the salary

The accrued salary is not the full cost of an employee. In 2026, the company pays from its own funds:

• social tax — 6%; since 2026, it is no longer reduced by the amount of social contributions;
• social contributions — 5% of the employee's income minus pension contributions, but on no more than 7 minimum wages per month (595 000 ₸ in 2026);
• employer mandatory pension contributions (OPVR) — 3.5% in 2026; they are not paid for employees born before 1 January 1975;
• compulsory social health insurance contributions.

Add to this a workstation and a computer, plus time for hiring and onboarding. Annual paid leave under the Labor Code is 24 calendar days, and all that time 1C tasks wait. An employee can resign on their own initiative by giving the employer at least one month's notice. A month is usually enough to hand over the work, but not always enough to find a replacement.

When an in-house programmer pays off

An in-house specialist is justified when 1C is the company's main working system and tasks come in a steady stream: several databases and exchanges between them, your own integrations with a website, warehouse or bank, regular changes for new processes. Even then, from day one you should require documentation of every customization and keep the code with a change history; otherwise, the departure of one person will stop the development of your accounting. For large projects, such as moving to a new configuration, an in-house programmer usually needs a contractor's help.

A 1C freelancer: flexible, but the risks are yours

A private specialist is convenient for a one-off task with a clear result: making a print form, a report or a price list import. You pay only for the work, with no fixed costs.

The risks come from having a single contractor:

• they get sick, leave or take on a large project, and your task stalls with no replacement;
• a private individual gets access to a database with commercial and personal data, so you need a separate user with limited rights and a confidentiality clause in the contract;
• source code and documentation of customizations often stay only with the contractor, and the next programmer starts by figuring out someone else's code.

How to formalize work with a freelancer

Paragraph 1-1 of Article 26 of the Labor Code prohibits signing a civil law contract with an individual if it has at least one feature of an employment contract from Article 27. These features are: work in a certain qualification, specialty, profession or position; personal performance of obligations subject to work rules; receiving wages for work. A contract with such a feature is recognized as an employment contract regardless of its title. So the scheme “our programmer on a civil law contract with a schedule and monthly pay” does not work.

If the contractor is an individual without sole proprietor registration, the company acts as a tax agent under the civil law contract: it withholds tax and contributions from the fee and, since 1 January 2025, also pays social contributions for the contractor. So for one-off tasks, a contract with a sole proprietor for a specific result and a certificate of completed work is more convenient, with no schedule, no subordination to work rules and no monthly “salary”. It is better to agree the contract wording with a lawyer.

What to include in a contract with a freelancer:

1. Result: what exactly must work and how you will check it.
2. Deadline and acceptance procedure.
3. Confidentiality of database data.
4. Transfer of source files and exclusive rights to the customization.
5. The period during which the contractor fixes found errors free of charge.

A company: you pay for the result and for a replacement contractor

Companies usually offer three payment formats:

• hourly payment with a preliminary estimate — for small tasks, when the scope is clear after analysis;
• a fixed amount based on technical specifications — for large customizations and integrations, with stages and the amount written in the contract;
• a package of hours or a subscription service — for a stream of small tasks, when a programmer is needed a few hours a month.

Advantages for the client: if the contractor falls ill or leaves, the task is handed to a colleague; the work is checked not only by its author; documentation, source code and bug-fixing periods are secured in the contract. It is convenient to order customizations from the same contractor who updates your database: they know what was changed in the configuration and take customizations into account during updates. Updates and 1C consultations are included in 1C support and 1C:ITS. What an ITS contract includes and how much it costs is covered in the article on 1C:ITS and its plans.

There are downsides too: a company has a task queue, and its rate includes a project manager and contractor replacement. So compare not the hourly rate but the final estimate of the task and what it includes.

A list of 1C Company partners in Kazakhstan with a city filter is published on 1c.kz in the “1C:Franchisees implementing 1C:Enterprise 8” section.

How to check a 1C programmer's qualifications

Certificates. 1C Company has two levels of certification. 1C:Professional is a test of knowledge of 1C programs. 1C:Specialist is a higher-level exam; only those who already have the 1C:Professional certificate are admitted to it. To verify certificates, ask the candidate to make their “1C Qualification Passport” public in their personal account on the 1C Company training center website and send you the link. A certificate does not replace experience, but it shows that the person knows the platform and standard configurations.

Interview questions. The answers show whether the programmer will leave things in order:

• How will you make the customization: in an extension or in the configuration itself? An extension lets you customize a standard configuration without removing it from support: when the updated program starts, the platform merges it with the extension again by itself. If the new release changed standard objects that the extension uses, the platform will detect this on connection, and the extension will have to be adjusted. If you change the configuration itself, it will have to be updated through comparison and merging, which takes longer and needs a programmer every time. More details are on the page about 1C updates.
• Where will the code and change history be stored? For team development, the platform has a configuration repository: it stores the version history, shows who changed what, and keeps developers' comments.
• Where will you develop and test the customization? The right answer is on a copy of the database. Working directly in the production database puts data at risk and stops users.

Test task. A small paid task from your list will show both the quality and how the person estimates deadlines.

How to set a task for a 1C programmer

The accuracy of the estimate depends on the task description. A good description answers seven questions:

1. What the result should be and what problem it solves.
2. An example of the result: an Excel table, a print form sample, a screenshot.
3. Who will use it and how often.
4. Which configuration and release, how many users, where the database runs: on a computer, on the company's server or in the cloud.
5. Whether there were customizations before and who made them.
6. How you will check the result: on which documents and figures.
7. By what date the result is needed.

Compare two descriptions of the same task.

Bad: “We need a sales report.”

Good: “We need a sales report for a period broken down by managers and product groups: revenue, cost, gross profit, filter by warehouse. An example is attached; we now build it manually in Excel once a week. It is used by the director and two managers. The configuration is 1C:Trade Management for Kazakhstan, the database is on a server, and there have been no customizations before. We will check it on September sales: the total must match the revenue in accounting.”

From the first description, a programmer can give only a “from–to” range. From the second, the number of hours and a deadline.

How to estimate the cost of a 1C customization

• Ask for an estimate in hours broken down by stage: task analysis, development, testing, transfer to the production database, documentation. This shows what you are paying for.
• An estimate without access to the database is preliminary. Other people's customizations, non-standard settings and an old release change the scope of work. The final estimate is given after reviewing the database.
• Record what is not included in the work. For example, transferring old data or training users.
• If the task has changed, a new estimate is needed before work continues, not an invoice “based on actual hours”.
• Accept the work on a copy of the database and only then transfer it to the production database.
• On handover, require a description of what was done, the source files (the extension file or a repository export) and a short user guide.

Warning signs:

• the contractor names a deadline and price without asking about the configuration or looking at the example;
• suggests working directly in the production database;
• changes the standard configuration where an extension would have been enough, and does not explain why;
• is not ready to describe what was done.

If the task is large (moving to another configuration, transferring accounting from 1C 7.7, launching a new program), it is no longer a customization but a project. It is estimated based on technical specifications and run in stages, as described on the page about turnkey 1C implementation. How much the programs and licenses themselves cost is covered in the article on the cost of 1C in Kazakhstan in 2026.

Summary: what to choose

• Full-time 1C workload every month, 1C is the main system. An in-house programmer with mandatory documentation of customizations and a code repository. A contractor for large projects.
• A one-off task with a clear result. A freelancer registered as a sole proprietor under a contract for a result, or a company with hourly payment.
• Irregular tasks; deadlines, contractor replacement and a guarantee matter. A company: hourly payment with an estimate or a package of hours.
• A large project. A company working from technical specifications with stages in the contract.

Checklist before starting with any contractor:

• the task is described using the seven questions above;
• there is an estimate in hours broken down by stage;
• work is done on a copy of the database;
• the customization is made in an extension where possible;
• the contract covers acceptance, confidentiality, transfer of source code and rights;
• after handover, you keep the documentation and source files.

AC PRO has worked with 1C in Almaty since 2018 and connects to databases remotely across Kazakhstan. If you want to understand which model suits your tasks, describe the task using the checklist above and send it to us. How we work with customizations is described on the page “1C programmer in Almaty”.