How many European firms outsource part of their IT?

In Eurostat's 2024 survey, 71.9% of EU enterprises with 10 or more employees and self-employed persons said outside suppliers performed some of their ICT functions, and Germany stood at 77.2%. Only 44.8% of EU firms used external suppliers alone, so a good part of the outsourcing runs next to an in-house team.

What does Eurostat actually measure?

Eurostat publishes the share of enterprises whose ICT functions are performed by external suppliers in its dataset isoc_ske_fct, titled "Enterprises - ICT functions performed by size class of enterprise". The latest year in the dataset is 2024, and the dataset was last updated on 15 June 2026. The figures come from the European survey on ICT usage and e-commerce in enterprises, which national statistical offices run on a model questionnaire from Eurostat.

The question is set in law. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1507 lists the data that Member States must send for reference year 2024. Two of its variables ask separately about "performance of ICT functions (such as maintenance of ICT infrastructure, support for office software, development or support of business management software/systems and/or web solutions, security and data protection)" by own employees, including those employed in parent or affiliate enterprises, and by external suppliers. Both refer to the previous calendar year.

Three details decide how to read the numbers, and each one limits what a reader can conclude from a headline percentage.

• The base is enterprises with 10 or more persons employed, and Eurostat's methodology page says the annual survey covers enterprises with at least 10 employees and self-employed persons, while the dataset's activity filter excludes agriculture, mining and the financial sector. Micro-enterprises are optional and are not in the figures below.

• The unit is the percentage of enterprises, and the survey does not count jobs or spending, so a firm that buys one hour of IT support a year counts the same as a firm that outsources its whole IT department.

• The two yes-or-no answers overlap, because a firm can report both own employees and external suppliers, and the shares for "own" and "external" therefore add up to more than 100%.

Eurostat's metadata notes that, among about 1.53 million EU enterprises with at least 10 employees and self-employed persons, roughly 83% are small (10 to 49), 14% medium (50 to 249) and 3% large (250 or more). The headline figure therefore mostly describes small firms.

How many European firms use external IT suppliers?

For the EU as a whole, Eurostat's 2024 figures for enterprises with 10 or more persons employed show that 71.92% had ICT functions performed by external suppliers and 39.52% by own employees. Only external suppliers performed them in 44.78% of firms, and only own employees in 13.55%.

The result has barely moved. For the EU, the "external suppliers" share was 70.9% in 2019, 70.55% in 2020, 72.46% in 2022 and 71.92% in 2024. For Germany it was 75.69%, 75.23%, 77.45% and 77.17% in the same years. Both series move by less than three percentage points over five years, so a buyer should expect the next round to look much like this one.

One caution on the older data. Before 2019 the dataset holds a different question, which asked what was "mainly" performed by external suppliers. Its last values are for 2018, when the EU figure for ICT functions mainly performed by external suppliers was 52.82%. We do not combine the two series, because they ask different things.

Where does Germany stand against other countries?

In 2024 Germany's 77.17% for any use of external suppliers is above the EU figure of 71.92%. Among the 27 Member States it ranks ninth. The highest values are Cyprus (84.53%), the Netherlands (84.27%) and Malta (84.09%), and the lowest are Latvia (48.29%), Bulgaria (51.42%) and Austria (57.87%). France is at 61.46%, Spain at 73.87%, Italy at 71.86% and Poland at 78.48%.

The picture changes once the question is "external suppliers only". Germany's 34.84% is below the EU's 44.78%, and it ranks 23rd of 27. The highest values are Lithuania (68.67%), Poland (61.35%) and Italy (57.00%), and the lowest are Finland (23.88%), Latvia (29.23%) and Luxembourg (32.46%).

Our reading is that German firms use outside suppliers about as often as firms elsewhere, but they are more likely to keep an in-house team alongside. German firms report own employees at 50.37%, against 39.52% for the EU. Eurostat does not give a reason for the difference, so the cause is open.

Single-country changes between survey rounds can be large. The Netherlands moved from 75.63% in 2022 to 84.27% in 2024, and Austria fell from 66.58% to 57.87% over the same two years. We did not find a sampling error next to each value. We therefore treat gaps of a few percentage points between countries as within the noise and use the ranking only as a rough guide.

Does company size change the answer?

Yes. Use of external suppliers rises by 13 points from the smallest to the largest group, while use of own employees rises by 53.

In the EU in 2024, firms with 10 to 49 persons show 70.19% using external suppliers, 34.44% using own employees and 47.92% using external suppliers only. For firms with 50 to 249 persons the three values are 79.67%, 59.28% and 33.62%, and for firms with 250 or more persons they are 83.29%, 87.23% and 10.24%.

In Germany the same three groups give 75.98%, 81.87% and 83.54% for external suppliers, and 38.42%, 22.63% and 6.27% for external suppliers only. Among firms with 250 or more persons, only 10.24% in the EU and 6.27% in Germany rely on suppliers alone, and 13.68% and 12.3% rely on their own staff alone. Suppliers-only is most common among the smallest group, at 47.92% in the EU.

What does this say about outsourcing software development?

Very little, directly. The 2024 figure bundles maintenance, office software support, business software, web solutions, security and data protection into one yes-or-no answer. A firm can tick "external suppliers" for security alone.

The dataset does hold the function-level questions, but only up to 2018. In that round Eurostat asked which party mainly performed each function. For the EU, the development of business management software or systems was mainly done by external suppliers in 45.07% of enterprises, and the development of web solutions in 50.29%. For Germany the values are 41.34% and 52.27%. These figures are eight years old and use the "mainly" wording, so they are context and not a current measure.

What should a buyer take from the numbers?

This section is our addition. It turns the Eurostat figures into a way of reading them, and it is not a forecast. The first point is to use the right comparison. If a board paper says "72% of European firms outsource IT", the accurate version is that 72% of firms with 10 or more persons employed used external suppliers for at least one ICT function in the 2024 survey. The second is to compare like with like: for a mid-sized German firm, the closest row is the 50 to 249 group, where 81.87% use external suppliers and 22.63% use them alone.

It also helps to ask about the split, and not only the share. Many firms in the survey mix their own employees with suppliers, so the useful question for a plan is which functions stay in-house. The figure should not be read as a quality verdict either, because it counts firms and says nothing about cost, results or satisfaction. Finally, check the date. The next round could change the picture, and the Eurostat table gives no 2025 value.

If part of your plan is an external engineering team, we describe how we work, the services we offer, and what dedicated teams cover on our site.

What we could not confirm

We could not read Germany's national table. Destatis publishes its ICT indicators in the GENESIS database (table 52911-0004), which needs JavaScript or an access token, so our German figures come from Eurostat's dataset. We expect them to match because national offices supply Eurostat with data, but we did not check. Every figure in this article comes from one publisher, Eurostat, and the other documents we opened, the Commission regulation, Eurostat's metadata and the Destatis quality report for 2024, confirm the question and the base, not the percentages.

We could not find how Eurostat builds the "own only" and "external only" indicators. The shares for "external only" and "own only" leave about 42% of EU firms in neither group, and we do not know whether they use both or give no answer. We found no source for how many firms hand software development to suppliers in 2024, since the function-level values end in 2018.

We found no Eurostat value later than 2024, and we did not check whether the next round, due for survey year 2026, repeats this question. We also found no standard errors for the single-country values.