Colombia Call Center Outsourcing Costs
An outsourced call center agent in Colombia costs roughly $11 to $18 an hour, all in, and typically about $14. That is around 60% less than a US onshore agent, in a time zone that matches US Central or Eastern depending on the season. Bogota and Medellin are now two of the fastest-growing nearshore hubs in the Americas.
How Colombia compares on price
At $14 an hour, Colombia costs less than 9 of the other 18 countries in the index and more than 7. Jamaica and Jordan cost the same.
Why companies outsource to Colombia
- Time zone
- UTC-5
- Live US overlap: full
- English proficiency
- 480 Low
- EF English index 2025 · rank 63 of 123
- Working languages
- Spanish · English
- Primary support language: English
- 01
Market scale
Colombia has grown fast around Bogota and Medellin, helped by government investment in bilingual talent. It now rivals the established Caribbean and Central American nearshore markets for voice capacity.
- 02
Language and accent
Colombia has a growing pool of bilingual agents with a neutral Latin American accent that US callers follow easily. English is still developing nationally, so the strongest bilingual talent is in the big cities.
- 03
Time zone
Colombia stays on UTC-5 all year and skips daylight saving, so it matches US Eastern time in winter and US Central time in summer. Either way, its working day covers the US business day.
- 04
Best-fit work
Colombia fits bilingual voice, customer care, and sales support that needs live coverage during US hours, at well under half the US onshore rate.
How the rate moves
By channel
Chat, email and back office cost less: they don't run in real time, so one agent can work several conversations.
By complexity
The biggest lever on your rate, by far. A tier-3 specialist costs well over twice as much as a back-office agent.
Colombia call center cost breakdown
The hourly rate a vendor charges is not what the agent earns. Of a $14 rate in Colombia, roughly 30% reaches the agent as take-home pay ($2.80 to $5.60/hr). About 40% covers benefits, team leads and quality assurance, and the last 30% pays for technology, facilities and the vendor's margin. A quote far below the range usually means one of those layers is missing, not that the vendor is more efficient.
Outsourcing to Colombia, answered
How much does it cost to outsource customer service to Colombia?
About $14 an hour per agent, fully loaded, meaning the rate already covers pay, benefits, supervision, tools and facilities. Most vendors quote between $11 and $18. That works out to roughly $2,240 per agent per month at 160 billable hours, or about $537,600 a year for a 20-agent tier-1 voice team on business hours.
What does one call center agent cost per month in Colombia?
Roughly $2,240 a month for a full-time agent, at the typical $14 rate and 160 billable hours. Vendor quotes run from $1,760 to $2,880. That figure is for first-line (tier-1) voice support. A back-office agent costs closer to $1,792 a month, and a tier-3 specialist about $4,480.
What does a 10-agent call center team cost in Colombia?
About $22,400 a month, or $268,800 a year, for 10 tier-1 voice agents on business hours. Vendor quotes for the same team usually land between $17,600 and $28,800 a month. Round-the-clock coverage adds up to 25 percent.
Is Colombia cheaper than the Philippines?
No. Colombia averages $14 an hour, against $12 in the Philippines, so it costs about 17% more. For a 20-agent tier-1 voice team, that adds roughly $77K a year. It is still about 60% cheaper than a US onshore agent at $35.
What drives the price of call center outsourcing in Colombia?
Complexity, more than anything else. In Colombia, a back-office agent costs about $11.20 an hour, first-line (tier-1) support $14.00, tier-2 $19.04 and a tier-3 specialist $28.00. Switching from voice to email moves the rate far less, from $14.00 to $11.20. Round-the-clock coverage adds a shift premium of up to 25 percent.
Methodology and sourcesRate data v2026.2 · May 2026
- 01
Rates are billable US dollars an hour, fully loaded, drawn from vendor disclosures and the contracts rethinkCX sees when running outsourcing engagements. Refreshed quarterly.
- 02
Channel, complexity, and shift-premium multipliers come from Crescendo.ai 2026 and Business.com shift-differential data.
- 03
English proficiency scores come from the EF English Proficiency Index 2025 (123 countries). Time-zone offsets are standard time, per the IANA time-zone database.
Using this data. The BPO Cost Index is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. You can republish the figures, chart them, or build on them, commercially or otherwise, as long as you credit the source: “Colombia call center outsourcing costs, rethinkCX BPO Cost Index, rethinkcx.com”.
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