The Polish IT sector has long benefited from a simple advantage: it offered expertise comparable to that of Western Europe at significantly lower costs. This model still works, but its economic viability is rapidly deteriorating. An increasing proportion of the value of Polish software today stems not from the number of hours sold, but from specialisation, proprietary products, technology and intellectual property.
The sector is already substantial in scale. According to PARP, sales of IT and ICT services by Polish companies amounted to nearly PLN 270 billion in 2023. Around one-third of the revenue of companies providing ICT services came from exports, the value of which increased almost eightfold over the decade. Exports of IT services alone reached €14.25 billion in 2023. Poland sold more of these services abroad than Japan or South Korea.
However, this is not merely a story of growing volumes. The nature of exports is changing.
Poland’s cost advantage is becoming less obvious. Eurostat reports that in 2025, hourly labour costs in Poland rose by 8.8 per cent in local currency, whilst the average for the European Union as a whole was 4.1 per cent. In the first quarter of 2026, Polish costs were already a further 6.5 per cent higher than a year earlier.
For the software industry, this signals the gradual end of a model in which the key selling point was cheaper software developers from Central Europe. Poland remains price-competitive compared with the largest Western economies, but this advantage is no longer sufficient as a stand-alone strategy.
Generative AI is creating additional pressure. If a software developer can produce more code in the same unit of time, the economic value of an hour’s work alone begins to fall. Conversely, the importance of architecture, security, data, integration, sector-specific experience and the ability to take responsibility for the entire product is growing.
PARP also describes this shift on the demand side. The Polish software development market is moving towards more complex projects, greater efficiency and higher profitability. Clients are showing greater interest in cloud competencies, cybersecurity and AI, and less in simply increasing team sizes.
Most evident, however, is the model of companies that have stopped selling time altogether.
Wrocław-based Text is developing its own communication and customer service software, used by over 40,000 customers in 150 countries. In August 2026, the company reported an ARR of $89.52 million and held seven patents in the US. Expansion here does not involve sending further development teams to overseas clients. The company develops its product in Poland and then sells access to the same technology multiple times around the world.
An even more extreme example is provided by CD PROJEKT. In 2025, the group achieved revenue of PLN 867 million, whilst net profit from continuing operations amounted to PLN 521 million. One of the main sources of sales remained *Cyberpunk 2077*, a product released several years earlier. At the same time, the company allocated over PLN 513 million to further productions and is developing its own new brand, Hadar.
Gaming is, of course, not classic B2B software, but the economic mechanism is the same: intellectual property allows revenue growth to be separated from a proportional increase in employment.
This is precisely where a significant dividing line lies in the development of the Polish technology sector. Outsourcing scales primarily through people. A product, platform or proprietary technology, on the other hand, can scale through customers.
This does not spell the end of IT services. Poland still has over 100,000 ICT entities, and most of the sector’s larger firms operate precisely in the services sector. What is more, cloud transformation, cybersecurity and AI implementations will continue to require large teams of specialists.
However, the source of profit is changing. The easier it becomes to produce code as a commodity, the more value shifts towards domain expertise, proprietary technology, data and IP. Polish software does not, therefore, have to cease being a service. It must, however, stop competing primarily on the basis of labour costs.
Exporting knowledge is more difficult to establish than exporting man-hours. On the other hand, it is much harder to replace it with a cheaper supplier.
