IT consulting firms vs. product companies: H-1B pay
Published November 10, 2026 · Data through FY2026 Q3
If you work in tech on an H-1B visa, one of the biggest factors in your pay is the type of company that sponsors you. This guide compares two groups of employers in U.S. Department of Labor Labor Condition Application (LCA) data: large IT consulting and services firms, and large technology product companies. The gap between them is wide. Part of it comes from the kinds of jobs each group files for, and part of it remains even when you compare similar jobs.
The data covers fiscal years FY2025–FY2026. FY2026 includes only Q1–Q3 so far (the federal fiscal year runs October 1 to September 30). All figures are annual base salaries from certified LCA filings. They do not include bonuses or stock, which can be a large share of pay at product companies. A certified LCA is not a visa approval, and one filing can cover more than one worker.
Who is in each group
The two groups are Wage Record's own selection of large, well-known H-1B employers. They are not an official classification, and other reasonable lists would give somewhat different results.
IT consulting and services firms (14): Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Tech Mahindra, Accenture, Capgemini, LTIMindtree, Mphasis, Deloitte, EY, IBM and NTT DATA.
Product companies (17): Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, LinkedIn, Tesla, Uber, Intuit and ServiceNow.
Together the consulting group accounts for 92,677 certified filings in the window, and the product group for 129,799. For context, the full dataset holds 931,595 filings with an overall median of $122,699.
The headline gap
| Group | Filings | 10th pct. | 25th pct. | Median | 75th pct. | 90th pct. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consulting firms | 92,677 | $81,328 | $90,874 | $110,906 | $138,445 | $175,000 |
| Product companies | 129,799 | $123,000 | $142,800 | $169,262 | $196,112 | $224,682 |
The median filing at a product company lists $169,262, which is $58,356 (about 53%) more than the consulting median of $110,906. The consulting median sits below the overall median for all H-1B filings; the product median sits well above it.
The ranges barely overlap in the middle. The 25th percentile at product companies ($142,800) is higher than the 75th percentile at consulting firms ($138,445).
Software engineers only
Comparing all jobs mixes very different roles. Restricting both groups to software engineer filings narrows the gap but does not close it.
| Software engineer | Filings | 25th pct. | Median | 75th pct. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consulting firms | 12,200 | $114,652 | $135,000 | $159,171 |
| Product companies | 65,619 | $152,027 | $175,000 | $200,000 |
The software engineer median is $40,000 (about 30%) higher at product companies. Software engineering is also far more central to the product group: 65,619 of its 129,799 filings are for this occupation, compared with 12,200 of 92,677 at the consulting firms.
Job mix and wage levels explain part of the gap
Every LCA lists one of four prevailing wage levels, from Level I (entry) to Level IV (fully competent). The two groups file at different levels:
| Wage level | Consulting share | Consulting median | Product share | Product median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level I | 5% | $87,651 | 12% | $129,000 |
| Level II | 54% | $94,760 | 40% | $162,200 |
| Level III | 27% | $121,514 | 28% | $178,006 |
| Level IV | 15% | $155,000 | 20% | $208,603 |
Over half of consulting filings (54%) are at Level II, compared with 40% at product companies. Product companies file a larger share at Level IV (20% vs. 15%). Since higher levels pay more, this mix pulls the product-company median up.
Mix is not the whole story. Within each level, the product median is higher: by about 47% at Level I, 71% at Level II, 46% at Level III and 35% at Level IV. Even at Level I, the product median ($129,000) is above the consulting Level III median ($121,514).
The tightest like-for-like comparison in the data is software engineers at Level II. There, consulting firms report a median of $122,000 (5,693 filings) and product companies $170,600 (22,613 filings), a difference of $48,600, or about 40%.
Other factors that this comparison does not separate also matter, such as where the work is located.
Pay varies a lot within each group
Neither group is uniform.
| Consulting firm | Filings | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Cognizant | 16,913 | $109,886 |
| EY | 14,593 | $147,396 |
| Deloitte | 11,047 | $127,500 |
| Tata Consultancy Services | 10,673 | $87,589 |
| Infosys | 10,391 | $92,581 |
| HCLTech | 4,637 | $112,923 |
| Accenture | 4,359 | $134,347 |
| Capgemini | 4,138 | $130,000 |
| LTIMindtree | 3,747 | $105,227 |
| Wipro | 3,723 | $95,326 |
| IBM | 3,341 | $126,818 |
| Mphasis | 2,466 | $120,000 |
| Tech Mahindra | 1,839 | $105,997 |
| NTT DATA | 810 | $123,864 |
Among consulting firms, EY has the highest median ($147,396) and Tata Consultancy Services the lowest ($87,589). The firms with large advisory practices (EY, Deloitte, Accenture) and Capgemini and IBM sit well above the India-headquartered outsourcing firms such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro.
| Product company | Filings | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 42,644 | $155,000 |
| 16,005 | $186,000 | |
| Microsoft | 14,273 | $172,759 |
| Apple | 11,810 | $174,304 |
| Meta | 11,568 | $208,000 |
| Tesla | 5,171 | $150,000 |
| Intel | 4,565 | $130,291 |
| NVIDIA | 4,234 | $186,197 |
| Salesforce | 3,338 | $200,000 |
| Qualcomm | 3,229 | $140,800 |
| Cisco | 2,419 | $147,508 |
| Adobe | 2,171 | $184,000 |
| Oracle | 2,111 | $143,062 |
| 1,937 | $177,681 | |
| Uber | 1,589 | $190,800 |
| ServiceNow | 1,450 | $147,742 |
| Intuit | 1,285 | $179,171 |
Meta has the highest product-company median ($208,000) and Intel the lowest ($130,291). Amazon alone files about a third of the product group's filings, so its $155,000 median weighs heavily on the group figure. The highest-paying consulting firm, EY, has a median close to Cisco's and above Intel's, Qualcomm's and Oracle's.
What this means for you
- If you are comparing offers across the two types of employer, compare the same job title and wage level, not company-wide medians.
- Base salary is only part of pay. These figures leave out bonuses and stock, which this data cannot show.
- A single company's median reflects its own job and location mix. Look at the company and occupation pages for more detail.
This guide is for general information and is not legal, tax or immigration advice.
How we calculated this
We took certified H-1B LCA filings for FY2025 and FY2026 (Q1–Q3), annualized the listed base wage, and grouped filings by employer using Wage Record's employer name matching. Medians and percentiles are calculated across filings in each group. Wage levels are as stated on each filing. See the full methodology.