Gergely Orosz hands TechPays to Levels.fyi, and the European salary data stays free

Gergely Orosz has sold TechPays to Levels.fyi. The European tech-salary database he built will keep running, now under the team behind the global comp site, and the data stays free to browse.

Orosz, who writes The Pragmatic Engineer, started TechPays in 2021 with Zsombor Erdődy-Nagy because European pay data was a black box. US engineers had Levels.fyi and Glassdoor; Europeans had rumors and a recruiter’s word. TechPays let people see anonymized packages, currency by currency, and it surfaced a tier of compensation a lot of strong engineers didn’t know they could reach. That gap is exactly what Levels.fyi says it’s buying.

What we know

Both companies confirmed the deal the same day in 2 matching posts, and the confirmed facts are short and clear: the database changes hands, the site keeps running, and reading it stays free. The open questions are about money and mechanics, not whether the deal happened. Here’s what each side put on the record.

• Gergely Orosz and Zsombor Erdődy-Nagy, who built TechPays in 2021, sold it to Levels.fyi. Levels.fyi confirmed the deal in its own post, calling TechPays “the leading compensation database for tech workers across Europe”. Orosz announced it the same day on The Pragmatic Engineer.
• TechPays keeps operating. “Levels.fyi will be taking over operating TechPays”, Orosz wrote, and the site itself doesn’t change for readers.
• Orosz gave the reason plainly. “Both Zsombor and I got busier with other projects,” he wrote, with The Pragmatic Engineer eating most of his time. “We wanted to find a way to keep TechPays running, and get the care it deserves.”
• Levels.fyi plans to fold European conventions into its main platform. “In the coming months, you can expect Levels.fyi to reflect the way pay is actually discussed in Europe, including monthly comp, net figures, local currencies, and more,” the company wrote. Anyone who’s tried to compare a Berlin net-monthly offer to a Bay Area total-comp number knows why that matters.
• The why-it-mattered case is concrete. Orosz has long argued European salaries are trimodal: most jobs cluster in a low band, a middle band sits above it, and a top band pays multiples more. His own example: a role he held at roughly £93K in London was worth €220K to €250K at a company like Uber. Engineers who don’t know the top band exists don’t interview for it.

What we don’t know

The 2 announcement posts confirm the deal but leave the mechanics open.

• No financial terms from either side. Neither the Pragmatic Engineer post nor Levels.fyi discloses a price, an earnout, or whether Orosz and Erdődy-Nagy keep any stake or advisory role.
• How the two products merge. Levels.fyi says European data will flow into its global platform, but it hasn’t said whether TechPays stays a standalone site long-term or eventually redirects.
• Whether the European data stays free forever. Browsing is free today and Levels.fyi’s own data has always been free to read, but the post stops short of a permanent commitment, and it leans on participation: “pay transparency only works when people participate.”
• What happens to TechPays’ contribution model and moderation under new ownership.

Who reported it

This isn’t a leak. Both parties announced it on the same day: Orosz on his own blog and Levels.fyi co-founders Zuhayeer Musa and Zaheer Mohiuddin on the Levels.fyi blog. The two posts cross-link, so the confirmed facts come straight from the people doing the deal.

What this means for you

If you’re an engineer in Europe, the practical upside is consolidation: one place that understands both US-style total comp and the monthly-net way pay actually gets quoted in Munich, Amsterdam, or Lisbon. That’s genuinely useful when you’re benchmarking an offer and the recruiter’s “competitive package” tells you nothing. The catch worth watching is independence. TechPays was a small, founder-run project with no incentive to slant the numbers; Levels.fyi is a venture-backed company with recruiting and salary-negotiation products attached. None of that makes the data worse, and Levels.fyi’s transparency track record is strong. But if you’ve leaned on these sites the way many of us do before a negotiation, keep an eye on how the data model and free access hold up once the platforms merge. For now, browse it, contribute your own number, and cross-check against a second source the way you should anyway. The same caution applies to any company-published comp or spend figures you can’t independently verify, and it’s the same instinct you’d use reading a layoff story from one side only.