DOU found that the median «age» of an IT sole proprietorship in Ukraine is almost four years, but the industry is still losing thousands of entrepreneurs: in just ten months of 2025, significantly more sole proprietorships closed than opened.
DOU found that the median «age» of an IT sole proprietorship in Ukraine is almost four years, but the industry is still losing thousands of entrepreneurs: in just ten months of 2025, significantly more sole proprietorships closed than opened.
DOU published fresh statistics with reference to Opendatabot data. Analysts estimated that every sixth IT entrepreneur ceases operations in the first year of operation, and about a third last from one to four years. At the same time, there are extreme cases: the oldest individual entrepreneur that closed this year was opened back in 1991 and existed on the market for 34 years.
The median «life» of an IT FOP of almost four years means that some businesses go through the initial turbulence and operate longer, while others do not survive to the point of stable income. Despite this, FOPs remain the main form of cooperation in IT: in 2025, 57% of specialists work this way, while last year there were 70% of them, and in 2022 — 87%. Another 19% of IT professionals switched to gig contracts in the Diya City mode, which is gradually changing the structure of the market.
In the first ten months of 2025, 18,605 new IT-FOPs appeared in Ukraine, while 26,158 entrepreneurs closed down. As a result, the industry lost 7,553 FOPs — about three times more than in the same period last year. The largest number of new registrations was recorded in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions, but almost everywhere the number of closures exceeds the number of openings.
Only two regions have a positive balance: in Volyn +19 IT-FOPs were recorded, in Ternopil region +12. Among new entrepreneurs, men predominate, as they account for 57% of registrations, the share of women is 43% and does not dominate in any region.
Taken together, these data show that IT entrepreneurship in Ukraine has both «long-livers» and a high level of attrition. Some specialists move to hiring or City Action, some close down sole proprietorships, and stories of entrepreneurs who have been working for decades are becoming the exception rather than the usual practice for the market.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how in October the Ukrainian IT market added more individual entrepreneurs than new companies: 3,338 individual entrepreneurs and 342 legal entities were registered. Compared to September, there were 99 fewer companies, but 246 more individual entrepreneurs.
