Men’s and women’s cycling prize money

One-day races, the whole race

Stage races, one stage against one stage

A stage race is compared one stage against one stage rather than whole against whole. The UCI sets the men's grand tours a single figure covering every stage and the general classification together instead of a stage count, so a whole-race total for the men's side would have to be built on a number nobody publishes. One stage against one stage is the same day of racing on both calendars, and it is the comparison the scale actually makes.

The same race, drawn to the same scale

What each calendar is obliged to put up

Both charts run against the same €50,000, so a bar on one is the same length as a bar of the same value on the other. The men's chart carries a bar the women's has no equivalent for. A Women's WorldTour one-day race is obliged €7,700 whether it is Paris-Roubaix Femmes or the Classic Lorient Agglomération, where the men's calendar prices its one-day races on two rates: €50,000 for race group 1 and €40,000 for group 2.

Where the gap actually is

The two ladders, place by place, on the same day of racing

The gap quoted about cycling is the winner's gap, and it is the widest number on the scale. Read down the ladder instead and it closes: 11.8× at the win, 4.0× at ninth and 3.8× at 20th place. It does not fall in a straight line, because the men's ladder pays flat bands where the women's keeps stepping, and both ladders run to exactly twenty places.

A one-day classic

One stage of a stage race

The stage table crosses over. From 10th to 15th place a Women's WorldTour stage pays more than a men's WorldTour stage: €170 against €100 at 10th, and €110 against €100 for the five places below it. The men's ladder flattens to €100 from tenth down while the women's keeps stepping, so on six places of the same day's racing the women's rider is the better paid one.

Where the two calendars already meet

Four places on the 2026 scale where the gap is not there

World Championships prize money is the one place the scale pays a men's win and a women's win the same number at elite level, and what a cycling team is paid, and pays covers the allowance and the registration fee, where the gap runs the other way: a men's WorldTeam pays 8.3× what a Women's WorldTeam pays to be registered at all.

Where to next

The whole UCI prize money scale holds all thirty-two ladders place by place, including the twenty that pay the races above. World Championships prize money is where the two calendars pay the same figure. What a cycling team is paid, and pays covers the money that never reaches a rider. What a professional cyclist is paid runs the same men's against women's comparison on salaries and team budgets rather than prizes. And cycling is the whole section, all 61 races on the 2026 calendar.