What a professional cyclist is paid
The median rider on the WorldTour is paid €350,000, and Tadej Pogačar is paid €8,000,000. The ten highest paid riders in the sport cost €42,000,000 between them, which is 1.27 times what an average men's WorldTeam spends on everything it has.
Every figure on this page is base salary, not prize money and not personal sponsorship. The gap is the whole point: the UCI obliges the Tour de France to put up €1,000,000 across the entire race, and one rider's salary is 8 times that.
The ten highest paid riders
Base salary, and the team that pays it
| # | Rider | Salary | Times the median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tadej Pogačar UAE Team Emirates-XRG | €8,000,000€8.0m | 22.9× |
| 2 | Remco Evenepoel Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe | €6,600,000€6.6m | 18.9× |
| 3 | Jonas Vingegaard Visma | Lease a Bike | €5,000,000€5.0m | 14.3× |
| 4 | Mathieu van der Poel Alpecin-Deceuninck | €4,000,000€4.0m | 11.4× |
| 5 | Wout van Aert Visma | Lease a Bike | €4,000,000€4.0m | 11.4× |
| 6 | Primož Roglič Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe | €4,000,000€4.0m | 11.4× |
| 7 | Tom Pidcock Pinarello-Q36.5 | €2,700,000€2.7m | 7.7× |
| 8 | Adam Yates UAE Team Emirates-XRG | €2,700,000€2.7m | 7.7× |
| 9 | Egan Bernal INEOS Grenadiers | €2,500,000€2.5m | 7.1× |
| 10 | Carlos Rodríguez INEOS Grenadiers | €2,500,000€2.5m | 7.1× |
| All ten together | €42,000,000€42.0m | 120.0× |
Tadej Pogačar is paid 3.2 times what the tenth name on this list is paid, and the list itself covers ten riders out of a peloton the size of a small town. The €42,000,000 they cost between them is 6.3% of everything the 20 men's WorldTour teams spend, and 1.27 times what one average team spends on its whole roster and staff together.
Below these names the sport stops publishing individuals and starts publishing averages, which is the next section. That is also why this page is one page rather than five hundred: rider eleven and rider four hundred are both on the minimum, and the minimum is one figure.
What the sport pays on average
The two contract types, and the rider in the middle
| Contract | 2026 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-employed | €654,000 | €636,000 | +2.8% |
| Employed | €384,000 | €366,000 | +4.9% |
| Median rider | €350,000 | — | — |
A self-employed rider averages 1.70 times an employed one, and that is not the same as being better paid. A self-employed rider covers their own social charges, insurance and pension out of the figure, where an employed rider's team pays those on top of it. It is why the two averages cannot be added together or averaged into one number, and why the highest floor in the sport is the self-employed one.
The median matters more than either of them. It sits 9.7% below the employed average, which is the shape of the sport in one figure: a small number of riders at the top pull the mean up and away from the rider in the middle of the peloton, who is on €350,000. We hold a salary for the ten riders in the table above and no individual figure below them, so the median is the sport's own number rather than an average of the names we can list.
Both averages rose: employed from €366,000 to €384,000, self-employed from €636,000 to €654,000.
The floor, by contract and by calendar
What a team may not pay less than
| Contract | Minimum | Share of the median |
|---|---|---|
| Men’s WorldTour, self-employed | €72,404 | 20.7% |
| Men’s WorldTour, employed | €44,150 | 12.6% |
| Women’s WorldTour, employed | €38,000 | 10.9% |
| Men’s WorldTour neo-pro | €35,721 | 10.2% |
| Women’s WorldTour neo-pro | €31,768 | 9.1% |
A neo-pro is a rider in their first or second year on a WorldTeam, and the rate is lower on the women's calendar at both career stages: €38,000 against €44,150 for an employed rider. The median rider earns 11.0 times the lowest of these five rates, and Tadej Pogačar earns 252 times it.
The whole range on one axis
The highest paid rider in the sport, the average on each contract type, the rider in the middle, and the lowest floor on either calendar. Tadej Pogačar's bar is 252 times the one at the bottom of it.
Where the money comes from
What the two WorldTours spend, and on how many teams
| Calendar | Teams | Total spend | Average team | Median team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s WorldTour | 20 | €663,000,000€663.0m | €33,100,000€33.1m | €28,000,000€28.0m |
| Women’s WorldTour | 14 | €80,000,000€80.0m | €5,714,286€5.7m | — |
An average men's WorldTeam runs on €33,100,000 and an average women's team on €5,714,286, a gap of 5.8 times. That is the same gap the prize money comparison measures race by race, arrived at from the other end of the sport. We hold no median for the women's calendar, only the total and the team count.
The men's average rose from €31,600,000 to €33,100,000, up 4.7%, and the number of teams it is averaged across moved from 18 to 20 in the same year, because Tudor and Pinarello-Q36.5 hold automatic WorldTour invitations and budgets in the same bracket. The median team is on €28,000,000, which is €5,100,000 below the average: the skew that separates the median rider from the mean separates the median team from the mean in exactly the same way.
Why prize money is not how a cyclist gets paid
Every other page in this section is about prize money, and none of it reaches a rider the way a salary does. Two reasons, and both are facts about how the sport is organised rather than caveats on a figure.
The first is that it is pooled. A team shares its prize money across its riders and its staff, so the rider who crossed the line first is not the person paid for crossing it. The second is scale. A men's race group 1 classic is obliged to pay its winner €20,000, and Tadej Pogačar's salary is worth 400 of those wins. The Tour de France, the largest single obligation on the whole UCI scale, is €1,000,000 across three weeks and every classification in the race, which is 12.5% of one salary.
It is also why the floor matters more here than the ceiling. A rider on €31,768 who finishes tenth in a classic collects €500 before the team pools it, so the salary is not a retainer on top of a living made from results. It is the living.
The whole UCI prize money scale holds all thirty-two ladders place by place. Tour de France prize money sets out what the biggest race on the calendar is obliged to pay, stage by stage. And what a cycling team is paid, and pays covers the participation allowances and the registration fees, which are not prize money either.
Cycling rider salary questions
How much does a professional cyclist earn?
The median rider on the WorldTour is paid €350,000. The average is higher on both contract types, €384,000 for an employed rider and €654,000 for a self-employed one, because the riders at the top of the sport pull the mean away from the rider in the middle of the peloton.
Who is the highest paid cyclist?
Tadej Pogačar of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, on €8,000,000. That is 22.9 times the median rider, 252 times the lowest minimum in the sport, and 3.2 times what the tenth highest paid rider is on.
What is the minimum salary for a professional cyclist?
Men’s WorldTour, self-employed is €72,404, and the lowest floor anywhere on the scale is women’s worldtour neo-pro at €31,768. A self-employed rider’s minimum is the higher one because the social charges, the insurance and the pension come out of it, where an employed rider’s team pays those on top.
Do cyclists keep their prize money?
Not individually. Cycling prize money is pooled by the team and shared out, staff included, so a win is not a payment to the rider who crossed the line first. It is also small beside a salary: the UCI obliges the Tour de France to put up €1,000,000 across the entire race, and the highest paid rider in the sport is on 8 times that in base salary alone.
How much does it cost to run a cycling team?
The 20 men’s WorldTour teams spend €663,000,000 between them, an average of €33,100,000 each and a median of €28,000,000. The 14 women’s WorldTour teams spend €80,000,000, an average of €5,714,286.
Does a cyclist’s salary include prize money and sponsorship?
No. Every figure here is base salary. Prize money is pooled and shared across the team, and personal sponsorship is negotiated by the rider outside the team contract. Tadej Pogačar’s €8,000,000 is what the team pays, before either of those.
Why is the average cyclist’s salary higher than the median?
Because the top of the sport is a long way above the middle of it. The employed average is €384,000 against a median of €350,000, 9.7% apart, and the ten highest paid riders cost €42,000,000 between them, which is more than an average men’s WorldTeam spends on its whole roster and staff.
Where to next
The whole UCI prize money scale is the other half of what the sport pays, all thirty-two ladders place by place. Men's against women's prize money runs the comparison the budget table above makes, race by race across twenty paired events. World Championships prize money covers the eleven rainbow jerseys. What a cycling team is paid, and pays holds the allowances and the fees. And cycling is the whole section, all 61 races on the 2026 calendar.