Do Dental Residents Get Paid? Resident Salaries by Program Type

The split runs along program lines, and the two general-dentistry residencies land differently on it.

GPR pays almost across the board: 158 of 166 GPR programs paid a first-year stipend, and 138 of the 166 paid a stipend while charging no tuition.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery (90 of 103 programs paid), pediatric dentistry (81 of 89) and dental anesthesiology (all 9) are also in the paid column.

Orthodontics (57 of 69 programs charged tuition), periodontics (45 of 57), endodontics (40 of 56) and prosthodontics (33 of 48) are mostly in the tuition column.

Where the money comes from matters for how much to trust the figures: these come from the CODA 2025-26 Survey of Advanced Dental Education, which is mandatory for accreditation — requests went to 782 advanced dental education programs in August 2025.

Even so, these are program-count patterns, not a promise about any single program.

How residencies, the match and board certification fit together is covered in our guide to dental residency, and the career this training leads into is the dentist career guide.

Among GPR programs that paid a first-year stipend, the average was $70,800 — and most GPR programs charged nothing on top: 138 of the 166 paid a stipend and charged no tuition.

The 22 GPR programs that did charge first-year tuition and fees averaged $48,024.

AEGD is a genuinely mixed bag: 63 of 97 programs paid a stipend, averaging $56,872.

Twenty-one AEGD programs charged tuition, averaging $44,986, and 28 offered neither a stipend nor tuition.

Two reading rules apply to every average on this page.

First, they are stipends — the survey's own glossary defines a stipend as money given to selected students to defray the costs of tuition and fees, a defined purpose rather than a defined wage.

Second, each average covers only the programs that actually reported a stipend or a tuition figure; programs reporting $0 are left out of that average rather than dragging it down.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery is one of the reliably paid residencies: 90 of 103 OMS programs paid a first-year stipend, averaging $66,596.

The 28 OMS programs that charged tuition averaged $40,651.

What the training itself requires is on the OMS residency page.

The federal wage figures this page could source don't answer the resident question, and it's worth seeing why.

In BLS OEWS, May 2025 (released May 15, 2026), general dentists in general medical and surgical hospitals had a median of $93,890 a year across 2,010 jobs — the lowest of any published industry.

That figure covers hospital-employed general dentists, not residents: we found no resident-specific pay figure in the federal wage data this page draws on, and BLS doesn't say why the hospital figure is the lowest, so don't read it as resident pay.

OEWS medians are also straight-time gross pay — production bonuses and commissions in; overtime, year-end bonuses and profit-sharing out — and the survey excludes the self-employed and owners and partners in unincorporated firms entirely, which is why its dentist figures describe employees, not practice owners.

This is where the pay picture flips.

Orthodontics is the tuition-heavy residency: 57 of 69 programs charged first-year tuition and fees averaging $55,640.

Thirty-one orthodontic programs paid a stipend, averaging $33,390 — but only 4 paid a stipend without also charging tuition.

What the accreditation standard requires of an orthodontics residency is on its own page.

Endodontics and periodontics look similar: 40 of 56 endodontic programs charged tuition (average $53,817) while 20 paid a stipend (average $29,187), and 45 of 57 periodontic programs charged tuition (average $48,280) while 28 paid a stipend (average $30,131).

Pediatric dentistry breaks the pattern and behaves like the paid programs: 81 of 89 pediatric dentistry programs paid a stipend, averaging $62,305, while 35 charged tuition (average $34,830).

Note the direction of the money in the three tuition-heavy specialties — orthodontics, endodontics and periodontics: in each, the average stipend sits below the average tuition (orthodontics' average stipend of $33,390 sits under its average tuition of $55,640), so a resident in one of those programs is usually funding part of the year rather than being funded through it.

These are the two questions residents ask next, and they are the two this page can't answer from sources.

Research for this page found no tier-1 or tier-2 source on resident moonlighting rules or on federal loan deferment specifics for dental residents, so we won't improvise either one.

What can be said without a citation is only the practical sequence: ask the program director what outside work its own terms allow, and take anything that touches licensure to your state dental board.

For repayment and deferment options, your loan servicer is the authoritative source, not a job board.

Every row below comes from the same mandatory CODA survey of 782 advanced programs, so the rows are comparable.

Figures are first-year, 2025-26:

*Averages cover only the programs that reported a stipend or a tuition figure; programs reporting $0 are excluded from each average. The survey's glossary defines these sums as stipends — money to defray tuition and fees — which is why this page says stipends, not salaries.

The survey's glossary settles the wording: a stipend is defined as "sums of money given to selected students to defray the costs of tuition and fees."

It is not defined as compensation for work, and the published averages don't establish that any program treats it like a wage.

That's why this page says stipend throughout, including in a title that asks about salaries — the honest answer to "how much do dental residents make" is that the national data measures stipends, and the two aren't the same object.

The tuition figures have their own boundary: they are first-year tuition and fees, averaged only among the programs that charge.

And charging tuition and paying a stipend are tracked as separate columns, so a program can appear in both — which is why the orthodontics row shows 31 stipend-paying programs inside a set of 69 where 57 charge tuition.

Dental anesthesiology paid across the board: all 9 programs paid a stipend, averaging $73,085, and none charged tuition — see the dental anesthesiology residency for the training behind it.

Oral and maxillofacial pathology programs that paid a stipend averaged $50,042 (10 of 14 programs), and oral and maxillofacial radiology paid across the board at $35,392 (9 of 9).

The remaining specialty program types run small: dental public health programs paying a stipend averaged $47,277 (7 of 16), orofacial pain $58,254 (6 of 14), and oral medicine $73,895 (4 of 6).

With program counts that low, one program moves the average, so read those figures as broad indications rather than benchmarks.

What each specialty pays once the residency is over is the specialty pay ranking, and how hard each one is to get into is the specialty match competitiveness page.

Both are general-dentistry residencies, but the survey shows the money side works differently in each.

The stipend counts diverge sharply: 158 of 166 GPR programs paid one, against 63 of 97 AEGD programs.

So does the no-money category: 6 GPR programs offered neither a stipend nor tuition, while 28 AEGD programs did — the largest neither group among the program types on this page.

What the two formats are, and how to tell them apart, is covered on our how to become a dentist page; this page stays on the pay question.

The practical takeaway from the survey is arithmetic, not advice: in the 2025-26 data, the majority GPR arrangement was a stipend with no tuition (138 of 166 programs), while AEGD's outcomes spread across stipend (63), tuition (21) and neither (28).

Whatever the balance coming out of dental school, the residency year's cash flow is the stipend-or-tuition picture above: the paid programs put a five-figure sum in your pocket, and the tuition-charging specialties add a year of cost on top of dental school.

For scale on the starting balance: average education debt was $297,800 among the indebted 2025 dental graduates who responded to ADEA's survey — dental-school debt, before any residency.

We found no national figure for debt taken on or repaid during residency, so this page won't quote one.

One adjacent figure does exist in federal pay tables: the military's.

Per DFAS, the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program stipend is $3,113.00 a month effective July 1, 2026 (it was $2,999.00 from July 1, 2025), and the Financial Assistance Program grant is $45,000.

What each program covers, and the service obligation attached to it, is a branch-by-branch question — the military dentist guide covers the statutory side.

The year after residency is when the arithmetic flips from paying to being paid: see new-grad associate pay for how the first contract usually works.

This article is general career information, not clinical, legal, or financial advice. Program stipends, tuition and terms change from year to year — verify current figures with the program and, for licensure questions, your state dental board.