Which Dental Specialty Pays the Most? (Ranked)

The federal government does not publish a single "dental specialist" wage.

It tracks dentistry as several separate occupations, each with its own Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code and its own wage estimate.

Ranked by national median annual wage in the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release:

Source: BLS OEWS national estimates, May 2025. All five figures come from the same release, so the ordering is like-for-like.

Two things jump out of the table: the gap between the top specialty and general dentistry is roughly double, and only four dental occupations get their own line in this release.

The rest of dentistry's 12 recognized specialties — endodontics, periodontics, pediatric dentistry and dental anesthesiology among them — are grouped into row 4, so the tidy part of the table is also the short part.

It cannot rank an endodontist against a periodontist, and the grouped row pools specialties with different day-to-day work.

Demand points the same way as pay at the top: BLS projects 6% employment growth from 2025 to 2035 for oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthodontists and prosthodontists, against 1% for the grouped specialist category.

This page ranks pay only.

For what each of these specialties actually does — who they treat, and what sends a case their way — see the 12 dental specialties explained.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery is dentistry's surgical specialty by the profession's own definition: the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards defines it as the diagnosis and surgical and adjunctive treatment of diseases, injuries and defects of the hard and soft tissues of the oral and maxillofacial region.

The training line is the documented difference behind the number: CODA requires an OMS program to run at least four years of full-time study, with at least 120 weeks devoted to clinical OMS; BLS describes OMS residencies as typically four to six years, and some lead to a joint medical degree.

The average length of accredited OMS programs in 2025-26 was 53.1 months, per the CODA/ADA HPI survey.

It is also a small group — BLS counted 4,910 OMS jobs in the same May 2025 release, against 124,390 general-dentist jobs.

What dentists are paid during those residency years is a separate question; dental resident pay covers it.

It is also the widest spread of the five dental occupations BLS splits out.

Measured like-for-like from the 25th to the 90th percentile, OMS runs $204,610 to $622,640, against $146,580 to $416,000 for orthodontics and $125,710 to $319,630 for general dentistry (BLS OEWS, SOC 29-1022 / 29-1023 / 29-1021, May 2025).

The "highest-paying specialty" label describes the middle of a very long distribution.

For the role itself, see what an oral and maxillofacial surgeon does; for the full percentile breakdown, the oral surgeon salary guide.

Prosthodontists — the specialty recognized for the diagnosis, treatment planning, rehabilitation and maintenance of patients with missing or deficient teeth and/or oral and maxillofacial tissues — hold the second-highest median on the board: $311,180 (SOC 29-1024, May 2025), between oral surgery and orthodontics.

Unusually, the mean of $268,630 sits below the median, a sign the distribution is pulled down by a group of lower earners rather than stretched by a few at the very top.

Two cautions before ranking them ahead of orthodontists in your head.

The figure rests on just 870 prosthodontists in wage-and-salary jobs nationally, so it can move from one release to the next.

And the training is longer than orthodontics': CODA requires an accredited prosthodontics program to run at least 34 months, against a 24-month orthodontics minimum.

The full percentile table, hourly figures and setting breakdowns are in the prosthodontist salary guide; for the role itself, see what a prosthodontist does.

Orthodontists post a $289,140 median (SOC 29-1023, May 2025) — third on the board, but reached through the shortest accredited route of the three named specialties: CODA's minimum is 24 months of residency after dental school, against 34 months for prosthodontics and four years for oral surgery.

On a per-year-of-training basis, orthodontics is arguably the strongest return in the ranking.

The spread is the more useful orthodontic number: BLS reports $99,850 at the 10th percentile to $416,000 at the 90th, with the 25th percentile at $146,580 — below the general-dentist 75th percentile.

A practice at the low end of that range pays less than a busy general practice; when you evaluate an orthodontic role, its case volume and local market are the questions that locate it within the range.

See what an orthodontist does and the orthodontist salary guide for the detail; for the head-to-head with endodontics, orthodontist vs. endodontist compares training, work and pay.

This is the biggest limitation of any dental-specialty pay ranking: a tidy table with a federal row per specialty cannot be built without ignoring it.

BLS does not give endodontists, periodontists or pediatric dentists their own occupation codes.

All three land in "Dentists, all other specialists" (SOC 29-1029), with a single median of $224,990 (May 2025) covering the whole group.

So the honest statement is that these specialties sit around the mid-$200,000s as a group, not that any one of them earns exactly $224,990 — and the catch-all holds the small diagnostic and public-health fields too.

The three named fields are genuinely different — endodontics is the dental-pulp specialty, periodontics covers the tissues that support the teeth, pediatric dentistry is children's oral care — but the federal table cannot show whether their pay differs.

Each also takes dedicated residency after dental school: CODA's minimum is 24 months for endodontics and 24 months for pediatric dentistry, while periodontics runs three consecutive academic years with at least 30 months of instruction.

For the individual roles, see what an endodontist does, what a pediatric dentist does, and the explainer on periodontists and prosthodontists.

A pay comparison is only as good as its like-for-like.

Among specialties with their own federal code — oral surgery versus prosthodontics versus orthodontics — the medians in the table above do that job: $352,220 against $311,180 against $289,140, all from the same May 2025 release.

Put an endodontist or a periodontist on either side and the federal table goes silent: both sit in the grouped category with no specialty split.

The American Dental Association's Survey of Dental Practice is the only named source in this page's research that reports some specialties separately, but it measures net income — a dentist's personal income after practice expenses and before personal income taxes, not wages — and each figure carries its survey year and a small sample.

Its most recent published private-practice medians: oral and maxillofacial surgeons $445,120 (2022), periodontists $295,780 (2024), endodontists $279,040 (2021), orthodontists $242,630 (2024), prosthodontists $195,000 (2018).

Pediatric dentistry is the only specialty with a current-year figure — a $245,300 private-practice median from the 2025 survey (70 responses).

So, the three head-to-heads that come up most.

Periodontist vs. endodontist: the latest ADA medians are $295,780 (2024) and $279,040 (2021) — different years, small samples; the data cannot separate them.

Endodontist vs. orthodontist: orthodontists hold the higher federal median ($289,140, against no endodontics figure at all), while the ADA's net-income figures run the other way across different survey years — a reminder not to mix measures.

Periodontist vs. orthodontist: the one pairing with same-year ADA figures, $295,780 against $242,630, both 2024 — a signal, not a verdict.

For training, work and referrals side by side, see endodontist vs. periodontist and orthodontist vs. endodontist; the pay guides linked in the ranking table above explain where each specialty's numbers come from.

At the median, meaningfully more.

The general-dentist figure is $170,950 (SOC 29-1021, May 2025) — so oral surgery runs about double it, prosthodontics roughly 80% above it, orthodontics about 70% above it, and the grouped specialist category about a third above it.

The overlap is the part the ranking hides.

General-dentist wages run from about $86,250 at the 10th percentile to $319,630 at the 90th, with the 75th percentile at $224,040 — essentially level with the median for the whole "other specialists" group.

The two numbers are $950 apart.

Practice model is one reason.

ADA guidance says employed dentists can be paid a flat salary or hourly rate, but pay based on a percentage of production and/or collections is more common, and owners take practice profit on top of clinical earnings — income the wage survey does not cover, since it leaves out the self-employed and owners and partners in unincorporated firms.

For the general-dentist benchmark in full, see the dentist salary guide, and for how the two career tracks differ in scope, general dentist vs. specialist.

Four things can move a real dental income as much as the specialty label does — the general-dentist range alone runs $86,250 to $319,630 from the 10th to the 90th percentile, a wider dollar span than the gap between the highest and lowest medians in the table above.

Ownership comes first: the wage survey behind this page leaves out the self-employed and owners and partners in unincorporated firms, so it understates pay for practice owners.

On the ADA's net-income measure — a different measure from the wages in this table — general dentist owners' 2025 median was $199,140 against $165,520 for employed general dentists.

Volume comes second: the percentile ranges behind these medians are wide (the oral-surgery spread above is the extreme case), so where a specific practice lands inside its occupation's range moves the number in ways the ranking cannot show.

Geography is third, and it cuts both ways: a market that pays more can also cost more to live in — the metro pay guide shows how far the same occupation's number moves across cities.

Training time and debt are fourth: the OMS route wins the median but is also the longest — BLS describes its residencies as typically four to six years, and the average accredited program ran 53.1 months in 2025-26 — so years of resident pay and deferred earnings sit on top of it.

Setting is a fifth lever, and it is a jobs question rather than a specialty question: owner versus associate, DSO group versus independent, locum versus employed, and which states pay the most.

That comparison lives in the highest-paying dentist jobs guide — this page stays on the specialty axis.

The practical read is that this ranking is a good map of where the ceilings are and a poor predictor of any individual career.

If specializing is the question rather than which specialty, start with how dental residency and board certification work, and browse current dentist jobs to see what the market is actually paying near you.

If admission itself is the concern rather than eventual pay, which dental specialty is hardest to match into compares the same specialties on applicant and position counts instead.

This article is general career information, not financial advice. The wage figures are national BLS estimates from the releases cited; the ADA figures are survey medians of net income from the survey years shown. Actual pay varies by ownership model, region, case mix, and experience.