Becoming an endodontist means completing an endodontics residency after dental school, and the accreditation number is a floor, not a fixed duration: the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) requires a minimum of 24 months of full-time study.
Endodontics is one of the 12 recognized dental specialties, with its own recognized certifying board.
Here's what the residency requires, how admissions work outside the match, and what residents get paid — most programs charge tuition, and only 20 of 56 pay a stipend.
How long is an endodontics residency?
An endodontics residency has one accreditation floor, not a fixed length.
The Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) requires that "an advanced dental education program in endodontics must encompass a minimum duration of 24 months of full-time study."
That's a minimum a program can't go below.
The CODA/ADA HPI Survey of Advanced Dental Education put the average length of accredited endodontics programs at 25.3 months in 2025-26 — an average across programs, not a fixed length for any one of them.
The residency comes after dental school: the NCRDSCB's eligibility table counts board certification for every specialty with a certifying board in years of advanced education beyond the DDS/DMD, and none before it.
For the broader framework — how CODA accreditation, the match, and board certification work — see dental residency & board certification.
This page goes deep on what's specific to endodontics.
What the residency covers
The clinical content lines up with what separates an endodontist from a general dentist: root canal therapy, retreatment of canals that failed the first time, and endodontic surgery — the non-surgical and surgical treatment and retreatment CODA's standards require training in — plus the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and injuries of the pulp and the conditions around the root.
CODA's standards set the minimum duration and the required scope of training; the standards text this page draws on doesn't spell out a day-by-day curriculum, a required case count, or how each program evaluates residents.
For the whole path from dental school through residency, see the sibling step-by-step guide to becoming an endodontist.
Board certification: the American Board of Endodontics
After residency, endodontists can pursue certification from the American Board of Endodontics (ABE) — one of 11 certifying boards recognized by the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards (NCRDSCB), an agency of the ADA.
Certification is voluntary.
It isn't required to hold a dental license or to practice as an endodontist; it's an additional credential on top of licensure, not a substitute for it.
None of the sources this page checked publish how many candidates sit for ABE certification each year, or what share pass.
Treat certification as a recognized mark of expertise, not a number you can benchmark against.
See becoming a board-certified endodontist for the exam stages and what each assesses.
Endodontics among the 12 recognized dental specialties
The NCRDSCB currently recognizes 12 dental specialties, and endodontics is one of them.
The Commission defines it as the specialty concerned with the morphology, biology, physiology, pathology and regeneration of the dental pulp and periradicular tissues; that current definition was adopted in April 2021.
The 2021 date belongs to the definition, not to the specialty's recognition — adopting a new definition isn't the same as recognizing the specialty.
See the 12 dental specialties explained for where endodontics sits among the rest.
How hard is it to get into an endodontics residency?
There's no match number for endodontics, because endodontics isn't in the match.
The Postdoctoral Dental Matching Program publishes applicant, position and match counts each year for the program types it runs — six dental specialties (orthodontics, pediatric dentistry, oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontics, prosthodontics and dental anesthesiology) plus the general GPR and AEGD program types — and its Results of the Matching Program for 2026–2027 Positions doesn't list endodontics among them.
That leaves no applicant count, no position count and no match count for endodontics in the program's published results, and the report doesn't publish a reason the specialty sits outside it.
What the sources do publish is the size of the training pipeline: the CODA/ADA HPI Survey of Advanced Dental Education counted 56 accredited endodontics programs operating in 2025-26, with 234 first-year residents, 501 residents enrolled in total, and 215 graduates in 2025.
The survey's applications column counts an applicant once per program applied to, so it isn't a count of applicants either — and neither source supports an acceptance rate.
For the program types the Match does run, with applicant, position and five-year trend numbers, see which dental specialty is hardest to match into.
What isn't published
How much do endodontics residents get paid?
First-year pay is the exception in endodontics, not the rule: in 2025-26, 20 of the 56 accredited programs paid a first-year stipend, and the programs that paid one averaged $29,187.
That average covers only the programs that pay a stipend — programs paying nothing aren't averaged in.
On the other side of the ledger, 40 of the 56 programs charged first-year tuition and fees, averaging $53,817 (CODA/ADA HPI Survey of Advanced Dental Education, 2025-26).
Both figures are program averages, and individual programs vary widely around them.
That stipend-optional, tuition-common pattern is what separates endodontics from the program types where a stipend is the norm — in general practice residencies, AEGD, oral surgery and pediatric dentistry, most programs pay a first-year stipend.
Do dental residents get paid? compares those program types' stipend and tuition averages side by side.
After residency, the pay question becomes the specialty-pay one, and the sourcing gets thinner rather than better.
BLS has no endodontist wage series: the role falls into "Dentists, all other specialists" (SOC 29-1029), median $224,990 a year (OEWS, May 2025) — a category that combines several specialties, not endodontics alone.
ADA HPI's latest published median net income for private-practice endodontists is $279,040 — for 2021; the 2022-2025 figures are suppressed.
See the endodontist salary guide for the full series behind both numbers.
Where the residency fits in a dental career
The residency is the credential gap between a general dentist and an endodontist — see endodontist vs. general dentist for exactly which cases that training changes and how referrals run.
It isn't a separate license, and finishing residency doesn't require board certification to start practicing.
This article is general career information, not clinical, legal, or financial advice. Program requirements and pay figures are directional and should be verified against current CODA, NCRDSCB, and BLS sources.