Prosthodontist Salary

The federal answer to what a prosthodontist makes: prosthodontists (SOC 29-1024) had a median wage of $311,180 a year, or $149.61 an hour, in BLS OEWS, May 2025 — the latest release, published May 15, 2026.

The mean was $268,630 ($129.15 an hour).

The full national distribution:

Source: BLS OEWS, prosthodontists (SOC 29-1024), May 2025 national estimates.

The mean sitting below the median tells you the distribution is pulled down by a group of lower-earning prosthodontists, not pushed up by a few at the very top.

Two caveats before you use any of these numbers: BLS counted only 870 prosthodontists in wage-and-salary roles nationwide — a small sample, so the estimate can move from one release to the next — and the survey excludes the self-employed, practice owners, and partners in unincorporated firms entirely.

What the specialty's training and day-to-day work involve is a separate question — see the prosthodontist career guide for the role itself.

BLS builds its annual figures on a full-time, year-round schedule of 2,080 hours, so annual = hourly × 2,080.

The hourly figures above are published directly, not converted: a median of $149.61 an hour, a mean of $129.15, and a 10th-to-90th-percentile hourly range of $49.77 to $165.75.

The OEWS tables publish hourly and annual wages — there is no monthly figure among them.

A monthly equivalent is just the median annual wage divided evenly across 12 months — arithmetic on the published number, not a separate statistic — so treat any monthly prosthodontist figure you see elsewhere as derived.

When a prosthodontist works less than full-time or less than year-round, the annual figure understates the hourly rate, which is why the hourly median is the better gauge for part-time or reduced-schedule arrangements.

Two published cuts cover setting.

The first is BLS's industry detail: inside offices of dentists (NAICS 621200), the prosthodontist median was $311,220 in May 2025 — almost identical to the $311,180 all-industry figure.

The industry tables we checked carry a prosthodontist median only for offices of dentists.

The second is the ADA Health Policy Institute's Survey of Dental Practice, which measures private-practice income rather than wages: median net income of all specialists in private practice was $258,880 (2025 data), and $259,550 for owner specialists.

HPI reported too few responses to publish a figure for employed specialists at all.

Net income, in HPI's definition, is a dentist's personal income after practice expenses and before personal income taxes — a different measure from the wage figures above, so don't compare the two directly.

The survey is also small: 1,113 responses from a sample of 59,951 private-practice dentists, a 1.9% response rate, and the figures aren't inflation-adjusted.

For DSOs, none of the sources on this page breaks prosthodontist pay out by employer type.

The nearest dentists-wide anchor: 16% of U.S. dentists were affiliated with a dental support organization as of 2024, per ADA HPI — whose published tables split income by specialty, not by employer type.

On the federal side, VA dentist pay (Title 38, effective January 11, 2026) puts prosthodontics in Pay Table 1 — the same table as general practice dentistry, endodontics, and periodontics — while oral surgery is paid from Pay Table 2, whose Tier 1 range runs $124,308 to $400,000.

Beyond the VA tables, the sources on this page give no prosthodontist-specific wages for private hospitals or public-health clinics.

No source on this page tracks prosthodontist pay by years of experience — the percentile table shows the spread without career-stage labels — and the ADA's survey can't fill the gap: HPI's most recent published median net income for prosthodontists is $210,000, for 2017, and every year since has been suppressed for too few responses.

That's dated context, not a usable benchmark.

The closest current figures are pooled: $258,880 for all specialists in private practice in 2025, and pediatric dentistry's $245,300 from just 70 responses, while 2025 figures for oral surgeons, endodontists, orthodontists, periodontists, and prosthodontists were suppressed for too few responses.

Both come from the same small survey described above.

On credentials: prosthodontics is one of the 12 dental specialties recognized by the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards.

The training route and the board-certification pathway are covered in the career guide — see board certification in prosthodontics for how the process works.

None of the sources cited on this page report prosthodontist pay separately by certification status.

BLS does not publish state prosthodontist wages.

The May 2025 state estimates contain no prosthodontist rows at all — zero rows, nationwide — so there is no federal state-by-state ranking for this specialty, and no published federal figure to answer a "prosthodontist salary in California" search — or any other state.

A national count of 870 wage-and-salary prosthodontists leaves little to break out by state.

Treat any state or metro prosthodontist pay ranking you encounter — including third-party aggregator figures — as not based on published federal data, and check the current BLS tables before relying on a local number.

The most current local signal is the hiring market itself: which markets have prosthodontic openings and what those postings advertise.

Browse current prosthodontist jobs to see what practices are advertising right now: the setting and the pay structure on offer.

Advertised pay is a different measure from everything above — a posting's range is an offer, the BLS figures are what employees were actually paid, and neither includes a practice owner's income.

If you're hiring instead of job-hunting, the percentile table is the employee-wage context for setting a posted range, and the specialty comparisons below show where prosthodontics sits against the fields general dentists also refer into.

Same source, same release, so the comparison is like-for-like: general dentists (SOC 29-1021) had a median wage of $170,950 a year ($82.19 an hour) in BLS OEWS, May 2025, against $311,180 for prosthodontists — considerably higher.

Both figures are employee wages; owners aren't counted in either.

Inside offices of dentists, BLS publishes four specialist medians: oral and maxillofacial surgeons $360,820, prosthodontists $311,220, orthodontists $287,960, and "dentists, all other specialists" — the catch-all for specialties without their own code — at $224,990.

Prosthodontics is one of only four dentist occupations with its own BLS series (general dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthodontists, prosthodontists), and its median is second-highest of the four specialist rows.

See the specialty pay ranking for the full side-by-side, and the orthodontist salary page for that series in the same May 2025 data.

Looking for a maxillofacial prosthodontist salary specifically?

We found no published figure that splits that subspecialty out: the federal series covers prosthodontists as a single occupation, and the ADA's survey reports the specialty as one line — its last published prosthodontist figure was 2017's.

Treat any subspecialty-specific salary you find elsewhere as an estimate.

If you've seen prosthodontist figures on salary forums that sit well above or well below $311,180, three things are usually happening.

First, owners versus employees.

BLS excludes the self-employed, owners, and partners in unincorporated firms, so a practice owner's earnings never appear in the federal series — the nearest published owner-side figure is the ADA's owner-specialist median net income, $259,550, and it's a different measure: income after practice expenses, before taxes.

Second, what counts as pay.

OEWS wages are straight-time gross pay: production bonuses, commissions, and incentive pay are included, but overtime, non-production and year-end bonuses, attendance bonuses, profit-sharing, and employer benefit costs are excluded.

A forum number that includes any of those isn't comparable to the table above.

Third, thin official data: with 870 counted jobs and a specialty survey that hasn't been able to publish a prosthodontist figure in years, anecdotes fill the space the data leaves.

The practical rule: before comparing any two prosthodontist numbers, identify the measure behind each — employee wage, owner net income, or advertised pay — and compare like with like.

This article is general career information, not financial, legal, or clinical advice. Wage data changes with each BLS release — verify current figures against the latest OEWS tables before relying on them.