What golfers actually earn

Median season prize money on each tour, among that tour’s regulars. Missed cuts are counted as the $0 weeks they were.

Regular =
starts
Median season money, 2025
The middle regular on each tour — half of them earned more, half less. 10+ starts, majors excluded.

Not charted: LIV Golf — the feed we ingest publishes no prize money for this tour, so we have no figure rather than a $0 one.

Does the money cover a season?
What share of each tour’s regulars out-earned a published estimate of a full season’s costs — travel, lodging, caddie, entry fees.
PGA Tourest. $150k a season

94% of 203 regulars out-earned the $150k figure. Source: Scaled from the Korn Ferry budget — caddie percentage rises with purses.

European Tourest. $76k–$89k a season

90% of 158 regulars out-earned the $76k figure, 87% cleared $89k. Source: Commonly cited £60–70k, caddie mandatory.

Korn Ferry Tourest. $110k–$150k a season

49% of 160 regulars out-earned the $110k figure, 41% cleared $150k. Source: James Nicholas published 2025 budget: planned $110–125k, actually spent ~$150k (caddie $58k, lodging $28k, flights $17k).

Challenge Tourest. $32k–$38k a season

54% of 153 regulars out-earned the $32k figure, 46% cleared $38k. Source: Commonly cited £25–30k.

Alps Tourest. $16k–$32k a season

14% of 96 regulars out-earned the $16k figure, 3% cleared $32k. Source: Commonly cited €15–30k depending on travel.

The cost figures are third-party estimates, not GolfHub data, and a player’s real expenses vary with how much they travel and whether they employ a caddie full time. Only the prize money is ours. Tours without a published estimate are left out of this section.

Full distribution
Because a median hides the spread: the 25th and 75th percentiles are the middle half of each tour. The last column counts the regulars who earned nothing all season.
TourRegularsMedianEarned $0
PGA Tour203$1,241,0350
PGA Tour Champions92$405,5000
European Tour158$391,5101
LPGA Tour158$344,6461
Korn Ferry Tour160$108,4240
Challenge Tour153$35,2040
Alps Tour96$5,4378
LIV Golf52not published
How this is built

Every figure is summed from the tournament leaderboards we ingest, per player, per season. A start with no prize money — a missed cut, a withdrawal — counts as $0 and still counts as a start, which is why the medians sit well below the money-list numbers people quote.

“Regulars” means 10 or more starts on that tour in the season. Without a floor, club pros and Monday qualifiers with a single appearance would set the bottom half of every tour.

The four men’s majors aren’t sanctioned by a single tour, so they sit in their own bucket and are excluded by default. “Include majors” adds each player’s major money to whichever tour they were a regular on. LPGA and PGA Tour Champions majors are already inside those tours, so the toggle doesn’t change them.

European, Challenge and Alps Tour money is published in euros and converted at a flat $1.08 to put every tour on one axis; it is not a rate-of-the-day conversion. Team events (Ryder Cup and the like) have no prize money and aren’t counted.