Software Developers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. California pays software developers best, at $174,410. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $115,230 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for software developers is also the real leader: California at $174,410, holding through tax and through price deflation to $115,230. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$135,980
People doing it
1,687,890
Highest paid
$174,410
CA
Best off, really
$115,230
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$82,460
Highest tenth
$214,670
Lowest, really
$81,083
HI
States with data
50
National average
$148,100
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $81,083 and $115,230. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 1,687,890 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $135,980. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, California pays most.
- Interstate variation for software developers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $81,083 to $115,230. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 1,687,890 workers are employed nationally in software developers. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for software developers in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Software Developers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $82,460 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $135,980 |
| Top tenth earn over | $214,670 |
| This salary | $135,980 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Software Developers
The national median for this job
$135,980around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $82,460 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $135,980 |
| Top tenth | $214,670 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Software Developers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $95,330 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $174,410 |
| Spread | $79,080 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $132,150 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $135,992 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $166,540 | $125,096 | $115,230 |
| MA | $165,210 | $116,247 | $107,399 |
| NY | $166,180 | $115,517 | $107,332 |
| CA | $174,410 | $118,347 | $105,122 |
| NC | $134,710 | $98,474 | $104,605 |
| TX | $132,150 | $101,591 | $104,544 |
| ID | $131,590 | $95,087 | $104,005 |
| TN | $122,430 | $94,947 | $102,629 |
| NV | $128,810 | $99,308 | $102,400 |
| NH | $139,720 | $106,765 | $101,348 |
| NM | $124,520 | $91,605 | $101,348 |
| SC | $129,450 | $93,967 | $100,848 |
| MO | $126,120 | $92,479 | $100,781 |
| AL | $122,540 | $89,967 | $99,997 |
| WV | $121,000 | $89,301 | $99,475 |
| CO | $138,390 | $100,475 | $99,105 |
| WY | $115,170 | $89,852 | $98,904 |
| MT | $121,990 | $89,115 | $98,749 |
| OK | $118,100 | $87,099 | $98,656 |
| UT | $128,810 | $93,576 | $98,499 |
| GA | $131,010 | $94,873 | $98,111 |
| MI | $125,570 | $92,007 | $97,689 |
| FL | $130,980 | $100,791 | $97,428 |
| IA | $114,890 | $85,901 | $96,771 |
| VA | $136,460 | $97,451 | $96,726 |
| PA | $126,550 | $93,878 | $96,285 |
| IL | $132,110 | $95,169 | $96,271 |
| AZ | $129,690 | $97,069 | $96,008 |
| WI | $122,660 | $89,277 | $95,897 |
| MD | $138,680 | $99,606 | $95,807 |
| DE | $133,020 | $94,637 | $95,349 |
| OH | $114,090 | $86,671 | $94,401 |
| RI | $130,590 | $95,674 | $94,342 |
| MN | $130,050 | $92,779 | $94,272 |
| VT | $125,280 | $90,737 | $93,896 |
| ND | $105,600 | $82,320 | $92,941 |
| CT | $134,120 | $96,140 | $92,719 |
| OR | $142,720 | $96,705 | $92,345 |
| KS | $113,420 | $82,581 | $91,792 |
| NE | $110,900 | $82,506 | $91,292 |
| AR | $104,490 | $78,931 | $91,241 |
| ME | $123,120 | $88,258 | $90,896 |
| KY | $109,010 | $81,821 | $90,442 |
| NJ | $135,940 | $97,712 | $89,740 |
| LA | $102,800 | $78,452 | $88,802 |
| IN | $105,920 | $80,250 | $87,054 |
| SD | $96,310 | $76,584 | $86,934 |
| DC | $136,880 | $96,157 | $86,781 |
| MS | $95,330 | $72,173 | $82,680 |
| HI | $124,040 | $88,064 | $81,083 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of software developers earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $135,980.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for software developers, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $125,096.
- Levelling out prices for software developers is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $81,083.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for software developers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $135,980, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for software developers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $125,096, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to software developers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Hawaii at $81,083. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $81,083 — and the two source series are dated independently.