Who are the highest-paid women’s soccer players in the world?

The women’s game has taken leaps and bounds forward towards significant global growth. Both in sporting and structural terms, and in some cases economic terms, momentous changes have taken place in the battle to achieve worldwide equality in soccer. In 2022, US Soccer announced an equal pay agreement that will see the members of the US women’s national team earn the same for playing for their country as the men’s team.

Women’s club pay lagging behind men’s soccer

This policy, which has been replicated by other federations across the globe, is an important step. However, more needs to be done at club level, where the planet’s best women’s soccer players are not paid anything close to what the highest-profile men get.

2023 has been a promising year for women’s soccer, though: while the expected leap has not been made in terms of club wages, there has been growth that indicates a desire across the board to achieve fair pay.

We present to you the top salaries earned by women’s soccer players, according to the most recent update provided by statista.

The highest women’s club salaries in the world:

Sam Kerr - $513,000 per year

The Australian has starred for English Women’s Super League club Chelsea in recent seasons, leading her to be paid the highest salary of any current women’s player in the world.

Alex Morgan - $450,000 per year

A USWNT legend, San Diego Wave forward Morgan has secured a $450,000-a-year contract in America’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), making her the second-highest-paid player in the world.

Megan Rapinoe - $447,000 per year

Rapinoe is also a long-time USWNT star. Her influence both on and off the pitch in the US has led her become one of women’s soccer’s biggest figures, and her recent contract renewal with NWSL club OL Reign saw her net a significant improvement on the $250,000 salary which, according to Forbes, she previously earned.

Julie Ertz - $430,000 per year

Morgan and Rapinoe’s USWNT team-mate Ertz, who plays for the Chicago Red Stars, is next in a list that’s dominated by Americans.

Also among women’s soccer’s top-paid stars

Contracts continue to be negotiated and signed off so these deals will change, but here are a few more of the better paid players in the women’s game.