Inside the Complicated Salaries of the ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Pro Partners

How Much Do the DWTS Pros Make?

Dancing With the Stars season 35 is here with a completely chaotic new cast (Taylor Hanson, anyone?) not to mention new pro partners—including Jenna Johnson’s niece, Hailey Bills, who’s been promoted from the troupe to a full-time pro and paired with Sarah Jane Nader in the second-ever all-female pairing.

The celeb cast members get a pretty nice paycheck for appearing on the competition series, so you might be wondering if Dancing With the Stars is a similarly lucrative gig for the pros. Answer? It completely depends.

According to Us Weekly, Dancing With the Stars professional partners are paid $1,200 per week when they start the show. But their salaries increase the longer they stay. Apparently, the highest-paid dancers are making around $5,000 an episode, which sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that there are only 10–15 episodes per season, so this ends up being between $50,000 and $75,000.

That said, Dancing with the Stars offers a lot of exposure, and the pro partners usually end up influencing, which puts more money in their pockets as a byproduct of being on the show.

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What About the Troupe Dancers?

Troupe, or background, dancers don’t get partnered with celebrities, so they make a lot less than pro partners. Lindsay Arnold told Jason Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast (per Us Weekly) that when she went from professional partner to troupe dancer, her salary was cut by “more than half.” And since the show only has one season a year, the salary simply isn’t livable.

As she put it, “I guess it depends on the kind of life that you live, but living in L.A., paying rent, buying food there, paying for gas, like, you’d be really tight.”

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What About the Hosts?

That’s a little less clear, but according to Celebrity Net Worth, Tom Bergeron was earning $150,000 per episode of Dancing With the Stars back in his heyday, which ends up being over $1 million per season. Not! Bad!

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What About the Cast?

We have a whole breakdown about how the Dancing with the Stars celebs get paid this way, but the top notes? They have a starting salary that increases as they spend more time on the show. In other words, it’s in their best interest to not get voted off—at least financially.

According to Variety, everyone on DWTS makes $125,000 for the rehearsal period + the first two weeks on air. Then the cast starts earning a per-week salary, but the limit does, in fact, exist. The most anyone can take home on this show is $295,000.

That said, there’s also a “signing bonus” that kinda depends on your level of fame and negotiation skills. DWTS winner Kaitlyn Bristowe confirmed this on Trading Secrets, saying, “Your signing bonus, I think you can negotiate a bit, like, to sign to say you’re going on the show.”

Welp, this has been an update!