2026 Travel Therapy Pay Snapshot

Heading into 2026, weekly pay for travel PTs, OTs, and SLPs sits in roughly the same band it occupied at the start of 2025 — with one important caveat: the spread between the floor and the ceiling has widened. Travelers willing to take less convenient assignments (rural, short notice, niche settings) are pulling in noticeably more than the median, while travelers who only chase metro outpatient roles are finding themselves stuck near the bottom of the range.

This issue is a snapshot of where weekly pay rates actually sit as of early 2026, where they vary by region and setting, and what we think is driving the changes. None of these numbers are agency-specific. They reflect the broad market based on aggregated reporting from our sister site traveltherapysalary.com, community-reported pay packages, and publicly available wage data.

Weekly Pay Ranges by Discipline

These are the figures we currently publish on traveltherapysalary.com, derived from agency-reported and community-reported packages.

All figures are pre-tax weekly totals including stipends. Hourly portions are taxable, stipend portions are tax-free if you maintain a valid IRS tax home (more on that in Issue 11).

A few things worth noting in this table. SLPs continue to top the chart at the upper end, mostly because school contracts in shortage districts have been bidding aggressively for the past two cycles. PT and OT averages have stayed close together — they always do — but PTA and COTA pay has lagged the percentage gains the licensed disciplines have seen since 2023.

How That Compares to Permanent Positions

The most useful comparison for any traveler weighing whether the lifestyle is worth it is the gap against a permanent role in the same discipline.

The catch is that the gap shrinks once you account for insurance you have to source yourself, retirement contributions, and the fact that you are paying duplicate housing costs to qualify for tax-free stipends. A realistic take-home advantage for a traveler who manages their tax home well and shops their own insurance is smaller than the gross gap suggests, and depends on contract count, region, and benefits structure. Travelers who do not maintain a tax home can lose that entire advantage to back taxes.

Regional Variation

Pay does not move evenly across the country. The biggest drivers of regional variation are GSA per diem rates (which set the ceiling on tax-free stipends) and local wage pressure. A few patterns based on what we are seeing on the ground in 2026:

• West Coast premium. Bay Area and San Diego SNF contracts in particular continue to clear the high end of the table.
• Northeast urban premium, but compressed. Boston, NYC metro, and DC commands strong rates on paper, but the GSA housing ceiling combined with high actual rents means travelers pocket less of the stipend than the headline number suggests.
• Rural multipliers. The catch: GSA standard rates apply, so the stipend portion is lower — the gain is in the taxable hourly.
• Saturated metros. Denver, Austin, Nashville, and Phoenix outpatient ortho contracts have not moved much. There are too many travelers chasing the same lifestyle markets, which keeps a soft cap on rates.

A useful exercise before signing any contract is to look up the GSA per diem for the assignment city, compare it to the offered stipend, and check what the local rental market actually costs — the difference is what you actually pocket. Our companion guide at traveltherapystipend.com walks through that math.

Setting Differences

The general pattern in 2026:

• SNF remains the highest-paying setting on average for PT, PTA, and COTA, with home health close behind. Pressure on facilities to meet PDPM productivity targets keeps this segment willing to pay for travelers who can hit the ground running.
• School-based SLP contracts remain the highest-paying SLP setting, particularly in Title I districts and rural/remote regions. These also tend to be the longest contracts (often the full school year).
• Acute care and inpatient rehab sit roughly in the middle. Pay is steady but rarely climbs into the top tier.
• Pediatric and home health OT rates have been climbing year over year, especially in suburbs of large metros, where there is real shortage pressure.

Year-over-Year Trend

The honest assessment for 2026 so far: flat at the median, wider at the edges. The average traveler is making about what they made at this time last year. The traveler who is willing to take a same-week start in a less popular location is making more than they would have.

Two things appear to be driving this. First, the post-2023 flood of new travel therapists has not abated — supply at the entry level is still climbing faster than demand in convenient markets. Second, agency margins on the convenient-market contracts have compressed, so there is less room for agencies to bid up the offered rate even when they want to. Tighter margins on the popular contracts is something we have heard repeatedly from recruiters this cycle.

What to Watch in Q2 2026

A few things on our radar for the next snapshot:

• The 2026 GSA per diem rates took effect October 1, 2025, with notable bumps in several West Coast and high-cost metros.
• Compact licensure expansion (the PT Compact continues to add member states each year, and the OT Compact is gaining traction) is likely to slightly reduce the rural premium over time as the friction of getting licensed in new states drops.
• We will track whether that becomes a real pattern.

We will revisit these numbers in Issue 09 with a fuller mid-year update.