7,671 programs here pay you from day one.
Those are registered apprenticeships: no tuition, and a wage from your first shift. The other 4,708 listings are trade schools, and they charge. Apprenticeships are listed first on every page here.
7,671 paid apprenticeships · 4,708 trade school programs · all 50 states and DC · every figure traced to a public record
Two paths · 7,671 pay you · 4,708 charge you
The difference is four years of your life.
Registered apprenticeship
$0
tuition a year. You are on payroll from day one.
You are an employee, not a student. The employer carries the cost of training you, the state registers the wage scale you move up, and the hours you log count toward a license.
Trade school
$9,750
median net price a year after grant aid, institution-wide, across the 1,369 institutions here that publish one.
Some are excellent and cheap. Some are neither. The same certificate can cost a few thousand at a community college or ten times that at a private school, and the completion rate is usually the number nobody shows you.
Our estimate · the median of the 218 programs here that publish a wage scale
Four years: $304,988 earned, and no debt.
- Year 1$61,566
- Year 2$134,425
- Year 3$218,577
- Year 4$304,988
Cumulative gross pay, before tax, at 2,000 hours a year and no overtime. The median program here starts at $30.78/hr and is paying $43.21/hr by year four, on a scale its state registry publishes. The arithmetic is shown on every program’s own page.
There is no second bar here for the trade school, and there will not be one. Nobody publishes what a graduate of a specific trade program earns in year one, so we can show you what one path pays and what the other costs, but we will not pretend to know the difference.
We do not tell you which to pick. Apprenticeships sit first because they pay you instead of charging you. That order is fixed and nobody can pay to change it. Past that, the figures are yours to argue with.
US median pay · US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS · survey 2025-05
Start with the trade, not the school.
Every trade here, sorted by what the job pays. Open one for what its application actually asks for.
- Elevator Tech$109,910
- Line Worker$95,320
- Boilermaker$76,410
- Millwright$65,700
- Plumber$63,800
- Electrician$63,190
- Ironworker$62,780
- Mason$62,120
- Sheet Metal$61,800
- Diesel Tech$61,770
- HVAC$61,010
- Carpenter$60,580
- Heavy Equipment Operator$59,850
- Machinist$58,750
- Glazier$57,080
- Roofer$55,440
- Welder$53,750
- Auto Tech$50,620
- Painter$49,400
- Insulation Worker$49,120
Three sources · state registries · College Scorecard · BLS
Every number here has a name on it.
Apprenticeships
State apprenticeship registries and the US Department of Labor register of sponsors. Wage scales where a state publishes them.
Schools
The US Department of Education College Scorecard: net price, debt at completion, and completion rates.
Wages
Bureau of Labor Statistics, by occupation and state, with the survey date shown next to every figure.
If a number cannot be traced to a public record, it does not appear on this site. Where a program publishes nothing, we leave it blank rather than estimate it. Nobody pays us. No listing can buy its position. There is no order here to sell.
How this site makes money, and how it ranksSearches 50 miles from your ZIP
A program you cannot get to is not an option.
218 of 12,379 programs here publish a wage scale
We may not have your state yet.
Some states publish wage scales and some publish almost nothing. Leave an email and we will write when the trade or state you name gets real numbers.