How many players keep an LPGA card each season?

One hundred. Only players inside the top 100 on the Race to CME Globe points list retain full status for the following year, and the money list itself is not the criterion. Players who finish 101st to 150th drop into Q-Series alongside the leading Epson Tour finishers to fight for the remaining categories.

Do LPGA players pay caddies and travel out of their prize money?

Yes. Tour players are self-employed contractors, so caddie wages, flights, hotels, coaching and physio all come out of gross winnings. The long-standing industry convention is roughly 5 percent of a cheque for making the cut, 7 percent for a top-10 and 10 percent for a win, on top of a weekly base.

Do the Olympics and the Solheim Cup add to a player's official earnings?

No. Neither event pays prize money, so an Olympic gold medal or a winning Solheim Cup week adds nothing to the LPGA money list. Their financial value is indirect, through the endorsement leverage that comes with the profile — which is a large part of why Lydia Ko's 2024 Paris gold mattered commercially.

How does LPGA prize money compare with women's tennis?

Tennis pays far better at the top. Sportico's 2025 figures put Coco Gauff at $8 million in on-court prize money against Nelly Korda's $2.8 million on-course, and eight of the ten highest-paid female athletes that year were tennis players. Golf's single-tournament peak is higher; its season-long depth is not.

Do these career totals include money won on other tours?

No. The LPGA's official money list counts official LPGA events only, including its co-sanctioned tournaments. Prize money from standalone Ladies European Tour, JLPGA or KLPGA events does not appear, so the career figures understate total earnings for players who spent significant seasons in Japan, Korea or Europe before joining the LPGA.

Highest Paid Female Golfers: LPGA Earnings and Endorsements

Nelly Korda is the highest paid female golfer. Forbes ranked her seventh among all female athletes in 2025 at about $13 million, the only golfer inside the top ten of a list otherwise dominated by tennis. Annika Sörenstam still holds the LPGA career prize money record at $22,583,693, though Korda’s win at the 2026 U.S. Women’s Open moved her to third all-time and within reach of it. The split between those two facts is the whole story: prize money builds the career record, endorsements pay the bills.

Career money: who has won the most on the LPGA

Figures below are official LPGA career earnings through the 2025 CME Group Tour Championship on 29 November 2025, with Korda updated to her post-U.S. Women’s Open total in June 2026. Endorsement figures are annual estimates, and only two of these players had one published by a credible outlet in 2025.

Player	LPGA career earnings	Notable season	Est. annual endorsements
Annika Sörenstam	$22,583,693	2002: 11 LPGA wins	Retired 2008; no current published figure
Lydia Ko	$21,511,071	2024: Olympic gold, Hall of Fame induction	No credible published figure
Nelly Korda	~$21.5m (June 2026)	2024: five consecutive wins	~$11m (Sportico, 2025)
Karrie Webb	$20,293,617	2000: two majors, seven wins	Retired; no current figure
Cristie Kerr	$20,179,848	2010: Women’s PGA by 12 shots	No credible published figure
Jeeno Thitikul	$17,704,399	2025: record $7,578,330 season	~$2.5m (Sportico, 2025)
Lexi Thompson	$15,498,227	2014: Kraft Nabisco Championship	No credible published figure
Jin Young Ko	$14,747,458	2019: two majors, Player of the Year	No credible published figure
Charley Hull	~$10.9m (end 2025)	2025: just under $2m in a season	No credible published figure

Sörenstam’s record has stood since 2008 and is about to fall. Korda passed Cristie Kerr and Karrie Webb with her $2.5 million cheque at Riviera in June 2026, becoming the highest-earning American in LPGA history, and sits behind only Lydia Ko and Sörenstam.

The single-season record and the $4 million cheque

Jeeno Thitikul earned $7,578,330 in 2025, an LPGA single-season record, and broke her own mark from the year before. Both seasons turned on the same tournament.

The CME Group Tour Championship pays $4 million to the winner out of an $11 million purse — the largest first-place cheque anywhere in women’s golf, and larger than any women’s major. Thitikul has won it twice in a row. Solo second gets $1 million; last place in the 60-player field still collects $55,000.

That structure means one week can define a money list. Thitikul turned professional in 2022 and is already seventh on the all-time list, which would have been arithmetically impossible a decade ago.

Endorsements do the heavy lifting, but not for everyone

Sportico’s 2025 accounting of the two golfers in its top 15 shows two completely different businesses.

Korda earned an estimated $13.8 million, of which $2.8 million was prize money and $11 million came from endorsements including Nike and TaylorMade — roughly 80 percent off the course. Thitikul earned $10.1 million, of which $7.6 million was prize money and about $2.5 million endorsements — roughly 75 percent on it.

Korda is American, plays in the largest golf market, and had the 2024 five-win streak that made her a household name. Thitikul simply wins tournaments. Both models work, but only one survives a cold season, which is the practical argument for why American and European players chase visibility as hard as they chase trophies.

How big is the prize-money gap with the PGA Tour?

Compare two events run by the same governing body in the same year, and the gap stops being abstract.

2026 championship	Purse	Winner’s share
U.S. Open (men, Shinnecock Hills)	$22.5m	$4.5m
U.S. Women’s Open (Riviera)	$12.5m	$2.5m

The USGA paid its men’s champion 1.8 times what it paid its women’s champion, from a purse 1.8 times larger. Across a full season the ratio is worse: the LPGA’s 2026 schedule carries a record $132 million in total prize money, the highest in the tour’s 76-year history, against roughly $500 million on the PGA Tour. That is close to a 3.8-to-1 gap.

The direction of travel is at least positive. The 2026 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine offered $13 million, the largest purse in women’s golf history, with Haeran Ryu taking $1,950,000 for her first major. The U.S. Women’s Open purse rose $500,000 on the 2024 and 2025 figure of $12 million.

What the money looks like outside the top 20

The headline numbers hide a steep drop. Only the top 100 players on the Race to CME Globe points list keep full status for the next season, and everything below the top 30 or so is a small-business problem: caddie wages, flights, coaching, entry logistics, all paid from gross winnings before tax.

Charley Hull sat tenth on the 2026 money list in July with $1,407,207 from 10 starts. That is an excellent year. It is also less than half of what Korda banked in a single Sunday afternoon at Riviera. Golf’s prize structures reward winning far more steeply than consistency, and on the women’s tour, with fewer $10 million-plus events to go around, that curve is sharper still.

The 2026 schedule illustrates it neatly. Of the tour’s record $132 million, roughly $82 million sits in regular events and the rest is concentrated in the majors and the season finale. A player who contends every week without closing can finish inside the top 30 and still take home a fraction of what one CME Sunday pays. That is the argument for the LPGA continuing to lift its floor rather than only its ceiling, and it is why the $500,000 rise in the U.S. Women’s Open purse matters less to most of the field than a broad increase across the regular schedule would.

If you are following the players rather than the balance sheets, our list of the greatest golfers of all time sets the historical benchmark these careers are measured against, and our guide to the richest female soccer players shows how differently the same commercial forces play out in a team sport. And if reading about the money has you eyeing a set, start with women’s golf clubs for beginners before you spend anything.