Highest-Paid NFL Kickers: Full Breakdown & Salary Rankings

Who are the NFL’s highest-paid kickers?

Chargers kicker Cameron Dicker is one of the NFL’s highest-paid kickers. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

NFL kickers play one of the sport’s most uniquely valuable positions. A great kicker gives a team a massive advantage, allowing them to score from longer distances and reliably put points on the board, even in tough conditions. On the other hand, a struggling kicker can cost a team from winning games it should.

In the early days of the NFL, the league did not have kicking specialists and other players instead handled kicking duties. Benjamin Agajanian is believed to have been the league’s first kicking specialist in 1945, and now 80 years later, kickers have since become highly skilled, able to hit field goals from 60 yards out or beyond. As such, they’ve become the latest NFL position that can earn multi-millions on an annual basis.

Here’s a look at the paid kickers in the NFL, ranked by annual salary.

Who is the NFL’s highest paid kicker?

Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn supplanted the Chiefs’ Harrison Butker for the title of highest-paid kicker on Tuesday. Per Mike Garafolo of NFL Network, Fairbairn re-signed with the Texans on a two-year, $13 million deal. He now makes an average of $6.5 million each year, surpassing Butker’s salary of $6.4 million. Butker does remain the league’s highest paid kicker in total contract value at $25.6 million.

Top 15 highest-paid kickers

Kicker	Team	Annual Salary	Total Contract Value
Ka’imi Fairbairn	Texans	$6.5 million	$13 million
Harrison Butker	Chiefs	$6.4 million	$25.6 million
Jake Elliott	Eagles	$6 million	$24 million
Brandon Aubrey	Cowboys	$5.77 million	$5.77 million
Cameron Dicker	Chargers	$5.501 million	$22.004 million
Graham Gano	Giants	$5.5 million	$16.5 million
Evan McPherson	Bengals	$5.5 million	$16.5 million
Will Lutz	Broncos	$5.37 million	$16.1 million
Jason Myers	Seahawks	$5.275 million	$21.1 million
Brandon McManus	Packers	$5.1 million	$15.3 million
Tyler Bass	Bills	$5.1 million	$20.4 million
Chris Boswell	Steelers	$5 million	$20 million
Daniel Carlson	Raiders	$4.6 million	$18.4 million
Eddy Piñeiro	49ers	$4.25 million	$17 million
Chase McLaughlin	Buccaneers	$4.1 million	$12.3 million

After Fairbairn and Butker, Eagles kicker Jake Elliott is the third-highest paid kicker in the league. Like Butker, Elliott has similarly seen his accuracy wane over the past couple years, but he has been a long-tenured member of Philadelphia since their first Super Bowl run in 2017.

Chargers kicker Cameron Dicker certainly merits his spot as a top-five highest-paid kicker. Dicker, who re-signed with Los Angeles in 2024, became the most accurate kicker in NFL history earlier this season with a 93.5 career field goal percentage.

While the kickers on the list above are primarily earning in the $4–6 million per year range, the majority of kickers outside the top 15 are earning between $800,000 and $1.3 million. This is for a variety of reasons, often because they are kickers who are either on rookie deals, short-term contracts, or have struggled with consistency and are on a second or third chance.

Both Brandon Aubrey and Eddy Piñeiro jumped into the top-15 last weekend after receiving pay raises. The Cowboys placed a second-round tender on Aubrey, which is valued at $5.76 million, per Jon Machota of The Athletic. Other teams will have the opportunity to make a separate offer to Aubrey, but the Cowboys can also match it. Meanwhile the 49ers re-signed kicker Eddy Piñeiro to a four-year, $17 million deal, locking him up before free agency.

Another kicker that could jump into the top-15 in the future is Jaguars’ Cam Little, who is currently on his rookie contract. He did miss some kicks earlier in the year, but made every kick over the final 10 weeks of the regular season, including hitting an NFL record 68-yard field goal, the longest in league history.

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