Every player who competes at the US Open — from the qualifier who falls in the first round at Flushing Meadows to the champion who lifts the trophy on Arthur Ashe Stadium — leaves New York with a cheque. The US Open prize purse has grown into the largest in tennis history, and the way the USTA distributes that money tells the story of how American tennis has positioned itself commercially and ideologically over more than half a century.
Here is a complete guide to what players earn at the US Open, how the figures are structured, and how the tournament’s prize money has evolved into what it is today.
The Total Purse
The total prize money at the 2025 US Open was $90 million — a 20 percent increase over 2024 and the largest purse in tennis history, surpassing the previous record set by Wimbledon and the Australian Open. The figure is announced annually by the USTA and has risen virtually every year since the start of the Open Era in 1968, the first US Open to pay prize money at all.
The US Open’s distribution model is distinctive in two ways. First, it consistently leads the four Grand Slams in headline prize money — both the largest total purse and the largest individual cheques. Second, the USTA has, in recent years, made aggressive double-digit percentage increases across nearly every round, including substantial growth in the earliest rounds and qualifying.
What the Singles Champions Earn
The headline figure is what most players, journalists, and fans focus on: the cheque written to the men’s and women’s singles winners. In 2025, that figure was $5 million each — a 39 percent increase on the previous year and the largest cheque ever paid to a singles champion at any tennis tournament.
The full singles prize money breakdown for the 2025 US Open:
| Round | Prize Money (USD) |
|---|---|
| Champion | $5,000,000 |
| Finalist | $2,500,000 |
| Semi-finalist | $1,260,000 |
| Quarter-finalist | $660,000 |
| Round of 16 | $400,000 |
| Round of 32 (third round) | $237,000 |
| Round of 64 (second round) | $154,000 |
| Round of 128 (first round) | $110,000 |
Every player who reaches the main singles draw — including those who lose in the first round — takes home a six-figure sum. The $110,000 first-round prize is one of the highest at any Grand Slam, reflecting a deliberate USTA strategy to support lower-ranked players who travel to compete on the North American hard-court swing.
Equal Pay for Men and Women: The 1973 Milestone
The US Open was the first Grand Slam — and the first sporting event of any kind — to offer equal prize money to men and women, adopting the policy in 1973. That year, John Newcombe and Margaret Court each received $25,000 in winners’ prize money. The other Grand Slams would not follow for decades: Roland Garros adopted equal pay in 2006, Wimbledon in 2007, and the Australian Open in 2008.
The 1973 decision was driven by Billie Jean King, who had publicly threatened a boycott by the top women players if the prize money was not equalised. King met with US Open tournament director Bill Talbert in 1972 with three things: data from a fan survey showing women’s matches were nearly as popular as men’s, a list of female stars (including Chris Evert, Rosie Casals, Evonne Goolagong, Margaret Court, and herself) prepared to skip the 1973 tournament, and a $55,000 commitment from sponsor Ban Deodorant to help fund the gap between men’s and women’s prize pools.
The USTA accepted. The policy took effect at the 1973 US Open and has been maintained without exception every year since.
The 2006 renaming of the USTA National Tennis Center as the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center — the first major sports venue in the United States named after a woman — was a direct acknowledgment of King’s role in pushing tennis toward equal pay before any other professional sport had even seriously considered the question.
Doubles and Mixed Doubles Prize Money
The 2025 doubles prize money breakdown (per pair):
| Round | Prize Money (USD, per pair) |
|---|---|
| Champions | $1,000,000 |
| Finalists | $500,000 |
| Semi-finalists | $250,000 |
| Quarter-finalists | $125,000 |
| Round of 16 | $75,000 |
| Round of 32 | $45,000 |
| Round of 64 | $30,000 |
The 2025 mixed doubles event, contested over a revamped 32-team draw played in the first week of the tournament, awarded $1 million to the winning pair — the same as the men’s and women’s doubles champions, a substantial increase from previous years.
Qualifying Prize Money
The US Open’s qualifying tournament, held on-site at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center during Fan Week before the main draw begins, distributes a substantial purse of its own.
In 2025, players who lost in the first round of qualifying received $27,500 — a 10 percent increase over 2024 and one of the highest qualifying first-round payouts at any Grand Slam. Players who reached the final round of qualifying earned $57,200.
A player who comes through qualifying and loses in the first round of the main draw therefore walks away with around $167,000 in combined prize money — a meaningful sum that reflects the USTA’s deliberate strategy of putting more money into the early rounds, where lower-ranked players need it most.
Wheelchair, Junior, and Invitational Events
Beyond the main singles and doubles events, the US Open’s prize money also covers gentlemen’s and ladies’ wheelchair singles and doubles, the quad wheelchair events, and junior competitions. Wheelchair purses have grown substantially in recent years as the USTA has expanded both draw sizes and total prize money for these events.
The US Open additionally provides hotel accommodation, per diem allowances, and travel expenses to a wide range of competitors — direct costs not reflected in the headline prize money figures but materially significant to the financial picture of competing at Flushing Meadows.
How the US Open’s Purse Compares to the Other Grand Slams
The US Open’s purse sits at the top of the four-Slam standings — and has done so consistently in recent years. The 2025 totals across the four majors:
- US Open: $90 million total / $5 million singles champions
- Wimbledon: roughly $73 million total / £3 million ($4 million) singles champions
- Roland Garros: roughly €56 million total / €2.55 million ($3 million) singles champions
- Australian Open: roughly A$96.5 million total / A$3.5 million ($2.25 million) singles champions
The US Open’s pursuit of the highest purse and the highest singles cheque is deliberate. As the final Grand Slam of the season — and the largest in capacity and attendance — the USTA has positioned the tournament as the commercial leader of the four-major calendar, and the prize money structure reflects that ambition.
The History of Prize Money at the US Open
The US Open paid no prize money at all for its first 87 years. From 1881 to 1967, the tournament was contested by amateur players only, and the trophy was the only reward. The Open Era arrived in 1968, and that year’s tournament — the first US Open after the tournament’s renaming from the U.S. National Championships — became the first to distribute prize money.
The total purse in 1968 was $100,000. The men’s champion was slated to receive $14,000, the women’s champion $6,000.
But the 1968 men’s champion, Arthur Ashe, never collected his prize money. Ashe was still officially classified as an amateur — he had served as a U.S. Army officer through the tournament and was not yet professionally registered. Under the rules of amateur status, he could not accept the $14,000 cheque. Instead, the winner’s prize was awarded to the runner-up, Tom Okker, who held the status of “registered player” — an amateur permitted to accept prize money at certain events.
Ashe took home a per-diem payment of $20 per day for his appearance at the tournament — a total of roughly $280 for becoming the first Black man to win a Grand Slam singles title. Virginia Wade, who won the women’s title that year, did collect her $6,000 — making her, by an accident of amateur eligibility, the first US Open champion to actually receive a winner’s cheque in the Open Era.
The numbers from that first year now read almost as a different sport. By 1973, equal prize money meant Newcombe and Court each receiving $25,000. The men’s and women’s champions earned six figures for the first time in 1983 ($120,000). They earned seven figures for the first time in 2003 ($1 million each). And in 2025, they each received $5 million.
The decades since 1968 have seen continuous growth, broken only briefly by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 — when the US Open went ahead behind closed doors and total prize money was reduced from the projected total but still distributed to players who competed in the modified tournament.
What Players Actually Take Home
The prize money headlines do not, of course, reflect what players ultimately keep. US Open prize money is paid in US dollars, and players from outside the United States face tax obligations in both their home countries and the US — though double tax treaties typically prevent the same income from being taxed twice.
After tax, agent fees, coaching costs, travel, and the considerable expenses of competing on tour, the practical take-home for a US Open competitor is meaningfully less than the headline figure. For champions, this is largely academic — $5 million remains a transformational sum after every deduction. For first-round losers, the $110,000 cheque, while substantial, can be largely absorbed by the costs of a season on the road.
The Honey Deuce — the tournament’s signature cocktail, sold at $23 per drink — generated roughly $17 million in revenue at the 2025 US Open, more than enough on its own to cover the $14.1 million paid to all 128 first-round singles losers combined. The economics of the tournament have, in this respect, become a story of their own.
The Bottom Line
The US Open’s prize money has grown from $100,000 in 1968 — when Arthur Ashe couldn’t even collect his $14,000 cheque — to $90 million in 2025, with $5 million going to each singles champion. That is the largest purse and the largest individual cheque in the history of tennis. It is also a 900-fold increase over the original 1968 total, reflecting both the commercial expansion of professional tennis and the USTA’s deliberate strategy of leading the four-Slam pack on financial scale.
Equal pay, settled in 1973, is the longest-standing equal pay policy in any major professional sport. The total purse is the largest in tennis. And the structure of the distribution — top-heavy at the champions’ end, bottom-heavy at the qualifying and first-round end — continues to shape who can afford to be a professional tennis player at all.
