The Short Answer
Across 769 live travel contracts in mid-2026, physical therapists and occupational therapists earn the same median weekly package: $2,280. Speech-language pathologists are close behind at $2,190. Assistants — PTAs and COTAs — both sit at $1,460. The gap that matters is not between PT and OT. It is between therapists and assistants, and it is about 36%.
Most pay guides quote a single "travel therapy salary" range and leave you to guess where your discipline falls inside it. That is not useful when you are deciding whether an offer is fair. The numbers below are medians from actual signed contracts, with the contract count shown next to each one so you can see how much weight it carries.
Median Weekly Package by Discipline
| Discipline | Contracts | 10th pct | Median | 90th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PT | 325 | $2,130 | $2,280 | $2,770 |
| OT | 95 | $2,130 | $2,280 | $2,714 |
| SLP | 71 | $2,130 | $2,190 | $2,770 |
| PTA | 182 | $1,260 | $1,460 | $1,680 |
| COTA | 95 | $1,260 | $1,460 | $1,740 |
Total weekly gross — taxable wages plus non-taxable stipends, before tax. Figures are medians from ProTherapy Staffing's own placement data as of July 6, 2026.
PT and OT Are Paid the Same. That Surprises People.
The perception that physical therapy pays more than occupational therapy is common, and in permanent employment there is often a modest gap. In the travel market there is not. Both medians land on $2,280, and both 10th percentiles land on $2,130.
The reason is that travel rates are not set by discipline prestige. They are set by how hard a specific role is to fill in a specific building. A hard-to-fill OT vacancy costs a facility exactly as much as a hard-to-fill PT vacancy, so the bill rate — and therefore the package — lands in the same place.
The real difference between the two disciplines is volume. There were 325 PT contracts in this dataset against 95 OT contracts, roughly three and a half times as many. That does not change what you are paid; it changes how much choice you have and how long you wait between assignments. Travel OTs who plan six to eight weeks ahead do noticeably better than those who start looking three weeks out.
SLPs: Slightly Lower Median, Same Ceiling
The SLP median of $2,190 sits about $90 below PT and OT. But the 90th percentile is $2,770 — identical to PT. The ceiling is the same; the middle of the distribution just sits a little lower, largely because SLP travel volume is concentrated in skilled nursing, where rates across every discipline are lower than in outpatient or acute.
The Assistant Gap Is Structural
PTAs and COTAs are priced almost interchangeably — both at a $1,460 median, both with a $1,260 10th percentile. Against the $2,280 therapist median that is a gap of $820 a week, about 36%.
That gap is a scope-of-practice gap, not a skill gap. A PT or OT can evaluate a patient and write the plan of care; an assistant cannot. When a building loses its therapist, evaluations stop and admissions back up — a regulatory problem with no workaround. When a building is short an assistant, treatment minutes get harder to hit. Both are real, but only one stops the facility taking new patients, and bill rates follow that difference.
The practical read for assistants: your leverage is highest at facilities short on both. A building that already has travel therapists covering evaluations but no one to carry the treatment load is where assistant rates run toward that $1,680–$1,740 top decile.
Setting Moves the Number as Much as Discipline Does
| Setting | PT | OT | SLP | PTA | COTA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skilled nursing | $2,130 | $2,190 | $2,130 | $1,460 | $1,460 |
| Outpatient | $2,340 | $2,555 | — | $1,680 | — |
| Inpatient / acute | $2,480 | — | — | $1,650 | — |
A dash means fewer than three contracts in that cell, so no median is published. Outpatient OT ($2,555) rests on six contracts and inpatient PTA ($1,650) on six — directionally useful, not precise.
Skilled nursing is where the volume is for every discipline — 613 of the 769 contracts. It is also the lowest-paying setting for therapists. Outpatient pays a PT about $210 a week more and a PTA about $220 more, but there are far fewer of those contracts, so a strict outpatient-only preference means longer gaps between assignments. That is a legitimate trade to make; just make it knowingly and budget for the gap.
What Actually Moves Your Number
- Geography. State medians vary by several hundred dollars a week, and the pattern is not identical across disciplines — a state can be strong for PTAs and unremarkable for PTs.
- How hard the role is to fill. A vacancy a facility has been carrying for two months prices very differently from a planned leave. This is the single most reliable route to the top decile.
- Start-date flexibility. Starting Monday when the current traveler leaves Friday is worth real money. Starting in four weeks is not.
- Setting willingness. Worth a couple hundred a week, and worth more in availability than in rate.
Notice what is absent: years of experience. Beyond the minimum a facility requires, experience rarely changes the rate. It buys access to pickier settings, not a higher line on the same contract.
How to Sanity-Check an Offer Against These Numbers
Take the weekly gross you were quoted and find your discipline's row above. If the offer sits below the 10th percentile, something specific should explain it — a very easy caseload, a metropolitan area people compete to live in, a facility with an unusually short commute, or a first contract where the agency is absorbing licensure costs. If nothing explains it, the number is simply low and it is reasonable to say so.
If the offer sits between the 10th percentile and the median, that is an ordinary contract. Most assignments live here. Negotiating from this position usually works better on terms than on rate: guaranteed hours, a fixed day off, written time off, or a shorter block if you are unsure about the facility.
Above the 90th percentile, look for the reason before you celebrate. Outlier rates usually mean an outlier assignment — a location that is genuinely remote, a building with retention problems, a caseload nobody local will take, or a start date so tight the facility is paying for speed. Any of those can be a fine trade if you know you are making it. The ones that go badly are the ones where the traveler assumed the high rate was luck.
Before You Compare Two Offers
Compare total weekly gross, not the hourly figure. An offer quoted as "$24 an hour plus stipends" cannot be compared to anything until you know the weekly total at the guaranteed hours. Ask what happens to the stipend if you are called off, and confirm the guaranteed hours in writing — a $1,700 package at 40 hours is a different job from a $1,700 package where 45 is the norm.
Our full pay package breakdown walks through every line item, negotiating pay covers how to ask, and the pay calculator will estimate a package for your discipline and state. For per-state medians by discipline, the ProTherapy Pay Index publishes the same dataset with the contract counts shown.