Kevin Hart Net Worth

The real Kevin Hart net worth story is about his popularity. Anyone who can pull down $32 million from a one hour video of himself saying funny things has got it in buckets. Likewise, Hart is cashing in on that popularity big time, not just with multi-million dollar standup tours but also with endorsement deals to rival big-name NBA stars like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. The star has deals with H&M, Hyundai, Foot Locker, Verizon, eBay, Samsung, Xbox, Ford and Nike. Why does a comedian need his own sneaker line? We don’t know, but Hart has one. The Nike Hustle Hart deal is worth approximately $8 to $10 million a year on its own.

A MoneyNation analysis of Hart’s income from acting, live shows, his own movie and TV production business and endorsement deals gives a total Kevin Hart earnings estimate of $195 million. After adjustments for taxes, expenses and investments, that cuts down to a conservative Kevin Hart net worth estimate of $78.5 million as of 6/14/16. That makes Hart far and away the richest comedian of his generation.

Kevin Hart Net Worth Facts

The table above shows how Hart stacks up against his peer group. The $79 million Kevin Hart net worth figure is four times bigger than Louis CK’s net worth of $20 million. It’s 13 times bigger than comedian Jim Gaffigan’s net worth of $6 million and eight times the size of Dave Chappelle’s net worth of $10 million. Meanwhile, late night talk show powerhouse Conan O’Brien has just slightly less than the Kevin Hart net worth sum with $75 million. More established, older comedians predictably have more money than Kevin Hart. Take Eddie Murphy for example. The former SNL star and funny movie king is worth an estimated $85 million. That’s impressive, but it’s still only 8% more than Kevin Hart’s fortune. Former late night mogul David Letterman meanwhile shrinks the field with his mind-numbing worth of $400 million. That’s five times bigger than the Kevin Hart net worth number. Meanwhile, to show how much Americans value their own president compared to their comedians, Barack Obama makes $400,000 a year and has 1/23rd the wealth of Kevin Hart. Finally, the median American family has $68,000 saved. Financially, that makes Kevin Hart worth 1,155 U.S. families.

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Kevin Hart Net Worth in the News

As of 5/20/16, Kevin Hart is working on a new TV series for Comedy Central. The show is titled Kevin Hart Presents: Hart of the City. It follows Hart on a tour through the nation’s comedy club scene. The show will likely pay Hart into the seven figure range. Hart is listed as executive producer as well as star and writer. Comparable TV show deals have landed other celebrities from $1 to $2 million. A show that really takes off like Kim Kardashian’s Keeping Up With the Kardashians can bring in $75 million over time, but that depends on huge ratings success and a run of many years.

Kevin Hart Net Worth Timeline

As the chart above shows, the Kevin Hart net worth trajectory has gone ballistic in the past few years. Hart’s wealth in the years from 2001 through 2007. In that time, his earnings came mostly from a respectable but not stratospheric career as a live comedian and some decent acting roles. Hart mostly toured clubs in New England during his early days, doing very well but by no means getting rich. He also acted in a ton of shows and movies, sometimes as a bit player and sometimes with top billing. His first big acting paydays likely came in 2008, when he got top billing status in three different films that won box office success. These were Meet Dave, Superhero Movie and Fool’s Gold. Around this time, Hart’s pay from acting began to rise, but it wasn’t the only income stream he had that headed skyward. Hart also began to headline live national comedy tours that brought in millions per year by 2009. As his popularity grew, Hart was able to parley those tours into accompanying videos. The first of these was 2011’s Laugh at My Pain. That video put about $3 million into the Kevin Hart net worth tank. Another video for the Let Me Explain tour pulled in $27 million at the worldwide box office. Hart kept an estimated $10 million of that.

If that was the end of the Kevin Hart net worth story, Hart would still be a rich man by any measure. It wasn’t. His popularity had grown so big he started to land high dollar endorsement deals in the early 2010s. Those deals, with big name companies like Ford and Nike, shot Hart’s net worth for the moon, as shown in the chart above. For the details on how each of the young comedian’s income streams breaks out, see the sections below.

Kevin Hart Net Worth Sources: Live Stand Up, Movies, Endorsement Deals

Where does Kevin Hart’s net worth come from? Believe it or not, the biggest source is almost certainly endorsement deals. Hart has his own line of Nike shoes called Hustle Hart. A MoneyNation analysis of all Hart’s sponsors puts his lifetime endorsement pay at $110 million. Hart’s pay for live appearances since 2001, including several national and worldwide comedy tours, comes in a distant second with $58 million. Live comedy videos and other appearances add $16 million to the Kevin Hart net worth sum. Acting pay and Hart’s movie production business surprisingly bring up the rear with a combined total of $10 million. As the table below shows, Hart’s taxes at 48.6% take out $103 million, while expenses account for nearly another $20 million gone. Investment income likely adds back around $6 million, leaving Hart with a final 2016 net worth figure of $78.5 million.

Live Stand Up and Kevin Hart Net Worth: $58 Million

Hart began doing professional live stand up back in 2001. Initially booed off the stage for being too imitative of other comedians, he eventually found his own voice by digging into his own fears and shortcomings. He played out in clubs around New England for the first six years of his career, but likely didn’t earn much more than a living wage. However, a MoneyNation analysis shows his fortunes changed in 2007. In that year, Hart began to put on national live tours. Digging into the number of shows per year and the seating capacity of each venue gives the data in the table below. Estimating $50 per ticket and Hart’s cut at about 85% of the total take, Hart earned between $50,000 and $200,000 per year from 2001 through 2006. In 2009 the performer’s stand-up income broke $5 million. In 2010, an unprecedented shows at venues like the Chicago Theater, the Fillmore in Miami and the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut paid Hart over $10 million total.

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The Endorsement King of Comedy: $110 Million

Kevin Hart has his own line of signature Nike shoes. We could print that fifteen times here if it would help it to sink in. Hart is a comedian. He’s not an NBA star. NBA stars get their own Nike sneakers. Comedians don’t, at least not until Hart hit the scene. Comparable deals with sports stars pay in the range of $10 million per year. Why does Hart deserve a deal like this? Because he is hugely, phenomenally popular. Companies like Nike don’t throw shoe deals around like Catholic priests sprinkling holy water at random in a crowd. They conduct careful analysis of just how far a celebrity’s popularity reaches. One company might make a mistake, but when a star gets deals from Nike, XBox, H&M, Hyundai, Ford, Foot Locker, Verizon, eBay, Madden NFL and Samsung, it’s because they’ve got a gigantic following. How gigantic? How about 30 million Twitter followers? That puts Hart at #26 at the list of biggest Twitter accounts on record. In fact, his Twitter following is so big, it’s rumored he’s been paid as much as $2 million for a single tweet. Sound ridiculous? A 30 second Super Bowl ad costs $5 million, just for the air time. That ad will reach 125 million viewers. A Kevin Hart tweet reaches 1/4 of that amount of viewers, and it doesn’t require spending millions on production. Taking all this into account, we’ve estimated the Kevin Hart net worth figures for endorsement pay along a similar track to big name sports figures like LeBron and Bryant.

Canned Comedy: Kevin Hart is the $16 Million Dollar Man

The fantastic thing about the $27 million box office take of Hart’s 2103 stand up video Let Me Explain is that the budget for the filming came to about $750,000. With a Kevin Hart video, there are no costly special effects, no expensive shooting locations and no team of highly paid actors. There’s just Kevin Hart, on stage with a microphone. That $27 million is largely profit. Even allowing for agent fees and distribution costs, that still leaves Hart with a probable $10 million from the deal. An earlier video, Laugh at My Pain back in 2011, brought in a smaller but still impressive $7.7 million. Hart likely kept $3 million of that. Combined with other appearances on talk shows like Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Hart has earned a total of $16.5 million from taped appearances as himself. With his new comedy video What Now out in 2016, that number will only get bigger.

Producing and Kevin Hart Net Worth

Hart has his own production company. The table below shows rough estimates for his earnings from that work. Hart has produced or executive produced 11 titles. Most have been TV specials, TV movies or his own standup routines, though he does have a deal with Comedy Central to produce a new live comedy show called Hart of the City. The numbers come from estimates for producer pay from industry experts.

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Acting and Kevin Hart Net Worth

It will probably surprise some readers to learn that Hart has earned less than $7 million total from acting roles. It’s surprising because Hart has 68 TV and film credits to his name, and some of those are for multiple episodes of TV series. The table below starts with the Screen Actors Guild numbers for base pay by day. That base pay ramps up to match Hart’s growing popularity, finishing at $100,000 per film. The estimate then adds 1/4% of the box office take for films that reached financial success. Hart’s successes include Superhero Movie, Meet Dave and Fool’s Gold, all from 2008. Little Fockers is another Hart success, as are 2014’s Ride Along and 2015’s Get Hard. That said, Hart has never really had a smash acting success. That would be classified as something that earned hundreds of millions at the box office, like a Marvel movie or a Pixar film. Since actor pay is really a numbers game, the Kevin Hart net worth figures haven’t yet taken on significant freight from TV shows or movies.

Kevin Hart Net Worth Calculations

The table below shows what taxes, expenses and investments do to the Kevin Hart net worth numbers. The story starts with $195 million in total lifetime earnings. Taxes take 52.9% or $103 million. That’s based on the top U.S. federal rate of 39.6% and the top California rate of 13.3%. Expenses likely grab another 10% for costs like cost of living, agent fees, venue rental and other outflows. That adds up to $19.5 million over the course of Hart’s career. Investment income of $6 million comes from a conservative 6% added to Hart’s net worth each year from stocks, bonds and other similar investments.

The Kevin Hart net worth figures in this article are based on an analysis of Hart’s probable income streams including acting, live performances and endorsement deals and are provided here for entertainment purposes only. Like what you see? Check out our article here on how much money stars make for an Oscar or this post on LeBron James’ net worth.