Kelly Ripa Net Worth

Kelly Ripa’s net worth is $91 million. The TV star made most of her money from Live with Kelly & Michael but she certainly doesn’t need the money any more. Ripa has appeared in 1,592 episodes of the show since 2002. The Screen Actors Guild rate sheet says actors make a minimum of $900 a day for screen work, whether it’s on TV or in a movie. That said, Ripa almost certainly earned a lot more than that for her work on the show. She hasn’t publicly released details of her contract, but comparisons to salaries from other hit shows place her pay at around $10 million a year. Her total estimated earnings from the show since it was called Live with Regis and Kathy Lee add up to $101.5 million. Ripa is also a product endorsement champion, with likely endorsement pay of around $75 million total. Her lucrative production business kicks in another $7.25 million. Other income sources, like acting in such movies as Sharknado 2: The Second One and appearing on shows like Saturday Night Live, pay Ripa another million or so each.

All told, Kelly Ripa’s lifetime earnings stack up to $187 million. After taxes, expenses and investments are all figured in, she walks away with a net worth of $91 million and an average salary of $15.5 million a year.

Kelly Ripa Net Worth Facts

The table above compares Kelly Ripa’s net worth of $91 million to other big name stars. The first takeaway is that there’s no way of knowing exactly what Ripa’s worth is down to the nearest dollar. The figure is an estimate, but it’s a solid estimate built on a deep analysis of every known income stream Ripa has. The number is then adjusted for taxes, expenses and investments to get the final net worth number. Looking at the table, the the Kelly Ripa net worth sum is 5 times bigger than Kathy Lee Gifford’s reported $20 million. It’s also more money than Adam Levine’s $54 million or Blake Shelton’s $75 million. Jimmy Fallon also has less money than Ripa with $25 million and Judge Judy has less with $45 million. What does Kelly Ripa have that those stars don’t? Two things: longevity and ratings. Ripa has been on the air every single day in a prime daytime slot with three to four million viewers per episode. That brings her both a relatively high salary and a large number of years to earn it.

Ripa doesn’t do as well against stars like Ryan Seacrest’s net worth of $230 million or Kim Kardashian’s net worth of $150 million. In the case of Ryan Seacrest, he’s been even more popular for even more years than Ripa has, pulling in more viewers over time. In the case of Kim Kardashian, she’s leveraged her fame in a way that almost no one else has, with high-dollar fragrance deals that churn out millions every year. Of course Ellen DeGeneres has both the longevity and the viewers, using Oprah Winfrey’s successful formula of interesting guests each day. Looking at the typical American family, Ripa does quite well indeed. The Kelly Ripa net worth sum is 1,339 times bigger than the median American household’s $68,000.

Kelly Ripa Net Worth Timeline

The Kelly Ripa Net Worth Timeline is a smooth curve at almost a perfect 45 degrees. What the chart above doesn’t show is that Ripa’s net worth from 1990 to 2001 was basically zero, though the star worked extremely hard during those eleven years. We’ve left that info off the chart because who wants to see a lot of zeroes, unless they’re after a “7” on your bank account balance? But the truth is that Ripa paid her dues before she became a millionaire. She got her first solid Hollywood screen work back in 1990, landing a regular role on All My Children. A lot of people don’t know she kept that job until 2010. According to most media reports, stars who just break into soaps make about $900 a day. Someone with Ripa’s clout probably wound up averaging more like $10,000 per episode by the end. An analysis of her work on the show returns a likely yearly salary of about $54,000. For her first ten years in show biz, that $54,000 was Ripa’s bread and butter, with a few other acting and TV gigs throwing in another $20,000 to $30,000 here or there. The star really broke through in 2002, when she replaced Kathy Lee Gifford on Regis & Kathy Lee. She still has that job today, though the name has changed. So has the pay. Ripa likely started out earning around $500,000 a year. Today she probably makes more like $10 million a year from it, if comparable salaries at other shows like The Voice are any guide.

Related: Ariana Grande Net Worth: $26 Million from YouTube Alone

Kelly Ripa Net Worth Sources

The table below shows the sources of Kathy Lee’s net worth. Her income comes mostly from Live with Kelly and Michael, though she also does quite well with endorsement deals. For a detailed breakdown of where all the numbers in the table came from, check out the sections below on TV, acting, producing and endorsements.

Kelly Ripa Net Worth from Live with Kelly & Michael

Kelly Ripa has earned an estimated $101.5 million for her work on Live with Kelly and Michael. She started on the show in 2002. Her salary isn’t publicly released. Several estimates online place her pay for the show at $20 million a year. They all trace back to Celebrity Net Worth, which doesn’t cite its source. In other words, there’s no guarantee the number is even an educated guess. Looking at salary figures that have been released, some judges on The Voice make $12.5 million a year. That show has three to four times the ratings of Live, with about 12 million people tuning in per episode. Granting that there are more judges to pay on The Voice and granting that Live has more episodes per week, it still doesn’t make sense that Ripa would earn $20 million a year. $10 million is probably a more on-point best guess. $10 million is likely her 2016 salary. What about her salaries in prior years? Scaling Ripa’s money back to a likely $500,000 for her first year on the show gives the figures in the table below. These are guesses, but they’re educated enough that they could land a decent teaching job somewhere.

Related: John Cena Net Worth

Kelly Ripa Net Worth from Producing

Ripa owns a successful TV production company. The table below shows all the projects she has worked on since 2004. According to industry experts, TV producers earn between $250,000 and $1 million for a TV movie or a series. The estimates below are based on that and each show’s number of episodes and/or ratings numbers. All in all, Ripa’s net worth owes $7.25 million to producer earnings. Not a bad side job for the popular TV host.

Related: Jessica Alba Net Worth

Kelly Ripa Net Worth from Acting

Kelly Ripa started her career as an actress. In fact she worked exceptionally hard for ten years at that job before landing her work on the Regis and Kathy Lee show. Despite her relatively low earnings in that field compared to over a hundred million from her talkshow job, she’s kept her hand in it. Ripa has appeared in several movies and TV series through the years. Most notable is a 20 year stint on the daytime soap All My Children. Other notables are 74 episodes of Hope & Faith and two episodes of 30 Rock. Acting certainly isn’t Ripa’s main gig, but she seems to enjoy it at least enough to keep it up. It can’t be for the money, if the industry-sourced estimates in the table below are even close to being right.

Related: Matt Damon Net Worth

Kelly Ripa Net Worth from Appearances

Space doesn’t allow us to include a full list of Kelly Ripa’s appearance credits. Ripa has appeared in 102 non-fiction shows, some of them dozens of times over. We’ve included a cross section of Ripa’s appearances in the table below, along with solid estimates of her pay for each. The full analysis shows estimated appearance earnings of $1.78 million adding to the Kelly Ripa net worth sum.

Related: Kylie Jenner Net Worth

Kelly Ripa Net Worth from Endorsements

If there’s one thing Ripa excels at other than hosting a talk show, it’s selling products. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t. She’s seen by millions as wholesome, fun and trustworthy. She’s in the public eye an awful lot, with high ratings. She’s watched by a segment of the population that does a lot of shopping for the home. She picks brands she trusts and sticks with them. In fact a recent Consumer Reports article on brand endorsements and celebrity trust showed Ripa was one of only two celebrities who answered a survey about whether they actually used the brands they pushed. CR asked Ripa if she really used Electrolux products. Ripa responded with a strong yes, telling the magazine she’d been using the company’s home vacuum cleaners for over 30 years. That’s trust. Couple it to high ratings and you’ve got endorsement gold. Ripa certainly cashes in on that gold. Apart from Electrolux, she’s signed deals with Pantene, Tide, Colgate and Aquafina. She earns an estimated $8 million a year from endorsement pay. Scaling that back to $1 million in her first year of big fame in 2003 gives a total of $75 million in endorsements for the star. That’s comparable to some big name sports stars, though NBA superheroes like LeBron James can earn as much as $25 million a year from sponsor money.

How’s this for an endorsement? Stats show celebrities can make $100K or more for a single tweet. The Ripa tweet below reached 1.5 million Twitter followers.

#ad More ways to enjoy the holidays! #JifHazelnut pic.twitter.com/9rceEHzpOp

— Kelly Ripa (@KellyRipa) December 18, 2015

Kelly Ripa Net Worth Calculations

The table below pulls together every number listed in the article above. Every income stream is added up by year. The numbers are then crunched for taxes and expenses, with investments added back. Ripa lives in New York and pays their top state tax of 8.82%. She’s also in the highest U.S. federal bracket of 39.6%. That gives her a total rate of 48.42%. She probably pays about 10% of everything she earns in expenses and makes an average of 6% on her investments every year.

Interested in learning more about the net worth of celebrities? Check out our posts on Adam Levine’s net worth, Blake Shelton’s net worth and Leonardo DiCaprio’s net worth.

All Kelly Ripa net worth data in this article come from a detailed analysis of media estimates, credits lists and industry figures for comparable achievements. The information in this article is intended for entertainment use only.