What FAANG Actually Pays in 2026: Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Netflix by Level
When this page first went up in January, Meta paid a senior engineer (E5) a median of $501,000 and Google paid its senior engineer (L5) $409,000. A $92,000 gap for the same job. I re-pulled the numbers on 23 Sep 2026 from the Levels.fyi company pages, which were last updated the day before, and that gap is now zero. Both sit at $434,000. So any FAANG salary comparison you read that still says “Meta pays 20% more” is working off last year’s data.
Every figure below is the US median for software engineers on Levels.fyi: Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Netflix. Total comp means base + annualised stock + bonus, the way Levels.fyi reports it. If you compare against an offer letter using “base + RSU at grant”, you’ll undercount.
Which FAANG pays the most in 2026?
Meta pays the most overall, with a US software engineer median of $440,000, followed by Netflix at $430,000, Apple at $325,000, Google at $295,000 and Amazon at $270,000 (Levels.fyi, updated 22 Sep 2026). At the same level the order changes: Netflix leads at every level it reports, and Meta and Google tie at senior.
That second sentence is the one that matters. The all-levels median mostly tells you who submits salaries to Levels.fyi. Apple’s overall $325,000 beats Google’s $295,000, yet Google pays more than Apple at every matched level in the tables below. Compare level to level or don’t compare at all.
FAANG salary comparison by level, September 2026
| Company | Median TC (all levels) | Entry | Senior | Staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | $440,000 | $181,000 (E3) | $434,000 (E5) | $707,000 (E6) |
| Netflix | $430,000 | $318,000 (L4, lowest level listed) | $520,000 (L5) | $800,000 (L6) |
| Apple | $325,000 | $167,000 (ICT2) | $369,000 (ICT4) | $495,000 (ICT5) |
| $295,000 | $197,000 (L3) | $434,000 (L5) | $654,000 (L6) | |
| Amazon | $270,000 | $188,000 (L4) | $384,000 (L6) | $624,000 (L7) |
Meta’s lead now lives almost entirely at staff level, where E6 beats Google L6 by $53,000. Below that it’s close to a coin flip. (Google actually pays more at entry: $197,000 at L3 against Meta’s $181,000 at E3.) I didn’t expect the senior gap to close this fast, and I don’t know whether it’s Google paying more or Meta’s refreshers cooling off. Probably some of both.
Level equivalents matter more than the company name
Most candidates compare offers wrong. They look at the all-levels median and pick the highest. A useful FAANG salary comparison is same-level to same-level, because a “Google L4” is a “Meta E4” is an “Amazon L5”, and conflating titles loses you tens of thousands of dollars a year. Here’s the rough map.
| Meta | Amazon | Apple | |
|---|---|---|---|
| L3 (entry) | E3 | L4 (SDE I) | ICT2 |
| L4 | E4 | L5 (SDE II) | ICT3 |
| L5 (senior) | E5 | L6 (senior) | ICT4 |
| L6 (staff) | E6 | L7 (principal) | ICT5 |
| L7 (senior staff) | E7 | L8 (sr. principal) | ICT6 |
Two things to flag. First, Amazon’s level numbers don’t map one-to-one onto seniority the way Google’s do (Amazon’s L4 is entry, Google’s L4 is mid). Second, Netflix used to hire only “senior” and above with no public ladder. Levels.fyi now tracks Netflix L4, L5 and L6, with 1,431 submissions on the page when I checked, and the jumps between levels look like everyone else’s. They’re just paid in cash.
Amazon vs Google salary, level by level
This is the comparison people search for most after “who pays the most”, and it’s where the level labels cause real damage. An “L4 offer” means entry level at Amazon ($188,000) and mid-level at Google ($297,000). Same label, $109,000 apart.
| Google level | Google median | Amazon equivalent | Amazon median | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L3 (entry) | $197,000 | L4 (SDE I) | $188,000 | Google +$9,000 |
| L4 | $297,000 | L5 (SDE II) | $273,000 | Google +$24,000 |
| L5 (senior) | $434,000 | L6 (SDE III) | $384,000 | Google +$50,000 |
| L6 (staff) | $654,000 | L7 (Principal) | $624,000 | Google +$30,000 |
Google wins at every rung, and the gap is widest at senior. Amazon’s answer is the signing bonus, which is why Amazon offers look closer than they are in year one and further apart by year three.
The vesting schedule is half the story
Two engineers with the same headline TC can take home very different cash over four years depending on how the stock vests. These are the schedules Levels.fyi lists on each company page as of 22 Sep 2026.
- Google: 38 / 32 / 20 / 10, vesting monthly. Front-loaded. More cash in years 1 and 2.
- Meta: 25 / 25 / 25 / 25, vesting quarterly.
- Apple: 25 / 25 / 25 / 25, vesting every six months.
- Amazon: 5 / 15 / 40 / 40. Back-loaded. Years 1 and 2 are paid mostly with signing bonuses that taper.
- Netflix: effectively all cash. The Levels.fyi medians show $0 stock at every level.
Amazon’s schedule is the trap candidates get caught in most often. The offer letter quotes total comp annualised across four years, but you only get 20% of the stock in the first two years. Signing bonuses bridge the gap. Leave after year two and you walk away with a fifth of the grant, which is a very different number from the one on the offer.
Google, Meta and Amazon pay by level
Google’s ladder runs L3 (entry) up to L11 (Fellow). Most engineers top out at L5 or L6. L7 and above weren’t in the public table when I checked, so I left them out rather than reuse January’s numbers.
| Level | Title | Median TC | Base | Stock / yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L3 | SWE II (entry) | $197,000 | $156,000 | $31,800 |
| L4 | SWE III | $297,000 | $192,000 | $81,300 |
| L5 | Senior SWE | $434,000 | $235,000 | $167,000 |
| L6 | Staff SWE | $654,000 | $267,000 | $337,000 |
Meta
Earlier versions of this page said Meta pays 15 to 25% more than Google at every equivalent level. That was true in January. It isn’t now: the premium is 4% at E4, zero at E5 and about 8% at E6, and Google pays more at entry. What hasn’t changed is the review culture. Meta’s twice-yearly PSC calibration is stricter than Google’s, and a “Meets Expectations” rating sets off a real conversation with your manager.
| Level | Title | Median TC | Base | Stock / yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E3 | SWE (entry) | $181,000 | $157,000 | $22,000 |
| E4 | SWE | $308,000 | $186,000 | $99,900 |
| E5 | Senior SWE | $434,000 | $224,000 | $182,000 |
| E6 | Staff SWE | $707,000 | $270,000 | $394,000 |
E6 to E7 is still the steepest jump in tech, and almost all of it is stock. E7 wasn’t in the public table on 22 Sep; our January figure was $1.63M. If you’re being recruited at that level you already know the comp will be custom.
Amazon (with the back-loaded asterisk)
| Level | Title | Median TC | Base | Stock / yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L4 | SDE I | $188,000 | $141,000 | $37,400 |
| L5 | SDE II | $273,000 | $181,000 | $90,000 |
| L6 | SDE III (senior) | $384,000 | $211,000 | $173,000 |
| L7 | Principal SDE | $624,000 | $265,000 | $353,000 |
Amazon’s base salary cap
Amazon capped base salary at $160,000 for years and pushed everything above it into stock and signing bonuses. In February 2022 it raised the cap to $350,000. Base still trails the others: the L6 median base is $211,000 against $235,000 for Google L5. If a recruiter quotes a base far outside that band, ask how it’s built.
Apple and Netflix: the outliers
Apple pays less than Google at every matched level, by 15% at ICT3 and ICT4 and closer to 24% at ICT5 ($495,000 against $654,000 for Google L6). The pitch is brand, stability, and the smallest gap between IC pay and manager pay in FAANG. Apple also runs a tighter return-to-office policy than its peers, which matters more to some candidates than the comp gap.
Netflix is its own model. The Levels.fyi medians are pure cash: $318,000 at L4, $520,000 at L5 and $800,000 at L6, with no stock and no bonus. You can elect to take part of your pay as stock options if you want. The upside is predictability. The downside is you don’t ride the stock unless you choose to. The other downside is the “keeper test”: Netflix expects managers to keep asking whether they’d fight to keep each report, and “adequate performance gets a generous severance” is straight out of its culture memo.
What we hear from candidates comparing offers
Most of the FAANG salary comparison questions we get are really offer questions. Candidates working with the LastRound AI copilot on offer prep get the same question wrong over and over: they optimise for headline TC instead of effective TC. Headline TC is what the recruiter quotes. Effective TC is what you actually take home over the years you realistically stay, accounting for vesting schedule, refresh patterns, base-pay caps, and the odds you’ll survive the performance-review cycle.
A few rules that hold up in almost every comparison we walk through:
- If you’re optimising for cash in years 1 and 2, Google wins. The front-loaded vesting plus a reasonable base does more than Meta’s equal headline.
- If you’re at staff level and you trust the stock, Meta still wins. Below staff, it’s now a wash with Google.
- If you’re optimising for predictability or you can’t stomach RSU volatility, Netflix wins.
- If you’re optimising for brand or work-life balance, Apple or Google wins (team-dependent).
- Amazon wins on offer-letter signing bonuses, but rarely on take-home cash if you exit before year 3.
How to negotiate between FAANG offers
Five things that actually move the needle in practice:
- Get the level right first. An L5 at one company can outpay an L6 at another. Recruiters can match or beat a competing level, which is a bigger lever than a competing dollar figure.
- Compare four-year totals, not year-one. Amazon’s year-one number looks competitive only because the signing bonus is doing the work.
- Use competing offers literally. Recruiters at the FAANGs all have explicit latitude to match. They need you to forward the other offer letter or the recruiter’s number.
- Push on signing bonus and refresher grant. These are the most flexible levers. Base salary is band-locked, initial stock is band-locked, but signing and refreshers are negotiable.
- Factor in the keep-or-lose probability. A higher headline TC at a company with a 25% PIP rate is worth less than a 15% lower TC somewhere stable. (This is the one nobody on Reddit will admit to you.)
One more thing
All of the above is the candidate side. From the recruiter side, the conversation looks different in 2026. Tech hiring budgets at FAANG are not back to their 2022 peaks. The BLS Software Developers Occupational Outlook still projects strong growth, but the FAANGs themselves have fewer open requisitions per quarter than they did in 2021. That changes the negotiating dynamic. If you have a strong offer in hand, negotiate hard. If you don’t, applying broadly matters more than chasing the highest single offer.
Sources: Levels.fyi US software engineer pages for Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Netflix (last updated 22 Sep 2026, checked 23 Sep 2026); the Levels.fyi 2025 End-of-Year Pay Report for the January baseline; CNBC on Amazon’s base-pay cap; and the BLS Software Developers Occupational Outlook. Medians are Levels.fyi-verified user submissions. Review-culture observations come from candidates the LastRound AI team has worked with through offer negotiation.
LastRound data
What our own session data says about levels
One thing we can add from our side. Across 1,393 interview sessions configured on LastRound between January 2025 and July 2026, the largest experience band was 3 to 5 years at 475 sessions, with 447 from candidates reporting zero years and 304 in the 6 to 10 band. Mid-level is where the volume is, which is also the band where the pay tables above spread most widely between companies.
Frequently asked questions
Which FAANG company pays the most for entry-level engineers?
Google, at a median of $197,000 for L3 as of 22 Sep 2026, ahead of Amazon L4 ($188,000), Meta E3 ($181,000) and Apple ICT2 ($167,000). Netflix’s lowest listed level, L4 at $318,000, isn’t really an entry role, so it’s not a fair comparison.
What does an L4 pay at Google vs Amazon?
Google L4 is a mid-level role with a median of $297,000. Amazon L4 is entry level (SDE I) at $188,000. The Amazon role that matches Google L4 is L5, at $273,000.
Do FAANG salaries still lead the market in 2026?
At senior levels the gap has narrowed. AI labs and quantitative trading firms now match or beat FAANG total compensation for specialised roles, while FAANG remains strong at the mid-levels where hiring volume is highest.
How much of FAANG pay is stock rather than salary?
A large share. At senior level it’s 38% at Google L5 and 42% at Meta E5, and past half at Meta E6 (Levels.fyi medians, 22 Sep 2026). That makes vesting schedule and refresh policy as important as the headline number, because a four-year grant with no refresh looks very different in year three.
Is total compensation negotiable at FAANG companies?
Usually yes, most often on the equity component rather than base. Competing offers are the strongest lever; without one, the band your level maps to sets most of the outcome.
Which level should I target when I apply?
Apply to the level your scope matches rather than the title you currently hold, since titles are not comparable across companies. Down-levelling after an interview is common and much harder to reverse than aiming correctly at the start.
Written by
Krishna Naga
Writes about hiring processes at large tech companies and how candidates can prepare for them.