Build the websites and web apps people actually use. The tech job with the shortest distance between learning something and being paid for it.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$92,650
Junior developer
$48,100
Senior or specialist
$162,290
The national median is $92,650 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $48,100. This is the survey's figure for web developers specifically, which is a separate and slightly lower-paid category than software developers. City matters enormously: the same job pays very differently in Omaha and San Francisco.
$48,000 to $70,000
Junior developer, first year
Getting hired without experience is the real barrier in this field, not the coding. Once you have 18 months on a team, the market opens up and pay moves fast.
$162,290 at the top tenth
Senior, lead and specialist developers
The jump comes from depth, not years: people who own a system, handle performance and security, or specialize in something scarce. Product companies often add stock on top of salary, which does not show up in wage surveys at all.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
This is the one technology path where the free route genuinely competes: the languages, the documentation and most learning material cost nothing, so the low end is a couple of hundred dollars for a paid course, a domain and hosting while you build projects. The cheap door is harder to walk through than it reads, because you have to finish real work and get past screening with no credential. The high end is a four year computer science degree at roughly $11,000 a year at an in state public university, or about $4,000 a year for a two year community college associate degree. An online competency based degree at Western Governors University runs about $4,325 per six month term. Coding bootcamps charge five figures with a mixed record.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before paying for anything. This is the one tech path where a free self-taught route genuinely competes with a paid one, so borrowing heavily is rarely the right call.
Salary at a company
Steady, with health insurance and often a retirement match. The default and the easiest to plan a life around.
Contract and agency work
Higher hourly rates, no benefits, and gaps between contracts you have to save for.
Freelance
Small business websites and maintenance. Easy to start, hard to charge properly, and half the job is chasing invoices.
Location pay bands
Remote jobs increasingly pay by where you live. Same work, different number.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
No license, no exam and no required degree. What replaces all of that is a set of things you have built that a stranger can open.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Start now. HTML and CSS in a weekend, then JavaScript. You need a laptop and nothing else.
Build real things
6 to 18 months
Not tutorials. Something with a purpose that you put on the internet where people can use it and break it.
Decide on a degree
0 to 4 years
About 46% of people in this job hold a bachelor's degree, 17% an associate degree and 17% a certificate. A degree opens doors at big employers and is optional everywhere else.
Get the first job
3 to 12 months of applying
Junior developer, agency, internship or a registered tech apprenticeship. Expect a technical interview where you write code in front of someone.
Specialize
Year 2 onward
Front end, back end, full stack, performance, accessibility or security. Depth is what moves your pay after year three.
Computer science
If your school offers it, take it. If not, that changes nothing about your chances.
Math
Less than people assume for web work, but logic and algebra make everything easier.
English
You will write documentation, commit messages and explanations for non-technical people every single day.
Art or design
Knowing why a layout feels wrong makes a front end developer much more valuable.
Business
Most web work exists to make a business money. Understanding that gets you into better rooms.
There is no state license, no board and no exam. Anyone can take the title, which is why hiring runs on portfolios and technical interviews instead of credentials. The closest thing to an official rulebook is the World Wide Web Consortium, the body that publishes the web standards browsers implement, including the accessibility guidelines that government and large-company contracts require you to meet. Knowing those guidelines is a genuine professional edge and costs nothing to learn.
On your own, for free
The most common route into this job. Free curricula, documentation and open source projects you can read.
Community college
Two-year web development and computer science associate degrees, cheap, and they transfer.
Four-year computer science
The route large employers and visa-sponsoring companies prefer, and the best option if you might move into other software work.
Registered apprenticeships
Technology apprenticeships registered with the federal apprenticeship office pay you while you learn. Rarer than in the trades, but they exist.
Things you don't need, but that help.
React and TypeScript
The federal occupation profile lists both as in-demand skills, alongside Vue.js and Git. Most front end job listings ask for them by name.
Back end and databases
Being able to build the server side as well as the screen roughly doubles the jobs you can apply for.
Cloud platforms
Deploying and running what you build on AWS (Amazon Web Services) or a similar platform is now expected, not a bonus.
Accessibility
Building sites that work for blind and disabled users is legally required on a lot of contracts and is a rare specialty.
Three projects a stranger can open
Deployed, working, with a link. Worth more than any certificate in this field.
Git and public code
Version control is how every team works, and public repositories let employers read how you think.
Writing clearly
The developers who can explain a trade-off in plain English end up leading teams.
Patience for debugging
Much of the job is finding out why something that worked yesterday does not work now.
Small businesses, restaurants, dentists and nonprofits all need websites and almost none of them can hire a developer full time. It is the easiest freelance work to start, because the first client is usually someone you already know, and the hardest to do well, because you are also the salesperson, the project manager and the support desk. A lot of developers use it to earn while they learn, then move to a salaried job for the stability, and keep two or three clients on a maintenance retainer.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
A short stand-up call in the morning where everyone says what they are working on. Then long blocks of writing and reading code, broken up by reviewing someone else's changes and being asked questions in chat. Something breaks in the afternoon and you spend two hours finding out it was a stray character in a configuration file. You ship, you write the notes, you close the ticket. Most of this happens from home.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
About 86,000 people are employed as web developers in the United States, with roughly 5,400 openings projected a year and growth well above average through 2034. Plenty of people who build websites are counted under other job titles, which is why the number looks smaller than the industry feels.
Of people working as web developers, about 46% hold a bachelor's degree, 17% an associate degree and 17% a certificate after high school. The federal profile says plainly that employers often value programming skill over formal credentials.
The World Wide Web Consortium publishes the standards that browsers implement, including the accessibility guidelines used as a legal benchmark for public websites in many countries. It is a volunteer-and-member organization, and the specifications are free to read.
The federal wage survey keeps them in separate categories with different medians. In real job listings the line is blurry and people cross it constantly, so do not let a title on a posting decide whether you apply.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.