Most salary guides give you a range with no source. This one gives you a smaller set of numbers, and every one of them links to where it came from and says when it was published.
That makes it less complete than the guides it competes with. It also makes it the only one you can check.
Three things to know before the tables:
- There is no "business analyst" occupation in government statistics. The US publishes wages for management analysts and for computer systems analysts, and BA work sits between them. The UK's official survey has no code that isolates BAs at all. So the US section shows both codes, and the UK section uses job-ad data instead.
- Government data gives percentiles, not seniority bands. A 10th percentile is not "entry level" and a 90th is not "senior"; they are the bottom and top tenth of everyone in the occupation. The tables use the percentiles as published.
- The European figures are not government data. Levels.fyi figures come from people who chose to submit a salary, so they skew toward larger employers and toward people who are proud of their number. The Michael Page figure for France is a recruiter's estimate. Both are shown in a separate table from the government and job-ad figures, and they are labelled.
All figures are gross annual pay in local currency.
United States
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, wage data for May 2025. Two occupations cover business analyst work.
| Occupation | 10th percentile | Median | 90th percentile | Projected growth 2025 to 2035 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management analysts (SOC 13-1111) | $60,640 | $101,860 | $171,640 | 10% |
| Computer systems analysts (SOC 15-1211) | $67,340 | $105,850 | $167,710 | 8% |
Links: management analysts, computer systems analysts.
If your BA role is closer to process, strategy and stakeholders, the first row is the better comparison. If it is closer to systems, requirements and IT delivery, the second. Most career switchers land somewhere between the two, and the two medians are within $4,000 of each other, so the distinction matters less than it looks.
The 10th percentile is the number to hold onto if you are switching careers. Roughly one in ten people in these occupations earns below it, and that group includes new entrants.
United Kingdom
Source: ITJobsWatch, which reads salaries from job advertisements. Figures are for permanent roles advertised in the six months to 22 September 2026, from 1,139 ads that quoted a salary.
| Six months to Sep 2026 | Same period 2025 | Same period 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | £39,964 | £36,750 | £37,500 |
| 25th percentile | £45,000 | £46,250 | £47,500 |
| Median | £55,000 | £60,000 | £62,500 |
| 75th percentile | £66,250 | £80,000 | £80,000 |
| 90th percentile | £82,500 | £102,500 | £95,000 |
| UK excluding London, median | £52,500 | £50,500 | £50,000 |
Two things this table shows that a single figure would hide.
The median advertised BA salary fell 8.3% year on year, from £60,000 to £55,000. The top of the market fell harder: the 90th percentile dropped from £102,500 to £82,500. At the same time the number of BA ads more than doubled, from 685 to 1,589. More roles, lower pay, which is consistent with a market hiring more junior analysts.
London's median is £67,500. Everywhere else combined is £52,500. The London premium is real but it is not the doubling that people sometimes assume.
What this data is: the salary an employer printed in the ad. What it is not: what the person hired was actually paid. Advertised figures tend to run slightly above paid figures for junior roles and below for senior ones, because seniors negotiate.
Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, platform data
These figures come from salary platforms where people submit their own pay. Treat them as indicative, not as a market rate.
| Country | Source | Figure | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | Levels.fyi, entry level | Median €53,571; 25th €49,329; 75th €59,385 | April 2026 |
| France | Levels.fyi, all levels | Median €51,150; 25th €45,076; 75th €62,759; 90th €69,600 | June 2026 |
| France | Michael Page, via Journal du Net | Median €61,002 | 2026 |
| Netherlands | Levels.fyi, all levels | Median €63,054; 25th €48,819; 75th €76,712; 90th €84,600 | December 2025 |
| Belgium | Levels.fyi, all levels | Median €47,388; 25th €37,346; 75th €62,687; 90th €78,500 | April 2026 |
| Spain | Levels.fyi, all levels | Median €37,442; 25th €25,314; 75th €49,424; 90th €65,700 | May 2026 |
| Spain | Levels.fyi, entry level | Median €25,255; 25th €22,507; 75th €33,400 | April 2026 |
The two French sources disagree by about €10,000 on the median. That is the normal spread between platforms with different samples, and it is the reason platform figures get their own table. If two sources this far apart were averaged into one number, the number would look precise and mean nothing.
Two things stand out in the European table. The Netherlands median is the highest in Europe on this data, above Germany and above the UK median once converted. And the Spanish entry-level median of €25,255 is the lowest number in this guide by a wide margin, which matters if you are switching careers in Spain: the national median of €37,442 is not what a first BA role pays there.
Italy is not in this guide. The only figures available were single-company submissions, including one that was clearly a US-remote salary reported against an Italian address, and a country figure built from those would be a guess.
Does certification change the number?
The UK job-ad data can answer this directly, because ITJobsWatch counts which terms appear in ads.
Of the 1,589 permanent BA ads in the six months to September 2026:
- 23 mentioned IIBA (1.45%)
- 15 mentioned CBAP (0.94%)
- 168 asked for a degree (10.57%)
By comparison, 541 mentioned Agile (34%), 344 mentioned user stories (22%), 321 mentioned stakeholder management (20%) and 305 mentioned requirements gathering (19%).
So the honest reading is: UK employers advertising BA roles are asking for practical skills at twenty to thirty times the rate they are asking for a BA certification. That does not mean a certificate is worthless. It means that if you are choosing between a certificate and evidence you can do the work, the ads are telling you which one they screen for. Our ECBA guide goes into when the certificate is still worth the fee.
How to use these numbers
If you are switching careers, benchmark against the 10th and 25th percentiles, not the median. Those are the entry points, and they are still above the median for many of the roles people switch from.
If you are negotiating, use the source that matches your situation. In the UK, the job-ad median is what employers are budgeting. In the US, the BLS median is what the occupation actually earns.
If you are comparing countries, remember the platform figures are a different kind of number from the government ones. A €51,150 French median from Levels.fyi and a $101,860 US median from BLS are not comparable on method, before you even get to cost of living.
These figures will be updated when their sources publish new data. BLS updates annually; ITJobsWatch rolls its six-month window continuously.
What pays more than any of this
Every source above measures pay for the occupation. None of them measures pay for the person, and the person is what an employer is deciding on.
The thing that moves an individual offer is evidence: a requirements document you produced, a stakeholder register that holds up under questioning, a use case someone else could build from. Module 1 and your first Case Lab case are free, and the artifacts you produce there are the kind of evidence these salary figures cannot price. Start with Module 1.
Sources, in order of appearance
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Management Analysts. May 2025 wage data. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/management-analysts.htm
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Computer Systems Analysts. May 2025 wage data. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-systems-analysts.htm
- ITJobsWatch, Business Analyst, UK, six months to 22 September 2026. https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/business%20analyst.do
- Levels.fyi, Entry Level Business Analyst, Germany, updated April 2026. https://www.levels.fyi/t/business-analyst/levels/entry-level/locations/germany
- Levels.fyi, Business Analyst, France, updated June 2026. https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/t/business-analyst/locations/france
- Journal du Net, citing Michael Page 2026, Business Analyst salary, France. https://www.journaldunet.com/business/salaire/business-analyst/salaire-01870
- Levels.fyi, Business Analyst, Netherlands, updated December 2025. https://www.levels.fyi/t/business-analyst/locations/netherlands
- Levels.fyi, Business Analyst, Belgium, updated April 2026. https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/t/business-analyst/locations/belgium
- Levels.fyi, Business Analyst, Spain, updated May 2026. https://www.levels.fyi/t/business-analyst/locations/spain
- Levels.fyi, Entry Level Business Analyst, Spain, updated April 2026. https://www.levels.fyi/t/business-analyst/levels/entry-level/locations/spain