Reality Show Prize Money: Ranking ‘Survivor,’ ‘Challenge,’ More

Rolling in the dough! Reality TV shows can be grueling, awkward and time-consuming, but for many contestants, it’s more than worth it based on the prize money they can win at the end.

Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, who has won seven seasons of MTV’s The Challenge, has taken home more than $1.2 million in winnings over the years. When it comes to an individual season win, The Challenge, has ranged in what the top competitor takes home, with the grand prize totaling $900,000, split between two people for 2021’s The Challenge: Double Agents. For its milestone 40th season, The Challenge: Battle of the Eras upped the prize to $1 million.

Baking shows also have a wide variety of seed money, with some series only giving a cake stand to the champion and others awarding the top chef a restaurant job and salary. Talent competitions, however, have the most inconsistencies with regard to prizes.

For years, The Voice coaches have been vocal about how the winners of the singing competition don’t appear to get the proper support from the record label that signs them as part of their winner’s compensation package.

“We work with these artists and give them this tremendous workshop and get them to the end of the show, and I think the work that we do on the show is amazing,” former coach Adam Levine told reporters at a press conference for The Voice‘s season finale in December 2017. “We give these guys this incredible platform and this really rare thing, a lot of exposure and airtime. Once we pass the torch, it is the record label that completely destroys that.”

Scroll down to see the reality show prize numbers from worst to best: