Lionel Messi remains the highest-paid player in Major League Soccer, with an annual base salary of $25m and guaranteed compensation of $28.3m, according to figures released by the MLS Players Association. The numbers reflect the contract extension he signed with Inter Miami in October, and they underline how far the league’s pay scale has been pulled by the Argentine star.
Messi turns 39 next month, yet he is still the standard by which the league measures star power and value. He joined Inter Miami in 2023, has scored 59 goals in 64 regular-season MLS games and helped Miami win the MLS Cup in 2025. He also led the league with 29 goals last season and was named Major League Soccer Most Valuable Player in both 2024 and 2025, a run that has kept him at the center of the league’s biggest moments.
LAFC’s Son Heung-min is now the second-highest earner in MLS, with a base salary of $10.4m and guaranteed compensation of $11.2m. That puts him just ahead of Inter Miami’s Rodrigo de Paul and San Diego FC’s Hirving Lozano, in a ranking that shows how aggressively clubs are competing for elite names. The salary figures do not include endorsement income, and they also leave out Messi’s option to acquire a stake in Inter Miami, which means the published total is only part of his broader financial package.
The association’s release gives a rare snapshot of what top-end spending looks like in MLS, where star arrivals are increasingly reshaping the table at the top. Messi’s base salary has doubled, a sign that Inter Miami’s commitment did not stop with his first deal in 2023. The extension signed in October kept him at the summit of the league’s wage ladder, even as other clubs moved to narrow the gap with marquee signings of their own.
What stands out now is not just that Messi is still first, but that the league’s second tier is tightening around him. Son is close enough to make the comparison meaningful, and de Paul and Lozano are not far behind. For MLS, the published figures show a market that is no longer defined by one outlier alone, even if Messi remains the name that still bends it.
