Physical Therapist Salary in San Antonio, TX 2026,
$106,010 Median | BLS + Market Data

San Antonio physical therapists earn a BLS MSA median of $106,010/yr, or $50.97 an hour, across the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro, with a published band of $76,010 to $137,240. That is level with the Texas statewide median and 3.2% above the US median. Setting explains almost all of the spread between the ends of that band.

No — San Antonio is level with the Texas statewide median for physical therapists. Texas PT pay is fairly uniform between metros because the licence, the practice act and the payer mix are identical statewide. San Antonio's real advantage over the state's costlier metros is what the same salary buys, not the salary itself.

Yes, and by a wide margin. Per-visit home health rates plus mileage across a geographically spread metro are how a San Antonio PT reaches toward the $137,240 top of the published band. The trade is real: visit volume is variable, driving time is unpaid in most arrangements, and documentation burden is heavier than in a clinic.

A Texas physical therapist licence issued by the Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners under the Executive Council of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Examiners: a DPT from an accredited programme, the National Physical Therapy Examination and the Texas jurisprudence assessment. The licence is statewide, and Texas participates in the PT Compact, which matters for therapists covering across state lines.

Reasonably. The metro's academic and military rehabilitation base creates a steady supply of structured first jobs with mentorship, which is exactly what a new DPT should want, and those posts sit in the lower half of the band by design. The metro's weakness is scale — BLS counts 1,700 PTs here at below the national concentration, so specialised roles turn over slowly.

The distance from this metro's 10th to its 90th percentile is more than 80%, which is unusual for a licensed profession with one entry credential. The explanation is that San Antonio's PT market contains two economies: salaried institutional employment, which is large and stable here because of the medical centre and the federal health presence, and per-visit home health, which is paid on a completely different basis. The median sits between them rather than describing either.

OEWS covers employees, so PTs working as independent contractors in home health — a substantial group in this metro — are inconsistently captured, likely understating the top of the range. The estimate also excludes productivity bonuses in outpatient orthopaedics and the sign-on incentives that home health agencies across South Texas use routinely.

A San Antonio PT's income is decided almost entirely in the first two years, when they choose between institutional and community-based practice. Institutional roles offer mentorship, specialisation pathways and a predictable ladder that tops out near the metro's upper-middle. Home health offers immediate access to the top of the band with no ladder above it. Moving from the first to the second is easy; moving back after several years is harder, because institutional employers hire on recent acute-care experience.