Tooth Fairy: How Much Per Tooth in 2026?

Tooth fairy how much per tooth in 2026: the answer, per the Delta Dental 2026 Tooth Fairy Poll, is $5.84 per lost tooth as a national average. That is up 17% from $5.01 in 2025, and it puts a first lost tooth at an average of $7.17 across the same survey. Those are the headline numbers most parents are searching for. The rest of this post is the harder question: how much should your tooth fairy leave, and what should the kid do with it once they have it?

The tooth fairy is rarely just a tooth fairy. For most kids, the coin or bill under the pillow is the first money they hold that is unambiguously theirs. The amount matters less than the ritual you build around it.

Tooth fairy: how much per tooth in 2026?

Here is the published 2026 picture from Delta Dental's annual survey, in one place:

1. National average per tooth: $5.84.
2. First-tooth average: $7.17, roughly 23% above a regular tooth.
3. Year-over-year change: up 17% from $5.01 in 2025.
4. Highest regional average: Northeast at $6.45.
5. Lowest regional average: Midwest at $5.27.

The 2025-to-2026 jump matters. The Delta Dental poll has reported declines in some past years, so the trend is not a one-way escalator. But $5.84 is the published number for 2026, and a household paying $1 or $2 per tooth is now visibly below the national average. That is not a problem by itself. Plenty of families pay $1 per tooth on purpose, hold the line for a decade, and raise kids with a perfectly intact tooth-fairy memory. But it is useful to know where your number lands.

The interactive picker further down on this page lets you set a household budget tier, region, and first-vs-regular tooth, and shows your suggested amount against the Delta Dental data on a thermometer. It is a starting point, not a prescription. You know your household better than a poll does.

First tooth vs regular tooth: the gap that catches parents off guard

The Delta Dental poll has reported a first-tooth bump every year it has measured one. The 2026 first-tooth average is $7.17, against a regular-tooth average of $5.84. The gap of about $1.33 is real but smaller than many families set themselves. A common household pattern is $10 for the first tooth and $5 for the rest, or $5 for the first and $2 for the rest. The exact number is less important than picking it before the tooth is lost.

The reason to bump the first tooth on purpose is straightforward. The first tooth is a one-time event. The kid will remember the amount for years and tell the story to a younger sibling, a cousin, or eventually their own kid. The regular teeth come 19 more times across the next five years; they teach a different lesson (consistency) and benefit from a different cadence (steady, predictable, lower).

A second reason: the first tooth is your one chance to set the precedent for everything that follows. Once you have left $10 for the first tooth, $2 for the second tooth reads as a downgrade. Picking a single amount that you can hold for every tooth after the first is the move. Set the first-tooth number a little higher; hold every subsequent tooth at the lower number; and resist mid-cycle inflation.

The picker rounds to the nearest quarter because tooth-fairy realism matters. Few parents leave $4.86. The output is meant to be a starting amount you adjust to what is in your wallet at 11 p.m. on tooth night.

Regional variation: why the Northeast and the Midwest land in different places

The Delta Dental 2026 regional breakdown is wide. The Northeast leads at $6.45 per tooth, the West is at $5.99, the South is at $5.89, and the Midwest is at $5.27. The gap from the highest to the lowest is more than a dollar per tooth, which compounds across 20 baby teeth into a meaningful difference in lifetime tooth-fairy spend.

A few caveats matter. The regional figures are aggregated from a national survey of 1,000 parents, not a deep regional sample. They track cost-of-living and parent-income patterns more than tooth-fairy culture. A household in the Midwest that pays $5 per tooth is not "below average for the Midwest" in any meaningful behavioral sense; the regional average is just where the survey landed this year. Treat it as context, not a benchmark to hit.

The right calibration for your household is the one you can hold for every kid, every tooth, for five years. A generous first-tooth amount you cannot repeat for the second kid creates a fairness problem you do not need. A tight amount you hold consistently teaches that the tooth fairy is reliable, which is the actual lesson at this age. The CFPB Money As You Grow milestones frame this same idea more broadly: at ages 6 to 10, predictability of money rituals does more developmental work than the size of any single payout.

What the kid does with the money

The Delta Dental figure is interesting trivia. What happens to the cash the next morning is where the money lesson lives.

Most six-year-olds have no system for holding money yet. The tooth fairy is the first cash event, which means it is also the first chance to build the system. Three lessons inside the app teach the kid side of this same arc. Pair them with whatever you actually leave under the pillow.

A practical pattern that works for most households at this age: when the kid finds the money, do not rush to sort it. Let them hold it for a day. Then sit down with three jars (or three envelopes, or the in-app Save / Spend / Give bucket system) and ask the kid where they want each piece to go. At six, they will probably put most of it in Spend. That is fine. The point is the ritual, not the ratio. Across the next 19 teeth, the Save jar starts winning more of the share. For the deeper rundown on the jar system across all ages, the Save / Spend / Give system post walks through the splits that work as kids get older.

What if my kid asks where the money comes from?

Two phases to this question.

Phase one, ages roughly 5 to 7. The kid asks out of curiosity, not skepticism. The answer is short and warm: "The tooth fairy comes when kids lose teeth and leaves a little money. Different families have different traditions about how much." Notice what this answer avoids. It does not invent elaborate lore. It does not promise an ever-larger amount. It does not name a specific other family. Calm and brief is the register.

Phase two, ages roughly 7 to 9. The kid asks with an actual question behind it. "Is it really you?" "Did Sam's mom tell him it was her?" When this version of the question arrives, the answer is the truth. Most kids work this out themselves between 6 and 9; the reveal is rarely the trauma adults fear. The move that lands is to frame the reveal as joining the team. "Yes, it is us. Now you get to be the tooth fairy for [younger sibling], and you cannot tell them. Welcome to the club." Most kids beam.

A small note on the older-sibling-tells-the-secret problem. If a sibling spoils the secret to a younger one, do not punish or lecture. Have the older one help leave the next tooth's money. The reveal converts cleanly into participation, and the younger kid often does not even register the change. The teaching-6-year-old post covers the broader question of how much honesty to share with kids at this age; the same principle applies here.

Frequently asked questions