In 2026, CCNA-certified professionals earn more on average than Linux+ certified professionals. Glassdoor pegs the average CCNA Network Engineer salary at roughly $121,000, while Skillsoft’s IT Skills and Salary survey puts the average Linux+ salary at about $110,000. However, the long-term earning ceiling for Linux+ holders who move into DevOps, SRE, or cloud engineering is significantly higher, often topping $200,000 in major markets. CCNA pays better on day one. Linux+ pays better fifteen years in if you take the right turns.
That’s the short answer. Now the longer one, because picking between these two certifications based on average salary alone is going to send you down a road you might not want to be on. The two paths look similar on a job board. They are not similar in practice.
What The Salary Data Actually Says
Let me lay out the credible 2026 numbers from multiple sources, because individual data points are noisy and you’ll see wildly different averages depending on which site you check.
For CCNA, the data clusters around three numbers depending on what you’re measuring. Glassdoor’s average for a CCNA Network Engineer at the entry level is $121,253, with a typical range between $93,000 and $160,000. ZipRecruiter shows a slightly lower national average of $109,040, with a range of $89,000 to $134,000. PayScale-cited data shows an average of $112,333. The KORE1 Network Engineer Salary Guide for 2026, which is one of the more honest sources, puts the realistic range at $95,000 to $145,000 for someone with production experience.
The trap in the CCNA salary data is that the average assumes experience. Fresh CCNA holders with no work history don’t walk into $100,000 jobs. The pure-cert-no-experience entry point is more like $50,000 to $70,000. The big numbers come from CCNA plus three to five years of production work. That distinction matters.
For Linux+, the data is messier because the certification is less precisely tied to specific job titles. Skillsoft’s IT Skills and Salary survey reports an average of $110,589 for Linux+ holders globally. PayScale’s average for Linux+ specifically sits around $91,000 to $93,000. Industry guides like Cert Empire put the typical range at $90,000 to $108,000.
The Linux+ average is also pulled around by the fact that many Linux+ holders also hold other, higher-value certifications like RHCSA, RHCE, AWS, or Kubernetes. Their salaries reflect the whole stack, not just the Linux+ credential alone. If you isolate “Linux+ as the highest cert held with no major adjacent credentials,” the average drops closer to $80,000.
So in raw dollars, CCNA wins the day-one comparison by roughly $15,000 to $20,000 at the median. But the bigger story is what each certification turns into over time.
What CCNA Actually Qualifies You For
CCNA is the entry point to a fairly defined career track: network engineer.
The first job is usually Network Technician or NOC (Network Operations Center) Analyst, in the $55,000 to $75,000 range depending on geography. After two or three years, you move up to Network Engineer, where the $95,000 to $130,000 range opens up. After five to seven years and additional certifications (CCNP, ideally), Senior Network Engineer roles run $130,000 to $170,000. The top of the conventional ladder is Network Architect or Principal Network Engineer, which hits $160,000 to $200,000+ in major markets.
The strength of the CCNA path is its clarity. The job titles are well-defined, the cert progression is well-understood, the work is similar across companies, and the hiring market is stable. You always know what the next step looks like.
The weakness is the ceiling. A network engineer at a public tech company doesn’t typically receive the kind of equity packages that push total compensation past $300,000 the way a software engineer or SRE might. Networking comp structures top out around $200,000 to $250,000 for all-cash roles, with some exceptions at the very top.
What Linux+ Actually Qualifies You For
Linux+ is more of a stepping stone than an endpoint. By itself, it qualifies you for entry-level Linux system administrator roles, junior DevOps positions, and IT support roles in Linux-heavy environments. Pure Linux+ holders earn modest salaries because the cert is foundational rather than advanced.
The interesting part is what Linux+ becomes if you build on it. Linux+ plus RHCSA pushes you into mid-level system administration at $90,000 to $120,000. Add cloud certifications (AWS, GCP, Azure) and you’re looking at Cloud Infrastructure Engineer roles starting at $110,000 to $140,000. Add Kubernetes (CKA), automation skills (Ansible, Terraform), and a few years of production experience, and you become a DevOps Engineer or Site Reliability Engineer, where the range is $140,000 to $200,000+. At top tech companies, senior SREs hit total compensation of $250,000 to $400,000+ when equity is included.
The strength of the Linux+ path is the trajectory. The ceiling is dramatically higher than the CCNA path because Linux skills feed directly into DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, and cloud architecture, which is where the most lucrative IT roles live in 2026.
The weakness is that Linux+ alone doesn’t get you there. You have to layer on additional skills and certifications, and the path is less defined than networking. Some people get there in five years. Others wander for a decade because they didn’t pick the right adjacent skills.
The Career Path Comparison In One Picture
If you graph the two paths over a ten-year career, they look something like this in plain language.
Year 1: CCNA wins. $60,000 to $80,000 for CCNA holders in network roles. $50,000 to $70,000 for Linux+ holders in support or junior sysadmin roles.
Year 3: CCNA still wins. $85,000 to $110,000 for CCNA holders. $75,000 to $95,000 for Linux+ holders.
Year 5: They converge. $115,000 to $145,000 for CCNA holders who have added CCNP. $110,000 to $145,000 for Linux+ holders who have added RHCSA, cloud certs, and DevOps experience.
Year 7: Linux+ path starts pulling ahead, depending on which direction you took. CCNA-trajectory engineers at $130,000 to $170,000. Linux+ trajectory professionals who moved into DevOps or SRE at $150,000 to $220,000+.
Year 10+: The gap widens. CCNA careers cap around $200,000 to $250,000 (with exceptions for Network Architects at major tech companies). Linux+ careers that landed in SRE or Platform Engineering at large tech companies regularly clear $300,000 in total compensation.
The catch is that this assumes you pick the right adjacent skills on the Linux+ path. If you stay narrowly in Linux sysadmin work without picking up cloud or automation, your career caps around $130,000 to $150,000, which is below where the CCNA path lands.
Which One Is Actually The Easier Path
Both certifications are roughly comparable in difficulty as exams. CCNA’s 200-301 is a tougher exam than Linux+’s XK0-006, but Linux+ requires more hands-on familiarity with the operating system. Neither one is easy, neither one is overwhelming.
The harder comparison is what comes after the certification.
CCNA opens doors immediately. Employers hiring network technicians and junior network engineers actively look for CCNA on resumes. The cert plus a reasonable resume gets you interviews. Plenty of companies will hire CCNA holders straight out of cert school into entry-level network roles.
Linux+ opens doors more slowly. Employers don’t recruit specifically for Linux+ the way they recruit for CCNA. The cert helps you pass resume screens, but it’s rarely the deciding factor in hiring. What gets you a Linux job is hands-on experience with real Linux systems, which Linux+ proves you have a foundation in but doesn’t fully demonstrate.
If your goal is to get a job in IT within six months of finishing the cert, CCNA has the more direct path. Linux+ tends to require additional resume-building activities (home labs, contributions to open source, side projects) before employers take it seriously as the primary credential.
What The Job Market Looks Like For Each
The job markets for these two certifications look different, and that matters for how confident you can be in either path.
Network engineering as a discipline is mature, stable, and slowly evolving. Companies need network engineers in every industry, in every region, regardless of technology trends. The work isn’t glamorous, but it’s reliable. Layoffs in the broader tech industry tend to hit networking less hard than they hit software engineering, because networking work is operationally critical.
DevOps and SRE work, which is where the high-paying Linux+ career path ends up, is concentrated in tech-forward companies and regions. Demand is high, but it’s more volatile. Layoffs hit DevOps and platform teams. Hiring slows down faster during economic downturns. The salaries are higher, but the floor is also less stable than networking.
For someone optimizing for predictable career stability, CCNA wins. For someone optimizing for upside potential and willing to accept some volatility, Linux+ (combined with the right adjacent skills) wins.
Why Most People Asking This Question Are Asking The Wrong One
The question “which pays better” assumes the two certifications are interchangeable choices for the same person. They mostly aren’t.
People who succeed in networking enjoy systems thinking, like understanding how data physically moves between machines, and don’t mind being on-call for production outages. They also tend to enjoy stable, well-defined work environments.
People who succeed in Linux and DevOps enjoy scripting and automation, like building things rather than fixing them, and tolerate (or thrive on) ambiguity in how problems get solved. They tend to gravitate toward fast-moving environments where the tools change frequently.
If you took both certifications without any interest in either underlying topic, neither one would pay you well, because neither one creates a career on its own. The cert is the entry ticket. The career is what you build with the skills underneath it.
Take a long look at the daily work in each path before choosing based on salary. The wrong choice with higher pay is worse than the right choice with lower pay.
The Honest Recommendation
If you are choosing between these two certifications and you genuinely don’t have a preference, the data suggests CCNA is the safer bet at the start of your career. The day-one salary is higher, the job market is more predictable, the path is clearer, and the cert opens doors faster. The career path that CCNA opens up is well-documented and stable.
If you’re already drawn to Linux, scripting, cloud work, or building automation, Linux+ is the right starting point even though the early salary is lower. Just understand that Linux+ alone won’t get you to the high-paying end of that career. You need to build on it with RHCSA, cloud certifications, and real hands-on automation experience. The destination is worth the longer setup, but the setup is real.
If you have time and energy for both, the strongest combination in 2026 is CCNA plus Linux+ together. Network engineers who can also script in Bash and Python on Linux systems are increasingly valuable as networking itself moves toward automation. Many CCNP holders are now adding Linux skills to their stacks specifically because network automation requires it. The Cisco certifications beyond CCNA guide covers this trend in more depth.
Don’t pick a cert based on which one pays better in someone else’s career. Pick based on which kind of work you actually want to do, then optimize the cert stack around that decision. The salary follows.
Network Engineer | CCNA | CCNP Enterprise
Regina Martinelli is a CCNP-certified network engineer who covers IT training programs, certification paths, and Cisco industry news. She started writing about the CCNA from the inside as a candidate, and that ground-level perspective still shapes how she evaluates training resources and helps others navigate the path she has already walked.
