Brent Spiner net worth is listed at $16 million by Celebrity Net Worth, the figure most sites repeat. The actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation has worked for more than five decades, yet that number is an outside estimate, not a statement from him or his representatives.
This article traces where his money most likely came from, what the public record actually supports, and why the numbers you see online disagree.
Brent Spiner Net Worth at a Glance
The most cited estimate is $16 million, published by Celebrity Net Worth and last revised in October 2024. Urban Splatter put it at $13 million in April 2026, and smaller sites print figures as low as $7 million.
None of these numbers come from tax filings, company statements, or an interview in which Spiner discussed his wealth. They are modeled guesses built from credits, property records, and industry habits.
Here is what the public record does support:
- Born February 2, 1949, in Houston, Texas, he left the University of Houston without a degree
- Cast as Data in 1987, he appeared in all but one of the 178 episodes
- He made four Star Trek films between 1994 and 2002, then returned for Star Trek: Picard from 2020 to 2023
- He won a Saturn Award in 1997 for Star Trek: First Contact
- A Malibu home was reportedly bought for $4.6 million and listed at about $11 million in 2016
At 77, Spiner has had time to earn through several different careers, so any estimate has to account for decades of uneven work rather than one peak. The Star Trek years carry the most weight in every version of the story, but they sit alongside theater, voice acting, and a long list of guest roles.
Why Data Sits at the Center of the Estimate
Spiner reached the Star Trek set after nearly two decades of steady work without much recognition. In 1968 he was performing at Six Flags AstroWorld in Houston, first as a gunfighter and then in Dr. Featherflowers’ Medicine Show.
He moved to New York in the early 1970s for Broadway and off-Broadway theater, then to Los Angeles in 1984. There he picked up a recurring part as Bob Wheeler on Night Court and guest spots on Cheers and The Twilight Zone.
Data changed Spiner’s earning position. Seven seasons gave him a long-running network job, and four feature films followed. Celebrity Net Worth attaches a $5 million figure to Star Trek: Insurrection, but it is the only career earnings line on his profile, and the site does not explain how it was calculated.
Time may have done the rest. Actors on network series typically collect residuals when episodes rerun, and The Next Generation has stayed in circulation for decades. Residual terms are private contracts, though, so nobody outside his team can say what reruns or streaming add up to for him.
The Picard Return
In 2020, eighteen years after he last appeared as Data, Spiner came back to the character in Star Trek: Picard. He was billed as a series regular and, in the third season, played Noonien Soong, B-4, Lore, and a version of Data built to feel emotions, all at once.
Spiner’s pay for the show has never been published. The series ran three seasons, so the work stretched across several years rather than a single guest spot. It also showed the character still had pull with audiences, which matters for convention bookings and interviews.
Income Beyond Star Trek
Spiner built a second line of work around supporting parts that people remember. None of the following comes with a verified paycheck, but together they show how his career stayed busy between and after the Trek years.
Film and Television Credits
Spiner’s best-known non-Trek role is Dr. Brackish Okun in Independence Day (1996), which earned him a Saturn Award nomination. He returned to the part for Independence Day: Resurgence in 2016.
Spiner’s screen list around that is long: Phenomenon, Out to Sea, I Am Sam, The Aviator, Dude, Where’s My Car?, and guest turns on Friends, Frasier, and Mad About You. He appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory in 2011, and later played a recurring role on Outcast across 17 episodes.
Voice Work, Stage, Music, and Books
Voice work has been steady for Spiner. He voiced Puck on Gargoyles, played the Joker in Young Justice beginning in 2011, lent his voice to Star Wars Rebels and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., and recorded Data for several Star Trek video games.
On stage, Spiner played John Adams in the 1997 Broadway revival of 1776 and earned a Drama Desk nomination. He also recorded Ol’ Yellow Eyes Is Back in 1991, an album of 1940s pop standards, and later made Dreamland with singer Maude Maggart.
In 2011 Spiner also began starring in Fresh Hell, a comic webseries in which he plays a version of himself trying to rebuild a stalled career. It is a rare case of an actor joking about the unpredictable income of his own trade.
In October 2021 he released Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir, part memoir and part invented detective story, with an audiobook featuring vocal cameos from his Next Generation castmates. In 2026 he launched the podcast Dropping Names with Brent and Jonny alongside Jonathan Frakes. No public source reports what the book or podcast earn.
The Malibu Home and What It Reveals
Real estate is the one asset in this story with numbers attached. Celebrity Net Worth reports that Spiner paid $4.6 million in 2003 for an estate in Malibu’s Point Dume area, a 5,000-square-foot house built in 1960 on about 1.6 acres.
Sources disagree on the timing. A Fox News report drawing on the Los Angeles Times says he bought the property in 1998, which would make the purchase older and the gain larger. The same report gives the listing price as $10,995,000 and describes three bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a pool with a waterfall.
The listing agent pointed to deeded rights to one of Malibu’s most exclusive beaches as a selling point. Celebrity Net Worth says the house went on the market in 2016 at about $11 million and did not find a buyer.
Point Dume is among Malibu’s priciest neighborhoods. The Real Deal reported a 6,000-square-foot house there traded for $52 million in 2023, while Redfin put the area’s median sale price at about $4.9 million that October. Those numbers describe other properties and say nothing about his.
That last detail matters. An asking price is a hope, not a valuation, and the public record available for this article does not show a sale, a mortgage balance, or whether he still owns the property. Treat the $11 million as a ceiling on what the house might have fetched at one moment, not as cash in his accounts.
Why the $16 Million Figure Deserves Caution
A 2A Magazine analysis points out that Forbes, Bloomberg, Reuters, and other major financial outlets have never reported a net worth for Spiner. It also traces the $16 million figure repeated across aggregator sites back to Celebrity Net Worth. When a number is copied from site to site, repetition is not confirmation.
Celebrity Net Worth is open about its method. It says its numbers are estimates calculated from public sources, and that it sometimes adds private tips from celebrities or their representatives. That is a reasonable approach for a rough guide, but it is not an audit.
Some pages online credit him with technology investments, merchandise royalties, and podcast sponsorships. None of them cite a document, so they are best ignored.
Gross pay also is not net worth. Agents, managers, taxes, and living costs take large portions of what a working actor earns, which is why a career with a few big checks can still produce a modest total. The same 2A analysis offers its own range of $10 million to $16 million and says the true number may differ.
For context, that article lists LeVar Burton at roughly $6 million on the same site. The $16 million estimate therefore sits well above at least one of his castmates, though without audited records the comparison is only as strong as the guesses behind it.
How Reliable Is Each Piece of the Estimate
It helps to sort what is known by how firmly it can be backed up. Four buckets cover everything written about his money.
- Confirmed by primary or well-documented records: his credits, the 178-episode run, the 1997 Saturn Award, and the 2024 Saturn Lifetime Achievement Award shared with the cast
- Widely reported: the Malibu listing at about $11 million in 2016, which both Celebrity Net Worth and a Fox News report citing the Los Angeles Times describe
- Public estimates: the $16 million figure from Celebrity Net Worth and the $13 million figure from Urban Splatter
- Unverified: the $5 million Insurrection line, his residual income, and any claim about investments or royalties
The pattern is clear. The career behind a large estimate is well documented, while the dollar figure itself is estimated.
That split is worth keeping in mind when you see a confident dollar amount in a search result. A headline that says what he “makes” per year or per episode is almost certainly invented, because no source in this research reports it.
What Could Move the Number Next
Spiner has not slowed down. In March 2024 he returned as Bob Wheeler in the second season of the rebooted Night Court, a character he first played in the mid-1980s. He also voiced Purple Data in an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks that year.
In 2024, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films gave the cast of The Next Generation a Saturn Lifetime Achievement Award. A photo on his Wikipedia page was taken at GalaxyCon San Jose in 2026, a reminder that fan conventions remain part of his calendar.
Spiner has said he does not plan to play Data again, though he has indicated he might consider Altan Soong. That narrows one route for Data-related work, but the Soong family of characters gives him other ways back into the franchise.
Data also keeps working as a cultural reference point. When Spiner appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory, the cameo leaned on viewers already knowing the android and the actor who played him. The Academy’s award citation credited The Next Generation with shaping television after it followed the original series.
For Spiner, that recognition is the real asset. It keeps conventions, voice offers, podcast listeners, and reunion projects coming, which is a steadier base than any single paycheck.
Any figure placed on Brent Spiner’s wealth should be treated as a snapshot. A new series, a book deal, or a property sale would change it, and none of those events would necessarily be reported with a dollar amount.