How Prince William’s Net Worth Will Eclipse Harry and Meghan’s

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have faced repeated criticism for complaining while sitting on a multimillion dollar fortune, while Prince William controls a property estate worth more than 10 times their Netflix contract.

King Charles III’s two sons are in very different financial situations because Harry and Meghan have made money by pitching themselves to the private sector in Hollywood. William by contrast has, since their father became king in 2022, been funded by the Duchy of Cornwall, a property portfolio that he controls, but does not own outright in the traditional sense.

That makes it hard to say who is wealthier, but in reality William and Princess Kate are likely to have a greater net worth than Harry and Meghan’s media empire over time.

Prince William’s Income and Net Worth

The Duchy of Cornwall exists to provide a private income for the Prince of Wales, who used to be Charles, but since September 2022 it has been William.

Succession, in fact, quadrupled William’s income, as he had previously been given a portion of the Duchy money each year by his father, when it was in Charles’ hands.

And up until summer 2020, he was sharing that pot of £4.5 million ($5.7 million) with Harry and Meghan, meaning in reality his current income is likely to be in the ballpark of 10 times his budget in the years before the Sussex royal exit.

However, William does not have outright control over the property portfolio—he can’t sell its asset and therefore, while he has a mega income, he does not have as much control as the Sussexes.

The estate itself is valued at £1.2 billion and his annual income was £23.1 million in 2023-24, according to annual accounts.

That means William may already be well on his way to rivaling the $100 million frequently quoted as the value of the Sussexes’ Netflix deal.

The Prince of Wales only got part of the 2022-23 income as he took over around six months into the tax year, with accounts revealing he benefited from £12.7 million.

With the £23.1 million he was paid in 2023-24, he had already made £35.8 million between the succession and April.

If his income sits at around £23 million for 2024-25 then by April 2025 he will have been paid £58.8 million.

And add one more year’s income on top and William will have likely earned about £82 million, so he may have topped the upper estimate for Netflix in just two years.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Net Worth

Harry and Meghan’s Netflix deal was widely reported to be worth $100 million, though there were suggestions this figure was a little high.

Their Spotify deal was valued at $20 million and Harry was said to have been given a $20 million advance on his book, Spare.

The prince is also chief impact officer at BetterUp and Meghan has invested in a number of businesses, including Clevr Blends, Cesta Collective and Highbrow Hippie, a new beauty company launched by her hair colorist, Kadi Lee.

There are far fewer hard numbers around for the couple’s income because they are not required to publish their accounts, like the estate that bankrolls William.

All figures are therefore best guesses and may not be completely accurate. However, if we use the above figures as an estimate and ignore tax—which they do pay—that would give a hypothetical possible pot of $140 million to invest.

That is a huge amount of money for anyone, and sounds higher than Prince William’s annual income.

However, if Harry and Meghan need these investments to generate an income for themselves for life then they might well be advised to apply the same principle used to calculate pensions and live off an inflation adjusted 4 percent of the total.

That would amount to an annual income of around $5.6 million, growing with inflation each year. In other words, their $140 million pot would be significantly less than William’s £1.2 billion estate and would therefore produce a significantly smaller income.

Not only that, but William gets a lot of his costs paid for by the taxpayer—including round-the-clock protection by armed police officers.

When Harry first began searching for a private security team in 2020 he found the costs insurmountable.

As he wrote in Spare: “I scrambled to find new security. I spoke to consultants, gathered estimates. I filled a notebook with research. The Palace directed me to a firm, which quoted me a price. Six million a year. I slowly hung up.”

Even on the basis of a pot of $140 million—and their real wealth may be far lower—that would be beyond his entire annual income before tax.

Harry doesn’t say in Spare how much he ended up paying, but he does suggest he found a cheaper firm.

They bought their house using a $9 million mortgage, which they may still be paying if their interest rate is lower than the growth they are seeing on their investments.

How the Royal Couples Compare

One area where William may lag behind Harry and Meghan is that to a significant extent his hands are tied.

There is nothing to stop him taking his private income from the Duchy and reinvesting it in the stock market, but he cannot sell Duchy assets if he thinks they are not providing enough return.

Eric Schiffer, chair of Reputation Management Consultants, told Newsweek: “William has the opportunity to also play the stock market with the £23 million he gets from an income standpoint.

“I think I would rather have the equity and the portfolio plus the income that can be managed and do it in a way that doesn’t require me to put out half-baked documentaries that make people cringe.

“Harry and Meghan are not required to disclose how their investments are performing, but my assumption is they have competent investment managers who are assisting them. They didn’t lose those relationships.

“I suspect they have quite a bit of wealth that has benefited from some nice investment returns over the last period of years given how the stock market has performed and other assets have done certainly in the United States.”

Between the first year William took on the Duchy and the second, his income actually shrunk and the year before that it grew by 4.4 percent.

In fact, in 2016-17 the Duchy paid Charles an income of £20.5 million, which means there has been growth of £2.6 million over seven years.

That adds up to around £433k on average per year, or around 2 percent, which at points will have been below the rate of inflation.

In reality, if Meghan and Harry have their money invested in the stock market, it may well be growing at a far faster rate.

For example, a global index fund, which invests in thousands of companies in an effort to replicate the performance of the market as a whole, would have returned significant growth for the Sussexes compared to the Duchy.

One global index fund examined by Newsweek, for example, boasted average annual returns in the ballpark of 10 percent in recent years, significantly higher than William’s estate. In fact, in the past 12 months it grew by 25 percent.

That means that some wise investing by the Sussexes could see them start to build an income that rivals William’s—and they would not necessarily actually need to match the £1.2 billion value of the duchy to get there because their returns on the stock market would be greater.

Applying the 4 percent rule, they would need a pot of £577 million to produce an annual income of £23.1 million that would be sustainable for decades to come.

How wealthy they become in the long term may have as much to do with how they invest their money as it does the actual sum they were paid by companies like Netflix and Spotify, though obviously these sums provided a pot of cash that will have fuelled their investment journey.

The brothers also both had money they inherited from Princess Diana, though Harry has said he wants to save that for his children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and also from their grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

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