If you are planning to teach English in Japan, this is probably one of the first decisions you will face. JET or a private dispatch company. The framing you will find online tends to be simple: JET is the good option, dispatch is the fallback. That is not really how it works.
I have managed foreign English instructors through dispatch companies for six years. I have watched people come through dispatch, move to JET, and come back. Here is what actually matters.
Timing eliminates the choice for a lot of people
JET runs on a fixed annual cycle. Applications open in autumn, interviews happen through winter at your country’s Japanese embassy or consulate, offers go out in spring, and everyone arrives together in late July or August. Miss the window and you wait a full year.
Private dispatch companies hire year-round. The gap between application and start date is often measured in weeks, not months. If you are already in Japan on a different visa, or you simply cannot wait twelve months, dispatch is the only realistic option. For a significant number of teachers, the decision gets made right there.
The salary difference is real — but read the contract first
JET pays around ¥335,000 per month in year one, rising slightly each year up to a five-year maximum. Many placements also come with housing subsidies from the local government. Against a standard dispatch salary of ¥200,000–¥250,000, the annual difference can exceed ¥1,000,000.
Before you treat that number as settled, check whether your dispatch contract has a pro-rata clause for school holidays. Some companies reduce pay during August and March when classes are not running. Two months of reduced income per year changes the real comparison considerably. Always ask before you sign.
JET participants are treated as quasi-public servants, which limits financial flexibility in ways that often go unmentioned. Dispatch teachers can choose the first-year National Health Insurance option instead of company social insurance — a legitimate difference of close to ¥300,000 in year one. They can set up Wise instead of using Japanese banks for international transfers, saving thousands more annually. A dispatch teacher who handles the practical side well can close a meaningful portion of that salary gap by managing their money smarter.
Where you end up is not your decision on JET
JET placements are decided by the program, not by you. Rural and regional postings are common, sometimes very rural. For some people this is exactly what they signed up for — deep involvement in a local community, relationships with the same students over multiple years, a pace of life that urban Japan simply does not offer.
One instructor I worked with spent a year at a dispatch company building classroom experience, then applied to JET and got in. Her placement was in a mountainous rural area. She was not disappointed — that was specifically what she wanted. The workload was manageable and the salary gave her the financial space to build the private life she was after.
For teachers who want Tokyo, Osaka, or a specific city, dispatch is the more reliable path. You can express a regional preference and, depending on the company’s contracts in that area, have a reasonable chance of being placed there. JET does not work that way.
The support you get looks different, not necessarily better
JET participants get a local government contact whose experience with foreign staff varies enormously. Some are excellent. Others leave teachers largely on their own. It depends on whether the assigned coordinator has dealt with international staff before — and that varies by placement in ways you cannot predict in advance.
Dispatch companies have built systems specifically for onboarding foreign teachers. Visa processing, initial housing, bank account setup, SIM cards — the process is more standardized because you are not the first foreign teacher that coordinator has handled. The quality varies by company, but they at least have a proven system in place.
Five years and out
JET has a hard ceiling of five years. Teachers who want to stay in Japan beyond that have to move into private employment regardless. It is not uncommon to see former JET participants join dispatch companies after their five years are up — sometimes because they want to stay in Japan and have run out of options, sometimes because they specifically want to move to a city they were never placed in.
The JET-to-dispatch pipeline is more common than people expect, and it is worth knowing about before you build a long-term plan around staying in the program indefinitely.
Which one makes sense depends entirely on where you are right now
If you can wait for the annual cycle, are genuinely open to any placement location, and want the financial stability and government program credentials, JET is worth the effort of the application.
If you need to start quickly, want to live somewhere specific, or are already in Japan and need to convert your situation into a working visa, dispatch gets you there. The salary is lower, but the constraints are fewer — and the financial gap is smaller than it looks once you factor in what you can control.
So don’t just ask which one pays more. Ask yourself which one you can actually get into right now, where you want to be living, and whether the tradeoffs still make sense when you picture your life two years from now. Those three questions will give you a clearer answer than any comparison chart.
What the Gap Actually Feels Like on the Ground
Most dispatch ALTs arrive knowing the salary is lower than JET. What they do not always anticipate is what that gap feels like two or three years in.
In the first year or two, the novelty of Japan absorbs a lot. The salary is what it is, and most people are too busy figuring out the basics to dwell on it. The moment it starts to sting is usually around year three or four — when the initial excitement has settled, the lifestyle is established, and the salary still looks exactly the same as day one.
I have had instructors with five or more years of experience come to me asking whether a raise was possible. In most cases it is not — the structure does not allow for it. In one case, we went back to the school directly and negotiated a higher contract rate, which created enough room to increase the instructor’s pay. That outcome is the exception, not the rule. It required a specific relationship with a specific school that had been built over years.
The JET comparison comes up occasionally, usually through a friend or acquaintance who took that route. One instructor told me a colleague on JET described the job as having significantly less workload for considerably more pay. That framing — less work, more money — tends to land hard when you are three years into a dispatch contract and your salary has not moved.
None of this means dispatch is the wrong choice. For most people arriving in Japan without existing connections or a strong Japanese language base, the dispatch route is the practical entry point. JET is competitive, placement is out of your hands, and the rural postings that come with it are not for everyone.
The honest version is that dispatch gets you here. What you do with the time and experience once you are here determines whether the salary gap ends up mattering.
If you want to understand the contract and salary side of ALT life in more detail — including what actually moves the needle at renewal time — it is covered in the ALT Survival Manual.
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Related guides: → ALT Salary in Japan: What You Actually Take Home
→ How to Save ¥300,000 on Health Insurance in Your First Year
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