Allied Health Professions

Head to head

Occupational therapist or physiotherapist?

Two HCPC-registered professions compared on the same measures: 129 approved courses for occupational therapists against 139 for physiotherapists and both usually starting on band 5. What each job is, every way in, how long it takes, what it pays and what you can claim while you study.

Occupational therapistPhysiotherapist
129 Occupational therapist courses At 56 universities
139 Physiotherapist courses At 68 universities
£32,073 Starting salary, occupational therapist Band 5, England, 2026/27
£32,073 Starting salary, physiotherapist Band 5, England, 2026/27

What each of them actually does

Occupational therapist

Occupational therapists help people do the everyday activities that matter to them when illness, injury, disability or ageing gets in the way. They assess what someone needs and wants to do, then grade tasks, teach new techniques, recommend equipment and adaptations and change the environment so the activity becomes possible again. Work ranges from discharge planning and home visits on an acute ward to hand therapy, mental health recovery groups, school-based paediatrics, vocational rehabilitation and social services housing assessments.

Who you work with: People of all ages recovering from surgery, stroke or injury, and people living with mental illness, learning disability, dementia, long-term conditions or physical disability who want to live more independently.

Physiotherapist

Physiotherapists assess and treat problems with movement and function caused by injury, illness, disability or ageing. They take a history, examine movement, strength and joint range, then agree goals and deliver treatment through exercise prescription, manual therapy, education, pacing advice and structured rehabilitation. Specialties include musculoskeletal outpatients, respiratory care on wards and in intensive care, neurological rehabilitation after stroke or spinal injury, paediatrics, pelvic health and care of older people. Many also work in sport, occupational health and private practice.

Who you work with: People of all ages with musculoskeletal pain and injury, neurological conditions, respiratory and cardiac disease, frailty and falls risk, long-term conditions, and those recovering from surgery or critical illness.

Where the two genuinely differ

The clearest way to separate them is by what the working day turns on. An occupational therapist’s day is built around the activities a person needs or wants to do — washing, dressing, cooking, working, getting to school — and changing the task, the equipment or the environment until those become possible again. A physiotherapist’s is built around movement and physical function — assessing joints, muscles, balance and breathing, treating with hands and with exercise, and building a programme someone keeps doing after you leave the room. Two people can share a corridor, a caseload and a set of patients and still be doing those two different jobs all week.

The settings they work in show the same split. Occupational therapists turn up in places physiotherapists generally do not — community rehabilitation team, NHS mental health trust, social services and local authority, schools and children's services, hand therapy and orthopaedics — while physiotherapists work in outpatient musculoskeletal clinics, intensive care and respiratory wards, community and home-based rehabilitation, neurological rehabilitation units, GP practice and first contact services. If one of those lists sounds like the environment you want to spend a career in and the other does not, that is a more reliable signal than any description of the professions themselves.

Where they overlap

Both are regulated by the same body — Health and Care Professions Council — so the shape of qualifying is the same: an approved pre-registration programme, a protected title, and annual registration you cannot practise without. Both usually start on band 5, which means the first job pays the same whichever you choose.

They share real ground on the wards. Both work in NHS acute trust, care homes and private practice — which is why so many applicants arrive certain they want one and leave a placement wanting the other. In those settings you would be in the same multidisciplinary team, at the same handovers, discussing the same patients from two different angles.

The way in overlaps as well. Both are taught through the same routes — undergraduate degree, pre-registration master’s, degree apprenticeship, integrated master’s — with no difference in how you get in.

Side by side

Every figure below is taken from the dataset. Where a field is not published for a profession, the cell says so rather than carrying a value across from the other column.

Occupational therapist and physiotherapist compared
Measure Occupational therapist Physiotherapist
Regulator HCPC HCPC
Professional body Royal College of Occupational Therapists Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Protected titles Occupational therapist Physiotherapist and Physical therapist
Approved pre-registration courses 129 139
Universities running them 56 68
Nations you can study in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
Entry routes BSc, MSc pre-reg, Apprenticeship and MSci BSc, MSc pre-reg, Apprenticeship and MSci
Undergraduate degree length 3 years 3 years
Pre-registration master’s length Not published 2 years
Course lengths in the dataset The range published across every approved course, undergraduate and postgraduate together. 2–4 years 2–4 years
Apprenticeship standards 1 1
Placement hours expected 1,000 1,000
Typical starting band Band 5 Band 5
Starting salary, England 2026/27 Bottom point of the band, before any high cost area supplement. £32,073 £32,073
Top of that band £39,043 £39,043
Funding schemes covering it 7 7
NHS Learning Support Fund eligible England only. Eligibility is set by the scheme, not by the university. Yes Yes
On the UK register Where the register keeps one count for a family of professions, the cell says so. 48,572 78,817
Occupational classification SOC 2222 SOC 2221

What the money looks like

On pay there is nothing to choose between them at the start. Both usually enter on band 5, which begins at £32,073 and runs to £39,043 in England on the 2026/27 Agenda for Change scale. Agenda for Change pays the job, not the profession, so two newly qualified staff in different departments of the same trust are on the same money.

What changes the number in practice is the same for both: where you work and what you specialise in. A high cost area supplement in and around London is added on top of the band; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own versions of the scale; and the step from newly qualified to specialist is worth more than any difference between these two professions at entry. The occupational therapist pay page and the physiotherapist pay page work each of those through nation by nation.

On the way in, funding is not automatically the same for both. 7 schemes cover both — NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF), Undergraduate-rate student finance for pre-registration postgraduate (MSc/PGDip) courses, Postgraduate Master's Loan (England), SAAS standard student support for AHP courses (Scotland), NHS Wales Bursary Scheme, Department of Health (NI) healthcare bursary for AHP students and Degree apprenticeship funding (England). Eligibility is set by each scheme and changes every academic year, so check the scheme itself before you count on it — the funding pages link to each administering body.

How you would actually get in

Occupational therapist

Routes in
Undergraduate degree, Pre-registration master’s, Degree apprenticeship and Integrated master’s
Where you can study it
England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
Undergraduate length
3 years
Apprenticeship standards
1 standard
Placement expectation
1,000 hours
Funding schemes
7 schemes

Physiotherapist

Routes in
Undergraduate degree, Pre-registration master’s, Degree apprenticeship and Integrated master’s
Where you can study it
England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
Undergraduate length
3 years
Master’s length
2 years
Apprenticeship standards
1 standard
Placement expectation
1,000 hours
Funding schemes
7 schemes

Placement expectations come from the professional bodies and are approximate where the source says so. Course counts are the approved programmes in this build, not the number of places.

Deciding between them

If the two still look interchangeable, the useful questions are not about the professions — they are about you. Do you want to work with the same person over months, or see a new one every twenty minutes? Are you drawn to a technical, equipment-led job or a conversational, relationship-led one? Could you spend a decade in settings like community rehabilitation team, NHS mental health trust, social services and local authority? Are you able to move for a course, or does it need to be within reach of where you live? With 129 and 139 approved courses respectively, that is a real constraint for at least one of these.

The honest answer is that both professions will tell you the other is excellent and mean it. Arrange to see each one at work before you commit — a morning in each department settles this question faster than anything written down, including this page.

More on occupational therapist

More on physiotherapist

Other comparisons

Where this page’s data comes from

Course counts and approval status come from the regulators’ approved-programme lists; pay from the Agenda for Change scales for 2026/27; funding eligibility from each scheme's published rules.