Cancer statistics
Cancer 5-year survival rates, explained
A plain-language guide to how U.S. cancer survival is actually measured — what the numbers include, what they leave out, and why they have climbed so sharply in the last 50 years. Use the spectrum below to compare 22 cancer types, then click through to each one's overview, treatments, and trials.
Source: NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts · Data year 2025 · Case-weighted average: 71.3%
Compare by type
The 5-year survival spectrum
Across 22 major cancer types — roughly 1.9M new U.S. diagnoses a year — 5-year relative survival averages 71.3%. 16 of 22 types sit above 50%; 8 sit above 75%.
Click any cancer to open its hub — overview, treatments, trials, specialists. For a trials-first view, see the trial finder.
- Thyroid Cancer 98.4%
- Prostate Cancer 97.9%
- Testicular Cancer 94.9%
- Melanoma 94.7%
- Breast Cancer 91.7%
- Endometrial Cancer 81.1%
- Bladder Cancer 79%
- Kidney Cancer 78.6%
- Lymphoma 74.2%
- Head and Neck Cancer 69.5%
- Cervical Cancer 68%
- Leukemia 67.8%
- Sarcoma 66%
- Colorectal Cancer 65.4%
- Multiple Myeloma 62.4%
- Ovarian Cancer 51.6%
- Stomach Cancer 37.9%
- Brain Cancer 33%
- Lung Cancer 28.1%
- Liver Cancer 22%
- Esophageal Cancer 21.9%
- Pancreatic Cancer 13.3%
What this shows: 5-year relative survival is the percentage of people diagnosed who are alive five years later, compared to the general population. These are population-wide figures — individual outcomes depend heavily on stage at diagnosis, subtype, age, and treatment. Ask your oncologist how your specific case compares. Source: NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts.
What "5-year relative survival" actually means
The headline number for any cancer — "X% survive 5 years" — is not a simple body count. It is the relative survival rate: the share of people diagnosed with that cancer who are alive five years later, compared to people without the cancer of the same age and demographics. The comparison strips out deaths from unrelated causes (heart disease, accidents, other illnesses), so what's left is a clearer signal of the cancer's own impact on survival.
Two things follow. First, relative survival is usually higher than raw ("observed") survival, because older patients die of other causes even without cancer. Second, the figure is a population average. It blends every stage, subtype, age, treatment response, and hospital together into a single number. It is a useful starting point — not a personal forecast.
Stage matters more than type
Within almost every cancer, the single strongest driver of survival is stage at diagnosis. A localized colon cancer has a 5-year relative survival above 90%; the same cancer diagnosed after distant spread drops below 15%. A localized lung cancer can exceed 60%; metastatic lung cancer sits in the single digits. This is why screening programs — and any earlier-detection tool — move the needle so heavily on the population average, sometimes more than new drugs do.
For your own situation, the stage-specific number from your care team will almost always be more informative than the top-line type average shown on this page. See each cancer's hub for stage detail: browse cancer types.
Why the averages have climbed
Five-year survival for all cancers combined has roughly doubled since the early 1970s, from around 49% to nearly 70% today. The gains are uneven across cancer types, but the drivers are consistent:
- Earlier detection. Mammography, colonoscopy, Pap tests, and low-dose CT lung screening catch cancers while they are still localized and curable with surgery.
- Targeted therapy. Drugs matched to specific mutations — HER2, EGFR, BRAF, BRCA, ALK, KRAS G12C, and many others — have rewritten the prognosis for entire subtypes of breast, lung, colorectal, and melanoma cancer.
- Immunotherapy. Checkpoint inhibitors (pembrolizumab, nivolumab, and similar) have produced durable remissions in melanoma, lung, bladder, and kidney cancer — all historically poor-prognosis diseases.
- Better surgery and radiation. Minimally invasive surgery, robotic techniques, SBRT, and proton therapy improve cancer control while reducing the harm caused by treatment itself.
- Supportive care. Fewer patients die of complications like febrile neutropenia or uncontrolled nausea than a generation ago.
Why some cancers still have low survival
Pancreatic, liver, stomach, and esophageal cancers still have 5-year survival below 35% — largely because they cause few symptoms early and are typically diagnosed after regional or distant spread. For these types, routine screening is not yet established in the general population, and the set of effective systemic therapies is narrower. This is precisely where clinical trials carry the most weight: the next generation of treatment is still being tested. Browse recruiting trials by cancer type.
How to read a survival number responsibly
- It is backward-looking. SEER publishes survival for people diagnosed several years ago, treated with what was standard then — not what's standard now. Today's patients often have access to therapies the SEER cohort did not.
- It is an average. Half the distribution sits above it and half below. Your subtype, stage, biomarkers, and general health shift you along that distribution.
- It is not destiny. Even for advanced disease, a meaningful minority of patients survive well beyond 5 years, especially when biomarker-matched therapy or trial enrollment changes the standard arc.
- It's one input, not the answer. Bring the stage-specific number — not the headline type average — to the conversation with your oncologist.