Understanding Breast Cancer Survival Rates
What the latest data reveals about breast cancer survival
A breast cancer diagnosis can bring uncertainty and difficult questions about what lies ahead. For many people and their loved ones, one of the most pressing is: What are the chances of surviving breast cancer?
There is reason for hope. Thanks to decades of advances in early detection and treatment, breast cancer outcomes have improved significantly. Today, the overall five-year relative survival rate is approximately 92%, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).
But every diagnosis is different. Survival rates describe outcomes across large groups of people, not what any one person can expect. Factors such as age, breast cancer stage, breast cancer type, hormone receptor status, and HER2 status help your doctor understand your individual prognosis.
How breast cancer survival rates are measured
A five-year relative survival rate compares people with breast cancer to people of the same age and sex in the general population. A rate of 90% means that people with breast cancer are, on average, about 90% as likely as people in the general population to be alive five years after diagnosis. It does not mean they live only five years.
Breast cancer survival can be measured in several ways, but relative survival is commonly used to compare outcomes across large populations. The National Cancer Institute’s SEER database uses this measure to report breast cancer survival by stage, subtype, age, and other factors.
Survival rates are calculated with information from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database (SEER), which tracks information on thousands of people with specific types of cancer. SEER reports breast cancer survival rates across several factors, including by stage, subtype, and age. Your doctor looks at all these numbers when providing you with a personalized prognosis.
A few things to keep in mind when looking at the numbers:
- Breast cancer survival rates are always improving thanks to research, which is continually identifying new treatments for breast cancer. Therefore, if you’ve been diagnosed recently, your outlook may be better compared to women who were diagnosed five years ago since they had fewer treatment options at the time.
- The rates apply only to the stage of cancer when it’s originally diagnosed—not if/when the cancer grows, spreads, or returns following treatment (recurrence).
- Averages for all women diagnosed with the disease do not reflect your individual prognosis. Talk to your doctor about your individual diagnosis.
- Survival rates specific to triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) or inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) are discussed later in the article.
Breast cancer survival rates by stage
When SEER breaks down breast survival rates by stage at diagnosis, they use a staging system that may be unfamiliar to you. Typically, doctors discuss staging using the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Tumor, Node, Metastasis (TNM) system: stages 0 through 4. The lower the number, the less likely the cancer has spread, while higher numbers reflect more extensive spread to other organs beyond the breast and lymph nodes.
SEER, however, categorizes cancer stages in three groups: localized, regional, and distant.
Localized means that the cancer is confined to the breast. This stage includes invasive cancer but not ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a non-invasive subtype that originates and remains in the milk ducts. The localized five-year survival rate is more than 99%. The majority of breast cancer diagnoses (about 64%) are localized, according to SEER.
Regional describes cancer that has spread to nearby locations, such as the lymph nodes and chest wall. The regional five-year survival rate is 87%.
Distant means the cancer has spread, or metastasized, to distant organs. While it can be treated, it cannot yet be cured. The distant five-year survival rate is 32%.
When all SEER stages are combined, the average is 92%. The localized, regional, distant, and combined rates in this section come from the ACS and are based on women diagnosed between 2015 and 2021.
How SEER stages relate to stages 1 to 4
The survival rates presented by SEER and the American Cancer Society use three broad categories: localized, regional, and distant, rather than AJCC stages 1 through 4. In general, localized disease includes most stage 1 cancers, while distant disease corresponds to stage 4. Stage 2 and stage 3 cancers may fall into the localized or regional group, depending on tumor size and lymph node involvement.
The table below shows how the two systems roughly line up. It is a simplification, because doctors also consider tumor grade, hormone receptor and HER2 status, and other factors when assigning a stage.
| SEER stage | What it means | Roughly corresponds to | 5-year relative survival (ACS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Localized | Cancer has not spread outside the breast | Most stage 1 and some stage 2 | More than 99% |
| Regional | Cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes or tissues | Some stage 2 and most stage 3 | 87% |
| Distant | Cancer has spread to distant organs, such as the bones, lungs, or liver | Stage 4 (metastatic) | 32% |
Metastatic breast cancer survival rates
Metastatic breast cancer, also called stage 4 breast cancer, has spread beyond the breast and nearby lymph nodes to distant parts of the body, such as the bones, lungs, liver, or brain. According to the ACS, the five-year relative survival rate for breast cancer that is metastatic when first diagnosed is 32%.
Survival varies widely by subtype. In SEER data for women diagnosed between 2016 and 2022, five-year relative survival for distant-stage breast cancer ranged from about 15% for triple-negative breast cancer to about 49% for HR-positive/HER2-positive (triple-positive) breast cancer.
These numbers describe people whose cancer had already spread when it was first found, which SEER estimates is about 6% of breast cancer diagnoses. They do not apply to cancer that spreads after treatment, known as a distant recurrence. Because the data reflect people diagnosed several years ago, they may also not capture the benefit of newer treatments. Learn more about metastatic breast cancer symptoms, treatment, and research.
Breast cancer survival rates by subtype
Triple-negative breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer are particularly aggressive, meaning they grow and spread much more rapidly than other subtypes of breast cancer. Prognosis is typically poorer for these subtypes. But again, new treatments are constantly improving outcomes, and averages do not reflect individual experiences.
Five-year relative survival rates for TNBC, according to the ACS (women diagnosed between 2015 to 2021), are:
- Localized: 92%
- Regional: 67%
- Distant: 15%
- All SEER stages combined: 78%
Five-year relative survival rates for IBC, according to the ACS (women diagnosed between 2015 to 2021), are:
- Localized: N/A (IBC has already spread to the skin when it’s diagnosed, so there is no localized stage)
- Regional: 53%
- Distant: 22%
- All SEER stages combined: 40%
Breast cancer survival rates by hormone receptor and HER2 status
When you’re diagnosed with breast cancer, your doctor will test for the presence of hormone receptors (HRs)—proteins located in the cells that are activated when hormones (estrogen and/or progesterone) bind to them.
Doctors also check for another protein, HER2, which is found on the surface of cells. HER2 is responsible for cell growth and repair, ensuring that they divide to replace those that are damaged or dying. In patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, the HER2 gene produces too many copies of itself, creates too many copies of HER2 receptors, or both.
Identifying your HR and HER2 status is vital to developing a treatment plan for your cancer that is most likely to be effective. Thanks to research, there are now many medications that target HR-positive breast cancer and HER2-postive breast cancer. This makes a significant difference in survival rates compared to those for TNBC, since TNBC cells do not have the estrogen or progesterone receptors, nor do they have enough of the HER2 protein for these therapies to be effective—though that is changing for some patients because of research (see HER2-low breast cancer).
According to SEER data for women diagnosed between 2016 and 2022, five-year relative survival rates based on hormone receptor and HER2 status are:
| Subtype | All stages | Localized | Regional | Distant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR+/HER2- (HR-positive, HER2-negative) | 95.8% | 100% | 91.1% | 38.1% |
| HR+/HER2+ (triple-positive) | 92.2% | 99.5% | 91.5% | 48.7% |
| HR-/HER2+ (HR-negative, HER2-positive) | 87.0% | 97.8% | 86.4% | 43.1% |
| HR-/HER2- (triple-negative) | 78.7% | 92.8% | 68.3% | 14.9% |
Stage at diagnosis may have the biggest influence of all: for cancer found at the localized stage, five-year relative survival was above 92% for every subtype.
Breast cancer survival rates by age at diagnosis
Survival rates are poorer for elderly breast cancer patients (75 and older) compared to their younger counterparts. The reasons for this aren’t well understood, but studies have shown that older women tend to receive less aggressive treatment, including less adjuvant (post-surgery) hormone therapy or chemotherapy. They also tend to have worse quality of life than younger women, and they’re more likely to be living with other health conditions (comorbidities), which are associated with decreased overall survival in breast cancer patients.
Overall five-year survival rates by age of diagnosis are:
- Younger than 45: 88%
- Ages 45 to 54: 91%
- Ages 55 to 64: 91%
- Ages 65 to 74: 92%
- Women 75 and older: 86%
Research on how specific comorbidities influence breast cancer survival rates is limited. However, a Danish study published in the journal Acta Oncologica that looked at 12 major morbidities in breast cancer patients revealed that the risk of dying from breast cancer was significantly increased for those with peripheral vascular disease, dementia, chronic pulmonary disease, liver disease, and renal diseases. The risk was higher in those with comorbidities diagnosed within five years of their cancer diagnosis compared to people whose comorbidities were diagnosed more than five years before their breast cancer diagnosis.
Obesity has also been shown to affect breast cancer survival. A study published in the journal NPJ Breast Cancer found that death from breast cancer is 1.3 times higher among obese women compared to normal weight women.
Breast cancer survival rates by sex
Breast cancer in men is rare, but those who have been diagnosed have a lower overall five-year survival rate than breast cancer in women—84% versus 92%, respectively, according to the ACS (people diagnosed 2015 to 2021). The difference can be attributed to several factors, such as low awareness of male breast cancer and the lack of breast cancer screenings in men. As a result, men are more likely to be diagnosed with regional- or distant-stage breast cancers, which are more challenging to treat than localized breast cancer.
Five-year survival rates for men are:
- Localized: 97%
- Regional: 86%
- Distant: 31%
- All SEER stages combined: 84%
Breast cancer survival rates by race
Race plays a significant role in breast cancer prognosis. The outlook is poorest among Black women, who have the lowest survival rate for every stage of the disease. Black women are also least likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at the localized stage when treatment is most likely to be successful. There are many factors that account for these racial disparities. For instance, Black women have less access to high-quality healthcare, and they’re also more likely to be diagnosed with TNBC than white women.
The good news is that the breast cancer death rate has been declining in Black women by 1.4% per year, according to ACS data for 2013 to 2022. Rates have also been trending downward in white women (1% per year), and Hispanic women and Latinas (0.7% per year). They have remained stable in Native women and Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) women.
According to the ACS’s Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2024-2025, overall five-year survival rates by race (women diagnosed 2014 to 2020) are:
- White women: 93%
- Black women: 84%
- Native women: 88%
- AAPI women: 92%
- Hispanic women and Latinas: 88%
For five-year survival rates by race and stage, see the American Cancer Society’s Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2024-2025 report.
Breast cancer survival rates by socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status (SES) is defined by several factors, including income, wealth, living conditions, occupation, and education for individual people and their neighborhood or social network. SEER does not track survival rates by SES, but many studies have looked at differences in cancer outcomes in those with high SES versus low SES.
These have revealed that survival is shorter for people who have lower SES and who live in rural areas compared to those with higher SES and who live in or near cities. This finding applies to all races, though the disparities are more pronounced among Black women.
The bottom line on breast cancer survival rates
Many factors influence overall survival rates: stage at diagnosis, type of breast cancer, age, socioeconomic status, race, and more. The survival rates calculated based on SEER data and in other studies are averages and do not reflect an individual’s prognosis. To understand your individual outlook after a breast cancer diagnosis, talk to your doctor.
Research has drastically improved breast cancer outcomes over the last 50 years, and continued advances in early detection and treatment offer opportunities for further progress. BCRF investigators are working to improve outcomes for every type and stage of breast cancer, including aggressive and metastatic forms where survival remains lower.
Support the research driving these discoveries. Donate, start a fundraiser, or explore other ways to give and help fund the science that’s improving survival for everyone diagnosed with breast cancer.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in U.S. women, after lung cancer, and the ACS estimates that about 42,140 women will die from the disease in 2026. But the breast cancer death rate fell 44% from 1989 through 2023, and most people diagnosed at an early stage survive.
The ACS’s Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2024-2025, which uses slightly older data than the figures above, reports relative survival of 91% at five years, 86% at 10 years, and 81% at 15 years. National 20-year rates are not routinely published. Long-term outlook depends heavily on stage and subtype, so ask your medical team what applies to you.
Tumor grade describes how abnormal cancer cells look under a microscope and how quickly they are likely to grow and spread. Higher-grade tumors tend to grow faster. National survival rates are not usually reported by grade alone. Instead, doctors combine grade with tumor size, lymph node status, and hormone receptor and HER2 status to estimate prognosis.
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