Employers paying above-average wages will happily advertise that fact.
So if pay isn't prominently advertised, assume it is at or below the bottom of the range for that job.
There might be other reasons you want to apply to a job, but if pay is your main concern, don't waste your time inquiring/responding to job ads that don't advertise the pay.
Education benefits, PTO, bonuses, weasel words like “competitive wages”… This is literally the hiring people saying “how can we get people to invest time/energy into applying before we tell them the pay sucks”?