What the Data Sources Actually Say
Before getting into specifics, it helps to understand why physician salary numbers vary so widely depending on where you look.
The three most widely cited sources — Medscape, Doximity, and MGMA — use different methodologies, different sample sizes, and different definitions of "compensation." Medscape's 2026 report, drawing from nearly 6,000 physicians across 29 specialties, puts the average physician salary at $386,000. Doximity's 2025 report, which aggregated more than 37,000 physician responses, shows figures that run 10 to 15 percent higher in most specialties. SalaryDr's 2026 database of 3,000-plus verified submissions puts the median at $445,000 when bonuses and incentive pay are included alongside base salary.
The gap between those figures is not noise — it reflects real differences in what gets counted. A Medscape figure often captures base salary plus production bonus. SalaryDr and Doximity data tends to capture total compensation including signing bonuses, call pay, profit-sharing, and other incentives that materially affect what a physician actually takes home.
The practical takeaway: when benchmarking your own offer, always compare total compensation — not base salary alone. A $300,000 base with a $75,000 production bonus and $30,000 in benefits is a materially different package than a $350,000 base with no bonus structure.
For the complete specialty-by-specialty breakdown from MGMA, Medscape, and Doximity, see our Comprehensive Physician Salary Guide.
What Is a Good Physician Salary by Career Stage?
The definition of "good" shifts significantly depending on where you are in your career.
Residents and Fellows: $68,000 – $85,000
Residency pay is set by training programs and has almost no negotiability. The 2025 AAMC survey found nationwide unweighted average stipends of $68,166 for PGY-1 and $77,593 for PGY-4. These are training salaries, not practice salaries — they exist in a different financial universe than attending compensation.
Early-Career Attendings (Years 1–3): $250,000 – $400,000
The first job out of training is typically below your long-term earning potential, regardless of specialty. Most physicians in their first three years are building a patient panel, completing credentialing, or working through an income guarantee period before transitioning to a productivity-based model. A starting salary of $275,000 in primary care or $350,000 in a procedural specialty is not a red flag — it is a starting point.
Mid-Career Physicians (Years 4–10): $350,000 – $600,000
This is where compensation starts reflecting your actual productivity, reputation, and negotiating leverage. Physicians who have built a referral base, achieved partnership, or moved into a higher-demand market typically see meaningful income jumps in this window.
Senior Physicians (10+ Years): $450,000 – $800,000+
Experience correlates strongly with income in medicine. Senior physicians in procedural specialties who own equity in their practice, ambulatory surgery centers, or ancillary services can significantly exceed the survey averages for their specialty.
What Is a Good Physician Salary by Specialty?
Specialty is the single biggest driver of physician compensation — more than location, more than experience, more than practice setting. The gap between the highest- and lowest-paid specialties can exceed $500,000 annually in some cases.
Here is how specialties stack up in 2026 based on aggregated data from Medscape, Doximity, and SalaryDr:
Surgical and Procedural Specialties (Highest Earners)
Orthopedic surgery leads all specialties with a median around $795,000 and top earners clearing $1 million or more. Neurosurgery follows, with Doximity reporting average compensation near $749,000. Plastic surgery, cardiovascular/thoracic surgery, and interventional cardiology consistently post medians above $550,000 to $650,000. Eight specialties now average above $500,000 per year, according to the 2026 Medscape Physician Compensation Report — up from four specialties the prior year.
For physicians in these fields, a "good" salary is one that lands at or above the 50th percentile for their specialty in their market. Anything below the 25th percentile warrants extreme scrutiny.
Non-Surgical Specialists (Mid-Range)
Radiology, anesthesiology, dermatology, gastroenterology, and cardiology cluster in the $400,000 to $550,000 range. Anesthesiology has seen notable gains — AMN Healthcare's 2025 recruiting data shows average starting salaries around $485,000, up 5.5 percent year over year. Cardiology starting salaries averaged $470,000, up 18.7 percent — one of the largest year-over-year jumps tracked.
Primary Care (Lower End, But Growing)
Family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics consistently sit below the specialty averages. Medscape's 2026 data puts primary care at around $298,000 on average. That figure is not static — primary care compensation has grown 16.5 percent since 2020, outpacing many surgical specialties in percentage terms. The floor is rising. But the gap between primary care and the highest-earning surgical specialties remains wide — surgical specialists earned 87 percent more than primary care physicians in 2024.
For primary care physicians, a salary at or above $280,000 in most markets is highly competitive. Rural and underserved area premiums can push this to $320,000 to $380,000 or higher for physicians willing to practice in shortage areas.
What Is a Good Physician Salary by Practice Setting?
Your employer structure matters nearly as much as your specialty in determining where you fall on the compensation spectrum.
1. Private Practice (Owners & Partners)
Practice owners and partners typically earn 15 to 30 percent more than their hospital-employed counterparts in the same specialty. The upside is real — but so is the variability. Private practice income depends on productivity, payer mix, overhead management, and the economics of your specific market. A surgeon in a well-run private practice with an ownership stake in an ambulatory surgery center can earn multiples of what the same surgeon would make in an employed position.
2. Hospital and Health System Employment
Hospital employment offers income stability, predictable benefits, and lower personal financial risk — at the cost of your earning ceiling. Most employed physician contracts use wRVU-based productivity bonuses beyond a base salary. The median base salary across all employed physicians sits around $388,500, with bonuses adding a median of approximately $70,000 in total compensation, per SalaryDr.
A competitive wRVU rate in primary care runs $50 to $60 per work RVU. Surgical specialties typically see $35 to $55 per wRVU but generate significantly higher volume. If your employer is offering an RVU rate below these benchmarks, that is worth negotiating — many physicians leave $20,000 to $50,000 on the table by focusing only on base salary and ignoring the per-RVU rate.
3. Academic Medicine
Academic salaries are generally the lowest of the three settings. The trade-off is protected research time, academic reputation, and public service loan forgiveness eligibility. For physicians who prioritize career flexibility, tenure, or research, the salary discount may be worth it. For those strictly optimizing income, academic medicine is rarely the highest-paying option in any specialty.
4. Locum Tenens
Locum physicians typically earn gross pay 20 to 40 percent higher per day than employed counterparts, but they pay the full self-employment tax burden (15.3 percent), fund their own benefits, and manage malpractice tail coverage when contracts end. Use our Locum Tenens Rate Calculator to model the true net hourly rate before comparing locum pay to an employed position.
What Is a Good Physician Salary by Geography?
Location affects physician compensation in two ways that often cut in opposite directions: market salary levels and cost of living.
Rural and underserved markets typically pay 20 to 40 percent more than the national average for the same specialty, because the supply of physicians willing to practice there is thin. A family medicine physician who earns $275,000 in a suburban market might earn $350,000 to $380,000 in a rural shortage area — with a lower cost of living that makes the effective purchasing power gap even larger.
Major coastal metros — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston — tend to pay salaries that look competitive in absolute terms but lose significant ground once cost of living is factored in. Medscape's geographic data has consistently shown that physicians in Midwest and Southeast markets often net more spendable income than coastal peers earning higher nominal salaries.
This phenomenon — sometimes called geographic arbitrage — is one of the most powerful and underutilized tools for physician wealth building. A hospitalist earning $350,000 in a Midwest market with a $250,000 mortgage is in a fundamentally different financial position than a hospitalist earning $400,000 in San Francisco with a $900,000 mortgage.
When evaluating a compensation offer, always translate the salary into its local purchasing power. A $50,000 nominal salary difference between two markets may represent a $0 real difference in financial outcome once housing, taxes, and cost of living are accounted for.
The Gender Pay Gap in Physician Compensation
Any honest guide to physician salary has to address this directly.
According to Doximity's 2025 Physician Compensation Report, women physicians earned $120,917 less than men in 2024 after controlling for specialty, location, and years of experience. The gender pay gap widened to 26 percent in 2024, up from 23 percent in 2023 — driven partly by men's compensation growing at 5.7 percent versus just 1.7 percent for women in the same year.
The gap is not explained away by specialty choice or hours worked. It persists within specialties and within practice settings. Hospital-employed positions with transparent salary structures show narrower gaps than private practice settings where compensation is more opaque and individually negotiated.
For women physicians benchmarking their salary, this data matters practically: the fact that a salary "matches market averages" does not mean it reflects what an equally trained and experienced male colleague in the same market is earning. Knowing the data gives you leverage in negotiation that is otherwise invisible.
Five Signs Your Physician Salary Is Below Market
Your base salary is below the 25th percentile for your specialty.
MGMA, Doximity, and SalaryDr all publish percentile data by specialty. The 25th percentile is not a floor — it is a benchmark that signals your employer is paying below what the competitive market requires to attract and retain talent.
Your wRVU rate has not been renegotiated in more than two years.
RVU rates erode in real terms if they are not updated for inflation and shifting reimbursement benchmarks. A rate that was competitive in 2022 may be significantly below market in 2026.
Your contract has no path to partnership or equity.
Employed physicians with no ownership pathway are permanently capped at their employer's salary structure. Partnership or equity — in the practice, an ASC, or ancillary services — is where the meaningful income upside in physician compensation typically lives.
You received no signing bonus or relocation assistance.
Signing bonuses averaging $20,000 to $100,000 are standard in most physician recruiting markets in 2026. If your employer offered nothing, either the position is highly sought-after — or you left money on the table.
Your non-compete radius is wide and your tail coverage obligation is yours.
Non-compete terms and malpractice tail coverage represent real financial value that belongs in your total compensation analysis. A $350,000 contract with a 25-mile non-compete and physician-paid tail coverage is worth significantly less than a $330,000 contract with a 5-mile non-compete and employer-paid tail.
How to Benchmark Your Own Salary
The most effective way to know whether your salary is competitive is to gather data specific to your specialty, market, and career stage — not national averages.
Start with publicly available sources: Doximity's annual report, Medscape's Salary Explorer, and SalaryDr's verified submission database are all free. Cross-reference at least two sources before drawing conclusions.
For the most granular specialty and regional benchmarks, MGMA's provider compensation data is the standard used by hospital systems and their attorneys when setting and justifying physician compensation. Individual access costs money, but many professional associations provide member access to specialty-specific reports.
If you are negotiating a new contract or feel underpaid in your current one, consider working with a physician-specific financial advisor who can model the total compensation value of your current package and identify where the gap lies. Our Financial Advisors Review Page covers fee-only, fiduciary advisors who specialize in physician compensation and contract analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average physician salary in 2026?
The 2026 Medscape Physician Compensation Report puts the average at $386,000, while SalaryDr's 2026 database of verified submissions shows a median of $445,000 when total compensation including bonuses is counted. The difference reflects methodology — Medscape captures more base salary-focused data while SalaryDr includes full total compensation packages.
What is a good starting salary for a first-year attending?
For primary care physicians, a competitive starting salary ranges from $250,000 to $310,000. For non-surgical specialists, $300,000 to $400,000 is typical. For procedural and surgical specialties, starting salaries of $400,000 to $500,000 are common in most markets. These figures represent total first-year compensation including income guarantees, not just base salary.
Do physicians in private practice earn more than employed physicians?
On average, yes. Private practice owners and partners earn 15 to 30 percent more than hospital-employed physicians in the same specialty, based on 2026 SalaryDr data. The trade-off is income variability and business risk. Early-career physicians often start employed and transition to partnership or private practice ownership as they build a patient panel and referral base.
How much do physician salaries vary by state?
Significantly. Medscape geographic data shows Wisconsin and other Midwest states near the top of physician compensation by state, while Maryland and coastal states where cost of living is highest show lower relative real wages. Rural areas within any state typically pay 20 to 40 percent above the state average due to physician shortages.
Is a $300,000 physician salary good?
For primary care physicians in most markets, $300,000 is above average and represents highly competitive compensation. For a surgical specialist in a major metro, $300,000 would be well below market. Context — specialty, market, career stage, and total package — determines whether any specific number is good, average, or below market.
Should I negotiate my physician salary?
Yes, always. SalaryDr data shows that physicians who negotiate earn 15 to 20 percent more in total compensation than those who accept the first offer. Employers expect negotiation — hospital systems have HR professionals and attorneys at the table. Knowing your benchmarked market value with real data is the most important negotiating tool you have.
Ready to run your numbers?
Check our full breakdown by specialty using our verified data sources, or plug your exact contract offer into our analyzer to see if you're being lowballed.
Disclaimer: Salary figures in this article are based on aggregated data from third-party sources including Medscape, Doximity, MGMA, SalaryDr, and AMN Healthcare. Individual compensation varies significantly based on specialty, geography, practice setting, experience, and negotiation. This article is for educational and benchmarking purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or career advice. MedMoneyGuide earns commissions from some financial product providers featured on this site.