Physician salary
What a physician actually earns, from 916 live job postings blended with the official US OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) wage anchor. Pick a market for its median and range, then read the seniority split, the trend, and the country comparison below. Updated 2026-07-23.
Switch the market above to see physician pay in the 2 countries our sources cover, each with its own cost of living. The trend, seniority, and state detail below are United States data, where the official record runs deepest.
What the number means
Physicians sit at the top of our salary board, a blended US median near 185,000 dollars, and the figure still understates the ceiling, because the specialties that pay most, surgery and anesthesiology and cardiology, post least. The floor is set by primary care and by the training pipeline: a physician clears roughly a decade of school and residency before the first attending paycheck, and carries the debt to match. Read the median as a mid-career number, not a starting one. The pay is real and durable, bought with the longest runway of any career we track.
Open physician roles
Live openings tagged to this occupation, from company career pages and remote boards. Apply at the source.
- In-Home Physician Full Time - CantonLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 23
- In-Home Physician Full Time - RobinsonLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 23
- In-Home Physician Part Time - RappahannockLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 22
- In-Home Physician Per Diem - Cedar RapidsLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 22
- In-Home Physician Part Time - La CrosseLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 22
- In-Home Physician Per Diem - MarinetteLifelancer · United StatesRemoteJul 22
By seniority
Posted-median pay by seniority signal in the title, from our corpus. Noisy at the edges where sample sizes are small.
By country
- United States$99,054 – $274,874 · median $140,794
- United Kingdom$64,327 – $112,279 · median $74,808
Is your offer fair?
Run a specific number through FairElephant, which weighs it against this data, your location, and remote market rates.
Related salaries
- Nurse Practitioner salary$95,455 median
- Registered Nurse salary$94,467 median
- Pharmacist salary$167,880 median
Quick answers
How much do physicians make?
The blended US median is about 185,000 dollars, with the typical middle running from roughly 124,000 to 294,000. Surgical and procedural specialties run well above that; primary care sits below.
Why is the physician salary range so wide?
Because the title spans primary care to neurosurgery. Specialty, not seniority, drives most of the spread, and the highest-paid specialties advertise the least.
Is becoming a doctor worth it financially?
The pay is high and stable, but it arrives after about a decade of training and heavy debt. The lifetime math favors it; the early-career math does not.
Method: bands are the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of live US postings with stated pay, shrunk toward the official OEWS anchor by sample size (the “blended” figure). Trend is the OEWS annual median for SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code 29-1228. Live corpus 916 observations, 2026-07-23. Definitions in the glossary.