Although there are many aspects that will determine whether a radiology job is a good one, a large consideration is whether the salary is a good fit for the radiologist’s needs. You should know your worth and ask for it. Having access to salary data and salary transparency about what the average radiologist salary is (and information about other typical parts of the compensation package) is essential for leverage during your contract negotiations for a new job.
On our physician communities, many physicians express that they’ve been undervalued in the marketplace. Therefore, we’ve tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile aggregate physician salary data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases.
Reported averages on physician salaries depend on several factors, with compensation varying widely by specialty. It is one of the largest determinants of how much doctors make. Accordingly, we’ve started this series on compensation data by specialty with aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Other factors such as hours worked, location, and practice environment all play a large role as well, so we look at differences in some of these categories within the specialty as well. Unless otherwise noted, the data included in our analysis below was collected from mid-2023 through mid-2024.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
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How Much Does a Radiologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing radiologists was $514,000, including physicians practicing radiology part time and full time. This is data for attending physicians only and excludes residents and fellows.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Radiologist Salary for 2024
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so let’s look at full-time versus part-time separately.
For a full-time equivalent, we assumed an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more. We omitted any data points that did not specify their average.
The average and median salaries for a full-time radiologist was $525,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest full-time salaries were around $800,000
The lowest full-time salaries were around $300,000
Average Part-Time Radiologist Salary for 2024
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-35 hours a week. We don’t have enough data points to break this down further, so please consider contributing if you haven’t already for future updates to this page. Find links to contribute on our physician salary and compensation data page.
The average part-time radiologist salary in 2024 was $375,000.
Radiologist Pay by Specialization
Our radiologists could select whether they did diagnostic radiology or interventional radiology as their specialty, and could also indicate a subspecialty, if appropriate.
Our full-time diagnostic radiologists reported an average salary of $509,000 for 2024, while our interventional radiologists reported $590,000 for a 16% higher average salary.
While we didn’t have enough data points to assess all subspecialties, we can currently provide a look into the following two diagnostic radiology sub-specializations:
Breast imaging: $480,000
Neuroradiology: $526,000
Outside of any other factors we look into below, neuroradiologists reported about 10% higher pay than their breast imaging counterparts. Of note, call requirements and hours for these two subspecialties may be significantly different, so looking at the individual datapoints on the database is highly recommended to ensure an apples to apples comparison.
If you’re in a subspecialty or category not shown, please consider contributing to the physician salary and compensation data so that we can add them in future updates.
Radiologist Salary by Gender
We looked at full-time salaries and compared what our female physicians averaged compared to their male counterparts, excluding all other factors (such as specialization, location, etc.).
Female radiologists reported an average salary of $512,000. Male radiologists reported an average salary of $540,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged around 5% higher than our female doctors. Of note, this is one of the smaller gender gaps that we have seen amongst physicians in our dedicated deep dives of what doctors make by specialty.
How Much Radiologists Make by Practice Environment
Looking at full-time (36+ hours a week average) attending radiologists, we broke the data down by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Corporate group, non private equity - not enough data points to assess
Corporate group, private equity - not enough data
FQHC and other non-profits - not enough data
Government - not enough data
Group private practice, non private equity backed - $530,000
Group private practice, private equity backed - $550,000
Academic hospital employee - $512,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $610,000
Solo private practice - not enough data points to assess
Looking at data just by practice environment, our non-academic hospital radiologists reported making significantly more than those working in academic hospitals.
Our private equity backed group private practice physicians made more than our non-private equity backed. While our data set shows the same to be true for OB-GYN doctor salaries, we’ve seen the general overall trend to be the opposite.
When looking at potential reasons for the difference, we noted that we have significantly more data points for non-private equity backed versus PE practices, but of the PE backed groups, a higher percentage of the physicians reported that they were owners/partners (50%) versus our non-private equity backed groups (33%). This may account for the differential.
We’d also like to see the differences in hours worked, volume requirements, and other factors that may be driving up the compensation in the private equity backed groups. We look forward to continuing to investigate these trends as we collect more data and update the article. For now, make sure you’re comparing specifics by looking at the individual data points within our full salary and compensation data.
Radiologist Salary by Type of Employment
When submitting data, our physician members indicated their type of employment.
1099 (single entity regular job, 1099 arrangement) - not enough data to assess
W2 employee - $507,000 a year
Locums/per diem - not enough data to assess*
Partner/owner - $640,000 a year
All other factors aside, partners and owners averaged more than 25% higher earnings than W2 employees in 2024, showing a great potential to increase your income in private practice as a partner. Just remember that this increase in income can come with additional responsibilities as well.
Related PSG resources to explore:
* We have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, and have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about this.
Radiologist Salary by Location
We looked at salary differences among states for full-time doctors in radiology. States with less than 10 data points were omitted from our analysis. If you don’t see your state listed and want to see where it stacks up, contribute your physician salary and compensation data today.
California - $494,000 a year
Florida - $593,000 a year
Pennsylvania - $521,000 a year
While we don’t have enough data points from different states to dig deep into the differences here by location, from the data we have, we can see that, like with other specialties, how much radiologists make can depend on where they live, with our Floridian physicians earning 20% more than our Californian doctors.
Assessing different salary options across the country and comparing them to the cost of living can give physicians the potential to geoarbitrage if they are willing to move. Just make sure you know what is included in cost of living comparisons (taxes are often excluded and can be significant).
How Much Radiologists Make by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied in 2024 by reported hours worked for our radiologists.
36-40 hours a week average - $502,000 a year
41-45 hours a week average - $514,000 a year (2% increase)
46-50 hours a week average - $520,000 a year (1% increase)
51-60 hours a week average - $592,000 a year (14% increase)
As you might expect, average salaries increased with the average number of hours worked a week. They did not, however, increase proportionally. Our radiologists who averaged 41-45 hours a week worked about 12% more than physicians who worked 36-40, yet averaged only 2% higher in pay. A similar takeaway was found for physicians working 46-50 hours on average.
Given the opportunity, they might have been able to pick up a physician side gig that could have generated more income through an alternative revenue stream for those same hours worked over the course of a year.
Throughout our doctor salaries by specialty series, we’ve noted that several physicians reported averaging over 60 hours a week, which can quickly lead to physician burnout. With the data set we currently have, our radiologists seem to report less maximum hours worked, which may suggest that this specialty can offer a better work/life balance than others.
Changes in Average Radiologist Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay in radiology over time*. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at radiologists out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old data and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $425,000
2020-2021: $450,000 (6% increase)
2022-2023: $499,000 (11% increase)
With our average radiologist salary of $525,000 from our new database covering mid 2023 to mid 2024, we can see salaries continuing to increase for 2024. We hope with continued salary transparency, this trend will continue.
*Note: We did not have as many data points as we generally like when pulling these numbers from the database, so it might not reflect the entire radiology landscape at the time.
Additional Insights into Radiologist Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights radiologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Radiologists Receive
29% of our radiologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $30,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
Around 25% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was $10,000.
Average Vacation Days Radiologist Receive
The average number and median number of vacation days annually was 40 days. Some doctors commented that their vacation is an overall pool of paid time off, including their sick days and CME, while others had separate buckets.
We always advocate for using all your vacation days to help reset and recharge to help prevent physician burnout.
CME Stipends for Radiologists
Around 60% of our full-time radiology doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $5,500.
Average Student Loan Debt for Radiology
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our physicians who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $225,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Radiologists
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we also looked for additional insights provided by other radiologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations.
We want to close with a few that might be of use to other radiologists:
Increasing Your Radiologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in radiology. But a reminder first: remember to look at the overall picture, taking into consideration all the factors included above and others, such as other compensation in the overall employment package such as amount of PTO, call responsibilities, 401(k) match, etc. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a radiologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Creating your own teleradiology service
Radiology informatics/workflow optimization consulting
Second opinions or translation services
Explore more side gigs for radiologists for ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Radiologists
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page. We will continue to update this page and other specialties as we receive additional data.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our side gigs for radiologists.