Salary is a big part of whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit, so it’s important for physicians to know their worth in the job market and ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers physicians to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. We believe doctors in cardiology need salary transparency about what the average cardiologist salary is, as well as information about other typical parts of the compensation package, so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore 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. Using data gathered from our physician communities, we have started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Reported averages on physician salaries depend on several factors. Given the wide range of compensation across specialties, specialty remains one of the largest factors in answering the question of how much doctors make. 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 Cardiologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing cardiologists was $573,000 for 2024, including physicians practicing cardiology 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.
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so for the analyses below, unless otherwise noted, we factor in only full-time equivalent attending cardiologists, assuming an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more.
Average Full-Time Cardiologist Salary for 2024
The overwhelming majority (97%) of cardiologists in our salary database reported working full-time, which is higher than we’ve seen in many other specialties.
The average salary for a full-time cardiologist was $583,000 for 2024. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salaries were in the $900,000 - $1,000,000 a year range.
The lowest reported salaries were in the $250,000 - $300,000 a year range.
The median salary for cardiologists was $575,000.
How Much Cardiologists Make by Specialization
We had a few different subspecialties that cardiologists could select when contributing to our databases. Since specialization can pay heavily into salary, let’s look at the average salary breakdown by these sub-specialization categories.
Average electrophysiologist salary: $672,000 a year
Average interventional cardiologist salary: $641,000 a year
Average non-invasive cardiologist salary: $539,000 a year
Our electrophysiologists report making the most on average, around 25% more than non-invasive cardiologists and 5% more than interventional cardiologists.
The breakdown of our correspondents by specialty is:
12% electrophysiologists
24% interventional cardiologists
64% non-invasive cardiologists
Comparing these two datasets show a correlation between the number of cardiologists per specialty and their earnings, i.e. the specialties with fewer physicians on average have higher salaries.
Cardiologist Salary by Gender
We compared what our female cardiologists averaged compared to their male counterparts.
Female cardiologists reported an average salary of $520,000. Male cardiologists reported an average salary of $613,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged 18% higher than our female doctors.
When looking at the data, we noticed that all of our electrophysiologist data came from male physicians, and we saw above that specialization can make a significant difference in average salaries. We also noted that all the physicians who reported 71+ hours a week were also male.
Cardiologist Salary by Practice Environment
As we’ve seen throughout our how much doctors make by specialty series, where physicians work can also play a role in average salary expectations. We broke the data down by practice environment to assess the differences:
Group private practice, overall - $577,000
Group private practice, non-private equity backed - $584,000
Academic hospital employee - $491,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $635,000
Solo private practice - not enough data
Note that we separated out group private practice into overall and non-private equity backed private practice cardiology groups. The overall group private practice numbers reflect both private equity and non-private equity backed groups, indicating that the private equity backed groups pay less to their physicians. However, we want to be cautious and say that we only had a handful of data points for the private equity backed cardiologists, and cannot say that this is a trend amongst all private equity backed private cardiology groups. As we get more numbers, we hope to more confidently be able to report an average amongst private equity backed groups, and will update the article accordingly.
As we’ve noticed within other specialties, cardiologists working in non-academic hospitals reported making more on average. The difference is quite significant in cardiology at 29% more, though it’s important to remember that salary isn’t the only part of a physician’s compensation package. Academic hospitals, for example, often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package. We also noticed a significant difference in the average hours cardiologists work a week between academic and non-academic hospitals:
17% of cardiologists working in academic hospitals average 36-40 hours a week, while only 4% of nonacademic hospital cardiologists do
34% of cardiologists working in non-academic hospitals average 51+ hours a week, while only 22% of academic hospital cardiologists do
If you would like to see how your practice environment stacks up and you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to contribute to the physician salary and compensation database today!
You can also use the full, free physician salary data to find what data we have for additional practice environments and to help compare data points relevant to your specific situation.
Cardiologist Salary by Type of Employment
When submitting data, our physician members indicated their type of employment.
88% of our cardiologists reported being W2 employees. Their average salary was $571,000 a year.
11% of our cardiologists are partners/owners where they work. Their average salary was $674,000 a year.
We can see that partners/owners in cardiology, on average, make 18% more. This 6-figure difference compounded over the course of a cardiologist’s career can make a huge difference in a physician’s net worth.
We noticed when assessing how much cardiologists make by hours worked below that the partners/owners in cardiology tended to report longer working weeks, so it’s also important to balance earnings potential with your desired work/life balance goals to help prevent physician burnout.
Related PSG resources to explore:
Side note: we have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, and have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors and the average hourly rates for locums doctors by specialty separately, where there is much more data for this type of employment.
Cardiologist Salary by Location
We looked at salary differences among states for full-time cardiologists. 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. You can also see how, in general, what doctors make changes with location.
California: $526,000
Florida: $581,000
New York: $419,000
Pennsylvania: $555,000
Texas: $557,000
From the data we currently have, we can see that the highest paid state (Florida) pays 39% more than the lowest paid state (New York), highlighting the difference in the average salaries depending on which state our physician members live in and the importance of geographic arbitrage. While city and local metropolitan areas can factor heavily into the cost of living, and how much a physician actually brings home depends on state and local taxes, 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 Cardiologists 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 attending cardiologists.
36-40 hours a week average - $408,000 a year
41-45 hours a week average - $553,000 a year (35% more)
46-50 hours a week average - $559,000 a year (1% more)
51-60 hours a week average - $674,000 a year (20% more)
We do see a general trend for our cardiologists where salary increases with the average number of hours worked, though it’s important to note that it isn’t a steady, one-for-one increase. Our doctors in cardiology who averaged 46-50 hours a week make similar salaries to their colleagues working 41-45 hours, while cardiologists working 51-60 hours per week make significantly more.
We noticed that many of our group private practice partners/owners were part of the group of physicians working 51-60 hours a week on average. We saw above how partners/owners can make significantly more than W2 employed doctors, but it’s important to know that extra pay can likely come with additional work requirements that make for longer work weeks.
A breakdown of the distribution of how much cardiologists work:
The majority of our cardiologists work on average 46-50 hours a week.
As an aside, we noticed over a quarter of our doctors in cardiology reported spending at least an additional 4 hours a week charting from home. You may have heard us talking about AI scribes on the physician communities. They are becoming more and more widespread, and can dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting.
We have a free trial and a long standing discount on an AI scribing solution in our practice resources for physicians, in case you need one!
Changes in Average Cardiologist 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 for cardiologists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at doctors in cardiology that were out of residency/fellowship and 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: $432,000
2020-2021: $465,000 (10% increase)
2022-2023: $579,000 (24% increase)
2024: $583,000 (1% increase)
We can see salaries in cardiology increasing with time. With our average salary for cardiologists of $583,000 from our new database covering mid 2023 to mid 2024, we see salaries continuing to increase for 2024. We hope as more doctors continue to contribute 2024 data through year end, and with continued salary transparency, this trend will continue.
Additional Insights into Cardiologist 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 cardiologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Cardiologists Receive
37% of our cardiologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $40,000. Reported sign-on bonuses ranged significantly from $10,000 to $75,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
28% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was $12,000, with bonuses ranging from $7,000 to $25,000.
Average Vacation Days Cardiologists Receive
77% of our cardiologists reported some form of paid time off. A few others reported they had unlimited time off available, but it affected their RVUs and thus their overall salary for the year.
The average number of vacation days annually was 29 days. The median was 26 days. We noticed a significant range in vacation days reported, with many as low as 15 days, so make sure you check during your contract negotiations.
Some doctors commented that their vacation is an overall pool of paid time off, including their sick days and CME, while others have separate buckets.
CME Stipends for Cardiologists
65% of our cardiologists reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $4,000.
Average Student Loan Debt for Cardiology
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 $224,000. 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 Cardiologists
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 cardiologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Cardiologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income as a cardiologist. But a reminder first: 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 cardiologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Check out more side gigs for cardiologists for additional ideas. You can also explore other common medical and non-medical side gigs for doctors not featured.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Cardiologists
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.
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 common medical and non-medical side gigs for doctors.