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 practicing neurology need salary transparency about what the average neurologist salary is, as well as 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 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 online 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, 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.
Article Navigation
How Much Does a Neurologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary in 2024 across all of our contributing neurologists was $357,000, including physicians practicing neurology part time and full time. This is data for attending physicians only, excluding 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 Neurologist 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.
The average salary for a full-time neurologist was $360,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salaries were in the $650,000 - $700,000 a year range.
The lowest reported salaries were in the $150,000 a year range.
The median salary was $345,000.
Average Part-Time Neurologist Salary for 2024
Several of our physician members reported working part-time. To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-35 hours a week.
The average part-time neurologist salary in 2024 was $339,000.
How Much Neurologists Make by Specialization
Our doctor members can add a note about sub-specialization when contributing their salary data. While we don’t have enough data points currently to assess averages by subspecialty, we can look at overall trends from the data available.
Epilepsy. Our neurologists who specialize in epilepsy reported a wide range of salaries both above and below the average neurologist salary.
Interventional Neurology. Some of the highest reported salaries for 2024 ($600,000+) came from doctors specializing in interventional neurology.
Movement Disorders. Generally, neurologists specializing in movement disorders seem to report salaries lower than the average for neurologists.
Neurocritical Care. Neurologists practicing neurocritical care tended to report salaries on the higher end of the average for neurologists.
Neurohospitalists. Neurohospitalist was the specialty mentioned the most. The average salary for neurohospitalists in 2024 was $387,000, about 8% more than the average salary overall for neurologists. You can also learn more about the average hospitalist salary in 2024.
Neuromuscular Medicine. All our current data points for neurologists specializing in neuromuscular medicine are less than the average neurologist salary.
Vascular Neurology. Vascular neurologists tended to report average salaries higher than the average across all neurologists.
If you would like to learn more about your specialization, please take a few minutes to contribute to our physician salary and compensation database if you haven’t yet this year. We will continue to update this page as new information is available.
Neurologist Salary by Gender
We compared what our female physicians averaged compared to their male counterparts.
Female neurologists reported an average salary of $330,000. Male neurologists reported an average salary of $396,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged 20% higher than our female doctors.
Specialization within neurology can factor into this, as we noted that the majority of our neurohospitalists were males, while many of our movement disorder and neuromuscular medicine doctors were females, though as we note above, sub-specialization in neurohospitalists, for example, only made about an 8% difference on average.
How Much Neurologists Make by Practice Environment
We also broke the data down by where our neurologists reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Group private practice - $400,000
Academic hospital employee - $299,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $403,000
Few neurologists reported working for FQHCs or other non-profits, as well as government facilities. We did not have any neurologists who reported working in corporate private practices.
Of the group private practice neurologists, the majority (~75%) work for non-private equity backed groups. We do not currently have enough data to assess salary differences between non-private equity backed groups and private equity groups.
The overwhelming majority of neurologists work as hospital employees, with 34% working for academic hospitals and 45% working for non-academic hospitals. Non-academic hospital employees make on average 35% more than neurologists working for academic hospitals. These positions with academic hospitals, however, often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
Neurologists working for group private practices make less than 1% less than non-academic hospital neurologists and 34% more than academic hospital employees.
Solo Private Practices. We also do not have enough data to assess solo private practice groups separately yet, though we did note that all our reported salaries so far are above the average for neurologists. We also noted that while private practice owners often have more responsibilities for administrative tasks and oversight, our current solo private practice doctors actually reported less average hours worked a week than many of their hospital employee colleagues.
Deep dive into all our private practice resources and education.
Neurologist Salary by Type of Employment
When submitting data, our physician members indicated their type of employment.
W2 Employees. 90% of our neurologists work as W2 employees and make an average $356,000 a year.
Partners/Owners. While we don’t have enough data points to assess an average for partners/owners yet, all but one of our neurologists who are either a partner or owner reported salaries higher than the average for neurologists overall.
Locums. We have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, which has much more data for this type of employment. We have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors as well as the average hourly physician locum tenens pay rate by specialty separately using that data set.
Neurologist Salary by Location
Our neurologists are spread across the United States. We typically like to have a minimum of 10 data points in each state before assessing averages for the aggregated averages to be relevant. We currently don’t have enough data points to assess these with confidence, but we can provide qualitative observations from the current data set.
Colorado. Colorado has two of the lowest 10 salaries reported for neurologists.
Florida. Neurologists in Florida report salaries higher than the overall average.
North Carolina. Neurologists from North Carolina routinely report salaries higher than the overall average.
Ohio. Two of the top 5 highest reported salaries for neurologists are from doctors living in Ohio, though one of the lowest salaries reported is also from Ohio.
Oklahoma. Another two of the top 5 highest reported salaries are from doctors in Oklahoma, with one of the lowest salaries as well.
Pennsylvania. Two of the lowest 10 salaries reported for neurologists come from Pennsylvania.
If you would like to see this section expanded in the future, please contribute to the physician salary and compensation data today. You can also explore trends in average doctor salaries by state across all specialties.
How Much Neurologists 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 neurologists. Some of our members reported working 71+ hours a week, but the vast majority fell into the averages below.
16-35 hours a week - $339,000 a year
36-40 hours a week - $351,000 a year
41-45 hours a week - $366,000 a year
46-50 hours a week - $351,000 a year
51-60 hours a week - $309,000 a year
61-70 hours a week - $407,000 a year
Overall, we see a general trend where salaries increase with the average number of hours worked weekly, but it isn’t true across all the ranges in our database. For example, neurologists working 41-45 hours a week make 4% more than their colleagues working 36-40 hours a week, and neurologists working 61-70 hours a week make more than any other range of neurologists. Physicians working 51-60 hours a week, however, average the least of all the ranges reported.
The current data we have suggests that earnings potential can increase if you’re willing to work more, but that other factors may factor in more heavily when determining neurologist salaries.
How Much Do Neurologists Work?
Along with average salaries by hours worked, we can also look at how much neurologists typically work based on the same data.
70% of neurologists work between 31-50 hours a week on average, though some reported working as little as 16-20 hours a week and others 81+.
As an aside, 30% of the neurologists in our database reported spending 5 hours or more a week on top of the hours reported above charting at 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 Neurologists Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting contributions 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 neurologists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at neurologists 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: $289,000
2020-2021: $329,000 (14% increase)
2022-2023: $335,000 (2% increase)
2024: $360,000 (7% increase)
We see cardiologist salaries continually increase over time. We hope with continued salary transparency, this trend will continue.
Additional Insights into Neurologist 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 neurologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Neurologists Receive
50% of our neurologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $28,000. Sign-on bonuses ranged anywhere from $5,000 - $95,000.
34% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was around $11,500. Relocation bonuses ranged from $3,000 - $25,000.
Average Vacation Days Neurologists Receive
The average number of vacation days annually was 24 days. The median was 21 days. Some neurologists commented that their vacation is an overall pool of paid time off, including their sick days and CME, while others had separate buckets. Reported paid time off varied greatly among neurologists, with some receiving only a week of vacation days a year, so make sure you negotiate this as part of your employment agreement.
Learn more about physician contract negotiations and contract review.
CME Stipends for Neurologists
70% of our neurologists reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $4,000.
Average Student Loan Debt for Neurologists
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our neurologists who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $235,000. 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 Neurologists
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 neurologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Learn more about understanding an RVU based contract.
Increasing Your Neurologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income as a neurologist. 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.
If you’re like some of the neurologists who commented on decreasing pay or frustrations with low pay, looking for additional career opportunities can also help, as we also saw noted in our database. 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 neurologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Check out unique side gigs for neurologists for more ideas. You can also explore other popular medical and nonmedical side hustle ideas for doctors.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Neurologists
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 our side gig ideas for physicians.