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 ophthalmology need salary transparency about what the average ophthalmologist 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 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.
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 Ophthalmology Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for ophthalmologists below was compiled using 87 data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. While we typically like to have more data points before assessing aggregate statistics for a specialty, this can be hard to obtain for highly specialized fields of medicine. Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time practicing ophthalmologists, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week.
Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. As such, a reminder to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to relevant data points available.
We would love to reassess the statistics and further expand insights based upon future data. As such, we will continue to update this page as more contributions are received.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your 2024 physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does an Ophthalmologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing ophthalmologists for 2024 was $484,000, including physicians practicing ophthalmology part time and full time. This is data for attending physicians only; we excluded data contributed by 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 Ophthalmologist Salary for 2024
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so let’s look at full-time versus part-time separately.
As noted above, 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 ophthalmologist for 2024 was $509,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salaries were around $1,500,000 a year.
The lowest reported salaries were in the $200,000 a year range.
The median salary was $450,000.
We break down who makes $900,000 or more a little further in the section on how much ophthalmologists make by practice environment.
Average Part-Time Ophthalmologist Salary for 2024
Several of our ophthalmologists reported working part-time, the majority of which reported working 31-35 hours a week. We look into the breakdown of how much ophthalmologists typically work below.
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-35 hours a week.
The average part-time ophthalmologist salary for 2024 was $329,000.
How Much Ophthalmologists Make by Specialization
Since specialization can play heavily into salary, we look at overall trends in the average salary breakdown by specializations doctors include with their data contribution. While we didn’t have enough data points to assess average salaries for most of the specialties, we can look qualitatively at the dataset.
Cornea specialists. All but one ophthalmologist who reported a cornea subspecialty reported an annual salary between $300,000 - $400,000 for 2024. This is significantly lower than the average across all ophthalmologists. Notably, the outlier reported a 2x higher salary of $700,000 and was a 1099 physician. Below, we look into how the type of employment can affect average earnings.
Glaucoma specialists. While one of our lowest reported salaries came from a glaucoma specialist, we noted that they were active duty military. Practice environment can play a huge factor in salaries, as discussed below. Overall, this subspecialty tends to pay on the higher side, with the remaining reported salaries ranging from $500,000 - $800,000 a year for 2024.
Pediatric ophthalmologists. All of the current data submitted for pediatric ophthalmologists were below the overall average for ophthalmologists, ranging from $250,000 - $500,000.
Retina specialists. The average salary for an ophthalmologist with a retina subspecialty was $699,000 a year for 2024, which was 37% higher than the overall average across ophthalmologists. Two of the three highest reported salaries came from doctors in this subspecialty.
Vitreoretinal surgeons. Reported salaries range widely from $570,000 - $900,000, but all reported salaries for our vitreoretinal surgeons were higher than the average across all ophthalmologists.
Ophthalmologist Salary by Gender
We also compared what our female doctors averaged compared to their male counterparts.
Female ophthalmologists reported an average salary of $459,000. Male ophthalmologists reported an average salary of $549,000.
When looking strictly at the average salaries overall, our male doctors averaged 20% higher than our female doctors. We noted when looking at the data by gender that the male ophthalmologists were much more likely to be an owner or partner in their practice, which we note below can play a large role in salary. 36% of our male ophthalmologists were owners/partners, while only 16% of our female ophthalmologists were.
How Much Ophthalmologists Make by Practice Environment
We then broke the data down by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Group private practice, non private equity backed - $544,000
Group private practice, private equity backed - $692,000
Academic hospital employee - $384,000
Of the practice environments where we had enough data points to assess an average, the ophthalmologists working for academic hospitals reported the lowest average salary, 42% less than colleagues working for non-PE backed group practices and 80% less than colleagues working for PE backed group practices. These positions often, however, 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.
Often, we see the reverse trend between non private equity versus private equity backed group private practice where doctors outside of private equity generally make more. For our current ophthalmologist dataset, we see physicians working with a PE backed group average 27% more. Looking at the current dataset, we don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions, but it is quite possible that the majority of our respondents working for the PE backed companies were also owners and not employees who were partners at the time of sale to private equity, which may skew the averages. We would love to dig into the data further when we have more data to assess.
Contribute your physician salary and compensation data today to help future updates.
While we didn’t have enough data points to assess an average, both of our lowest reported salaries were active duty military members.
The data for our solo private practice ophthalmologists had a much wider range. While most of the current reported salaries were around $375,000, we also had a seven figure solo private practice ophthalmologist.
Who Earns the Most in Ophthalmology?
6 of our contributions for ophthalmology were $900,000+ salaries. Among this group of highest earners, we saw a few common traits:
They all work in private practice, either as a solo practitioner or for a group practice
They are either partners/owners or in a surgical subspecialty
They typically have at least 5 years of experience after training
Ophthalmologist Salary by Type of Employment
Physicians contributing to the database can denote what type of employee they are. Salaries often vary significantly based on the type of employment.
1099 independent contractor ophthalmologists. We don’t have enough data points to assess an average, but noted that the range between the highest and lowest salaries reported for 1099 was more than $400,000, suggesting other factors may play more significance in determining salaries for this employment type.
Locums. One of our lowest reported salaries was for a locums physician, though they didn’t state how often they typically do locums work or how long their contracts typically last, so it’s difficult to determine if locums was their full-time job or a side gig. 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.
W-2 employed ophthalmologists. On average, W-2 employee ophthalmologists made $476,000 a year, which is less than the overall average for full-time ophthalmologists.
Partners/owners. Partners/owners reported an average salary of $610,000 a year, which was 28% higher than W2 employees. The partners/owners averaged a slightly higher average number of hours worked weekly, but only by about 5% versus the 28% higher salary.
The partner or owner track can be a great way to increase your earnings potential as an ophthalmologist, if you don’t mind the additional administrative roles that accompany the title. Several of these partners may also have ownership in an ambulatory surgery center (ASC).
Related PSG resources to explore:
Ophthalmologist Salary by Location
Our ophthalmologists are spread around the country, so we don’t have average salaries (yet) by state, as we tend to want more data points in each location before commenting on trends. We hope to update this section soon.
How Much Ophthalmologists 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 ophthalmology physicians.
16-35 hours a week average - $329,000
36-40 hours a week average - $515,000
41-45 hours a week average - $466,000
46-50 hours a week average - $460,000
51+ hours a week average - $682,000
While generally we see that doctors in ophthalmology who work the most make the most and who work the least make the least, we interestingly see a reverse trend around 36-50 hours a week among the dataset we currently have. This suggests that other factors drive salaries for ophthalmologists more than hours worked. There may also be more practice owners in the 36-40 hour a week bucket, who have chosen to either cut back clinically or focus more on the business side of their practices. More data points will hopefully elucidate this in the future.
How Much Ophthalmologists Work
As well as looking at how much ophthalmologists make by hours worked, we looked at how much ophthalmologists worked on average.
The majority of ophthalmologists work 36-45 hours a week on average.
Along with the average hours worked a week, doctors contributing to our database also indicate how much time they spend charting. Ophthalmologists spend less time charting at home than many of the other specialties featured in our how much doctors make by specialty series, but 33% still reported spending at least one hour a week charting at home on top of the hours worked above.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time at home charting, an AI scribe may be able to 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 Ophthalmologist 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 ophthalmologists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at ophthalmology doctors 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: $400,000
2020-2021: $383,000 (4% decrease)
2022-2023: $458,000 (20% increase)
2024: $509,000 (11% increase)
Overall, we see salaries in ophthalmology increasing over time. There was a dip in 2020-2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, which we’ve seen across several specialties, especially those with elective surgeries that were suspended during the pandemic.
We see a sharp increase in salaries in 2022-2023 with pay rebounding after the pandemic, as well as a continued increase in salaries for 2024.
With more and more salary transparency, we hope to see this trend continue.
Additional Insights into Ophthalmologist 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 ophthalmologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Ophthalmologists Receive
25% of our ophthalmologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $20,000. Signing bonuses ranged from $5,000 - $45,000.
Learn more about sign on bonuses for physicians.
33% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was around $9,000. Relocation bonuses ranged from $2,000 - $20,000. Members noted that some relocation bonuses were limited to a reimbursement of actual moving expenses versus a lump sum bonus.
Average Vacation Days Ophthalmologists Receive
The average number of vacation days annually was 22 days with 20 days being the median. 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.
Others commented that they have unlimited time off, but this was typically because they worked under a straight production compensation model. This time off thus wasn’t an extra compensation perk of paid time off, as they didn’t get paid if they didn’t work. This can be an important distinction to make sure you understand when negotiating your physician employment agreement.
CME Stipends for Ophthalmologists
58% of our ophthalmology doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $5,200. Stipends ranged everywhere from $1,000 up to $25,000.
Average Student Loan Debt for Ophthalmologists
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 $220,000. 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 Ophthalmologists
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 ophthalmologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Ophthalmologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income as an ophthalmologist. 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 an ophthalmologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well.
Explore popular medical and non-medical side gigs for doctors for ideas on other ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Ophthalmologists
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 physician side gigs.