We often focus on how physician salaries compare across specialties. And yes, there’s a massive difference between a neurologist’s salary and a neurosurgeon’s salary on average. But choosing a specialty based on salary alone rarely leads to satisfaction. There are so many other contributing factors. You’ll be doing this for your career, so choosing a field that you enjoy waking up for every day is important.
But what if you could have both? Salary and career satisfaction. It’s actually possible. Because, when it comes to pay - there’s a lot of variation within your specialty. And that’s the part that’s often missed when looking at just averages. The pay spread within a specialty can be just as wide or more as between specialties.
Doctors in the top 10% often earn 1.5 - 3.5 times more than those in the bottom 10%.
You just need to know what’s possible. And that’s the power of individual, anonymized salary data on Marit. It lets you go beyond averages and medians, and see all the details that matter - across locations, practice types, and schedules, shifts, benefits, and more.
Salary variances within each specialty
We first heard about this idea of intraspecialty variance from Dr. Jim Dahle’s post at the White Coat Investor. Let’s dig into this.
Source: Marit Doctor Salaries (May, 2025)
Intra-specialty variance is calculated as (90th percentile salary – 10th percentile salary) ÷ median salary.
Yes, there is wide variation across specialties - you can see that in the spread of the larger green dots, which show median salaries by specialty. But what’s even more striking is the variation within each specialty. The smaller dots show the 10th and 90th percentiles, and in many cases, they’re very far apart.
Yes, on average, Family Medicine salaries are lower than those of their peers in procedural fields like Orthopedic Surgeons, Cardiologists, or ENTs. Similarly, there are Emergency Medicine physician salaries that exceed Oncologist salaries, especially in independent or high-volume groups. And Hospitalist salaries, especially with night or ICU coverage, that outpace Plastic Surgeon salaries working in academic or low-volume settings. The comparisons can go on.
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What Drives These Differences?
We know that salaries can vary widely due to a number of factors. For example, both pay bands and pay satisfaction vary significantly by location. Rural areas tend to pay much more than large metros. Practice type and compensation models have a huge impact as well, with productivity-based and partnership models paying much more. And of course, your schedule and hours have a significant influence. You can see many of these variances on our Physician Salary Trends page.
Specialties With the Most Variability
So, which specialties have the highest variance in pay? It turns out, there is little to no correlation between a specialty’s median salary and how widely incomes can vary within it.
Take Podiatry salaries, for example. The median is relatively low at $265k, but it ranks highest in terms of intra-specialty variance. That’s because some self-employed podiatrists earn well into the seven figures. As this respondent reported -
Self-employed. Solo practice. I know I’m an outlier, and I do a lot of non-mainstream podiatry things, but it’s worked out well. Best year was $2M.
It's a powerful reminder that individual choices can dramatically shape outcomes. Knowing how others have structured their careers can help know what’s possible.
Other specialties with high variance include -
Ophthalmologist salaries have a 70% spread between the 10th and 90th percentile, as there is a significant difference between the earning potential of self-employed and private medical group ophthalmologists, especially when they perform high-volume procedures or have equity in their practices, relative to their hospital-based counterparts.
Orthopedic Surgery salaries, where compensation often depends on the ownership structure. Surgeons who are partners in an ASC (ambulatory surgery center) or generate high wRVUs can earn significantly more than employed surgeons on a base-plus-bonus model.
Neurologist salaries, where the variance reflects a mix of general outpatient practice, subspecialty expertise (like epilepsy or stroke), and procedure-based work (e.g., EMG, Botox, intraoperative monitoring). Academic neurologists tend to earn less, while those in private or hybrid models with high patient volumes can earn much more.
Allergist salaries vary significantly by setting. Physicians in academic roles typically earn far less than those in private practice, where procedure volume can be quite high.
On the other end of the spectrum, the specialties with the least variance tend to fall into two categories: hospital-based roles and preventive-care specialties.
Hospital-based specialties like Anesthesiologist salaries, Hospitalist salaries, Emergency Medicine salaries, and even Radiologist salaries often have standardized compensation structures, especially in large health systems. As we discussed in our post on compensation models, these roles are frequently salaried, with limited variability in ownership, bonus upside, or procedure-based pay.
Preventive and lower-acuity specialties, such as Preventative Medicine salaries, Endocrinologist salaries, Psychiatrist salaries, etc., also show lower variance, often due to employed positions with consistent workloads and fewer opportunities for high-volume procedural income. Compensation tends to be more predictable and stable
Why This Matters
You should always choose the specialty where you think you’ll thrive, where the work feels meaningful, and where you can see yourself growing over time. There are hundreds of choices you’ll make during and after residency or fellowship, and during your practicing career - where to work, how much to work, what kind of practice to join, and each one can shape your income, schedule, and satisfaction in different ways.
We built Marit to help with those decisions, not by reporting national averages or outdated benchmarks, but with real, granular data that updates in real time. These are anonymized, and verified physician salaries reflecting choices your peers have made.
So you can see what’s possible. And plan your career with clarity!
About the Data & Methodology
Marit's Data is different. It is -
Unique - since it captures the compensation data along with all the details that matter - bonuses, shifts, scheduls, benefits, and more
Comprehensive - Across all specialties and Professions (Physicians & APPs), Employer Types (large and small, including Self-employed, Academic & Non Academic), Job Types (Full Time, Part Time, PRNs and Locums) and Employment Types (W-2, 1099, K-1)
Current - Unlike other benchmarks that only update their data once a year, all salaries reflect the clinician’s current compensation, and all averages are updated in real-time as new salaries are added
All data in this report comes from anonymized salary contributions on Marit, as of May 25, 2025. Only verified salary reports approved by our moderation team are included
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