Doctor Salary in Norway (Lege) 2026

This calculator compares a doctor's (lege) pay in Norway with the official statistics from Statistics Norway (SSB) for two occupation groups: specialist doctors and general practitioners. You can choose a sector, convert part-time pay to full time and separate fixed pay from allowances. The result shows where you fall in the pay distribution and what you take home after tax. All figures are gross monthly pay in NOK unless stated otherwise.

The path to becoming a doctor

Medicine is a six-year university programme. After graduating, doctors apply to the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet) for authorisation. Most then train as specialists, in three parts called LIS1, LIS2 and LIS3, where LIS means lege i spesialisering, doctor in specialisation. LIS1 is 12 months in hospital and six months in the municipal health and care service, and it is required to work as a GP (fastlege) or in the municipal emergency service. The whole specialist programme takes at least six and a half years after authorisation.

Two SSB groups: specialists and general practitioners

SSB reports doctors under code 2212 for specialists and code 2211 for general practitioners. The name of 2211 can mislead. The median for that group was NOK 78,850, against NOK 107,940 for the specialists. In central government, where the hospitals are, its median was the lowest of all sectors (NOK 68,960), which is consistent with the group including many doctors early in their careers. SSB's table does not describe who is in the group, and the occupation code is what the employer reports. Most GPs are self-employed, and self-employed people are not in SSB's earnings statistics, so the 2211 figures say little about what a GP with their own practice earns.

Hospitals, municipalities and the private sector

88% of the full-time jobs for specialist doctors in the data are in central government, which in SSB's classification includes the state-owned hospital trusts. Hospital doctors are covered by the agreement between the hospital employers' organisation Spekter and the Norwegian Medical Association, not by the municipal agreement. In the private sector the median for specialists was higher than in central government. The data has only about 182 full-time specialist jobs in local government, too few for a reliable comparison, so that row is not shown.

What is in monthly pay, and what is not

SSB's monthly pay is the agreed monthly salary plus irregular allowances and bonuses, measured in November for full-time employees. Overtime is excluded. For specialist doctors the average was NOK 11,280 higher than the agreed salary alone (NOK 110,460 against NOK 99,180), so enter your fixed pay and your allowances in separate fields. Overtime and on-call work are paid on top, so your total pay can be higher than this comparison suggests.

Worked example

A specialist doctor at a hospital works full time with NOK 88,000 in fixed pay and on average NOK 12,000 a month in allowances. The calculator gives:

Doctor pay after tax

The table taxes the SSB monthly pay as if it were earned all year. Higher pay is taxed at higher bracket rates, so the effective rate rises with pay. Your employer withholds tax using a tax table, so see the Norway tax table calculator for how a normal month and December differ, and the Norway income tax calculator for how yearly tax is calculated.

Women, men and pay growth

If you have just moved to Norway

• Medicine is a regulated profession. You need authorisation or a licence from the Norwegian Directorate of Health before you can work as a doctor. The directorate explains the rules for qualifications from abroad.
• Ask whether your job is an employment or a self-employed contract. A salaried hospital or municipal post follows a collective agreement and is covered by the figures on this page, but the income of a self-employed GP is not.
• Your employer withholds tax from every payslip using your tax deduction card (skattekort). With table withholding there is normally no tax withheld in one month in the summer and half in November or December. If you have no tax deduction card you do not get that reduction.
• On-call duty and overtime are paid on top and are not in SSB's monthly pay. See the Norway overtime pay calculator for the general overtime rules, and the Norway pension calculator for pension.

Nurses in the same hospitals are covered by other agreements: see the nurse salary calculator.

What this calculator does not cover

It does not cover self-employed doctors, overtime, on-call pay, the minimum pay scales in the hospital agreements or the details of individual employment contracts. It does not include pension or holiday pay, and the tax estimate uses standard deductions only for a person taxed at the ordinary rate. The SSB figures describe all full-time doctors in the two groups in 2025, so your own pay compared with them is a guide, not a verdict on what you should earn.