How much does an MRI cost?

Cost breakdown

Each table below comes from one source, named underneath it, with the date that source last revised the figures. Everything is a United States figure in USD.

What changes the price

Which body part, and whether contrast is used

This is the code, and the code is the price. At Boston Medical Center a brain MRI without contrast is $4,591.00 and the same brain with contrast is $4,901.00, and doing both in one visit is $5,966.00. A cardiac MRI at the same hospital is $8,829.00. Nobody chooses the code: it describes what was done.

Whether anyone is paying on your behalf

The gap between the two published columns is the whole question. Boston Medical Center publishes a gross charge of $4,591.00 and a cash price of $2,065.95 for a brain MRI. Franklin Memorial Hospital publishes $2,559.90 and $2,559.90. One hospital discounts a self-payer and the other does not, and both are complying with the same rule.

Which hospital, which matters more than the scan

A lumbar spine MRI without contrast, CPT 72148, is published at $4,034.00 by Boston Medical Center, $2,554.55 by Franklin Memorial Hospital and $5,558.00 by The University of Chicago Medical Center. Three files, three attesters, one code.

Which plan you are on, where the hospital names them

Franklin Memorial Hospital publishes a rate of $69.85 on one Aetna plan for a brain MRI and $1,903.54 on another Aetna plan for the same scan. Boston Medical Center runs from $230.56 on a Harvard Pilgrim plan to $3,902.35 on a Cigna plan. The insurer is not the answer; the plan is.

What the published figure is not

It is the hospital, and it is a rate rather than a bill. The radiologist who reads the scan usually charges for that separately. Your deductible and your coinsurance then decide how much of a negotiated rate reaches you, and no hospital file contains either of those.

The date on the file

These are not live prices. Each is true as of the day its hospital attested to it, and the three quoted here span seven months. A contract changes when it is renegotiated, and the file is the only thing that says when anyone last looked.

How to pay less

Ask for the cash price by name, and be ready for it to be the list price

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires a hospital to publish the discounted price it will accept from a patient paying cash. Two of the three hospitals here set it equal to the gross charge, so the question is worth asking and the answer is worth checking against the file rather than assumed.

Ask which CPT code they expect to bill

It is the one question that changes the number most. Brain without contrast, brain with contrast, and brain both ways are three codes and three prices at Boston Medical Center, and the difference between the cheapest and the dearest of those is decided before you arrive.

Compare the same code between hospitals, not the same word

A knee MRI and a shoulder MRI are the same two codes at every hospital here, 73721 and 73221, so comparing "an MRI" between two providers compares nothing. Comparing 72148 against 72148 compares something.

Ask whether the radiologist is billed separately

Every figure on this page is the facility. Somebody reads the scan and that reading is its own charge at most hospitals, so a quote that sounds complete may be one of two bills.

Ask for the consumer display rather than the file

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires two things of every hospital, and the second is a display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format. Imaging is named in that requirement. It is faster to ask for than to download a file of several hundred megabytes.

What to read next

A CT is the scan a doctor often orders instead, and it is a different code family at a different price: what a CT scan costs at the same three hospitals is filed alongside these.

The cheapest imaging on any of these lists is the plain film, and it has a pricing rule of its own: an X-ray is billed by the number of views taken.

Questions

Where these figures come from

Every figure here is published by the hospital named beside it, in US dollars, in the United States, in its own machine-readable standard charges file under 45 CFR 180.50, and each of those files carries the attestation that the information encoded is true, accurate and complete as of the date in the file. The dates are the ones the files give themselves: 13 March 2026 for Boston Medical Center, attested by Christopher Abate, 9 September 2025 for Franklin Memorial Hospital, attested by Kenneth Olsen, and 1 April 2026 for The University of Chicago Medical Center, attested by Chris Allen. All three files, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pages linked below, were read on 25 September 2026, and the two CMS pages on what a hospital must publish were read again on 9 October 2026. Figures are reproduced as each file publishes them, with thousands separators added and trailing zeros dropped. Every one is a facility charge and none includes the radiologist who reads the scan. The files also carry minimum and maximum fields which are deliberately not reproduced, because at one of these three hospitals the published minimum is higher than the lowest rate that same file names, so the field cannot be presented as the least anyone pays without a document explaining what it means. Nothing here is averaged, turned into a ratio or restated as a typical cost, and three hospitals are three hospitals rather than a national picture.

• Hospital Price Transparency

  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · page last modified 16 September 2026

  The rule itself. CMS states that starting 1 January 2021 each hospital operating in the United States is required to publish pricing information online in two ways, as a comprehensive machine-readable file with all items and services and as a display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format, that CMS audits a sample of hospitals and investigates complaints, and that hospitals may face civil monetary penalties for noncompliance. Cited for the obligation and the enforcement, never for a price.

• Hospital Price Transparency: Consumers

  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · page last modified 10 September 2024

  CMS's own description of what a hospital must make public: standard charges including the rates they negotiate with insurance companies and the discounted price a hospital is willing to accept directly from a patient if paid in cash. Cited for what the files are supposed to contain, which is how this page can say what a given file leaves out.

• Hospital Price Transparency: Hospitals

  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · page last modified 10 March 2026

  The CMS page setting out what a hospital must publish: a single machine-readable file of gross charges, discounted cash prices, payer-specific negotiated charges and de-identified minimum and maximum negotiated charges for all items and services, and a display of at least 300 shoppable services a consumer can schedule in advance.

• Pricing and estimates: standard charges machine-readable file

  Boston Medical Center · Attested by Christopher Abate · file last_updated_on 13 March 2026

  The hospital's own machine-readable file, 043314093_BostonMedicalCenter_standardcharges.csv, schema version 3.0.0, carrying the attestation required by 45 CFR 180.50 that the information encoded is true, accurate and complete as of the date in the file. Unlike its inpatient rows, its imaging rows carry a gross charge, a discounted cash price and a rate for each named health plan, which is why this page can answer the question about paying without insurance from a published figure rather than an estimate.

• Standard charges machine-readable file

  Franklin Memorial Hospital · Attested by Kenneth Olsen · file last_updated_on 9 September 2025

  The hospital's own machine-readable file, 010238552-1922791417_mainehealth_standardcharges.csv, schema version 3.0.0, published by MaineHealth for its Franklin Memorial Hospital location in Farmington, Maine, and carrying the same attestation under 45 CFR 180.50. It is the oldest of the three files quoted here and is said rather than smoothed. On every imaging row its discounted cash price is identical to its gross charge.

• Price transparency: standard charges machine-readable file

  The University of Chicago Medical Center · Attested by Chris Allen · file last_updated_on 1 April 2026

  The hospital's own machine-readable file, 363488183_the-university-of-chicago-medical-center_standardcharges.json, schema version 3.0.0, carrying the attestation required by 45 CFR 180.50 that the information encoded is true, accurate and complete as of the date in the file. At MS-DRG level it publishes no gross charge and no discounted cash price, and instead names each health plan and the rate agreed with it, alongside a minimum and a maximum.

• Procedure Price Lookup for Outpatient Services

  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · no date shown on the page; it gives national averages based on Medicare's 2026 payments and copayments

  Medicare's own national averages for an outpatient procedure, split by hospital outpatient department and ambulatory surgical center. For each it gives what Medicare pays, what the patient pays on average, and the total of the facility fee and the doctor's fee. Medicare rates are set by the government, so they work as a national benchmark; a private plan or a cash payer is charged its own price. Figures were read from the JSON the lookup page loads, saved in docs/research/cms-ppl-2026-10-12.json. Tests the tool does not cover, such as an EKG, an echocardiogram, a mammogram or an emergency visit, are not priced from it.

Sources on this page checked between 23 September and 12 October 2026. How we source prices.