An echocardiogram is an ultrasound of your heart, and it is priced like almost nothing else in medicine. The same 30-minute scan can be $250 at a cardiology practice that publishes a flat self-pay rate and more than $3,000 at a hospital outpatient department down the road. The probe, the gel, and the sonographer are essentially identical. The building and the billing are not.
This guide covers real cash prices as of August 2026 for a complete transthoracic echocardiogram, the cheaper limited and follow-up versions, and the stress echo variant, plus what CMS claims data shows providers actually bill and what Medicare actually pays for the same codes.
What Does an Echocardiogram Cost Without Insurance?
The figures below are published cash prices verified in August 2026, alongside average submitted charges from the CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners file (2024 claims). A submitted charge matters to uninsured patients because it is roughly what a provider bills before any discount is applied.
| Service | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Complete echo with Doppler, prepaid cash (MDsave) | $220 | $903 | $1,859 |
| Echo bought as an in-office procedure, prepaid cash (MDsave) | $355 | $472 | $1,321 |
| Limited or follow-up echo, prepaid cash (MDsave) | $232 | $425 | $811 |
| Stress echocardiogram, prepaid cash (MDsave) | $394 | $963 | $1,868 |
| Average cash price across all facilities (Turquoise Health) | n/a | $1,852 | n/a |
| Cardiology-office published self-pay rate (Tampa Heart) | n/a | $250 | n/a |
| CPT 93306 average billed charge, CMS 2024 | $309.72 | n/a | $690.55 |
| CPT 93306 Medicare allowed amount, CMS 2024 | $66.89 | n/a | $173.10 |
| Median hospital price, 20 top-ranked US hospitals (JAMA IM) | $204 | n/a | $2,588 |
| New Hampshire, what an uninsured patient pays (NH HealthCost) | $360 | n/a | $4,067 |
Sources: prepaid cash ranges and national averages from MDsave’s national listings as of August 2026; the all-facility cash average from Turquoise Health; the flat self-pay rate from Tampa Heart and Vascular Associates’ published price list; billed charges and allowed amounts are national averages for CPT 93306 in the CMS 2024 physician file (low is the facility-setting figure, high is the office-setting figure); hospital medians from the 2022 JAMA Internal Medicine analysis of the 20 top-ranked US hospitals; New Hampshire figures are the “what you will pay” column on NH HealthCost after each provider’s uninsured discount.
Note how far apart those sources sit. MDsave says $903 on average, Turquoise says $1,852, and New Hampshire’s state price site puts the statewide average charge at $3,497 before discounts. They are not measuring the same thing: MDsave prices are prenegotiated and prepaid, Turquoise averages hospital-posted cash rates, and NH HealthCost reports what providers charge for the facility and the professional read together. Treat $220 to $1,859 as the realistic self-pay range and anything above $2,500 as a hospital list price you should push back on.
The codes that explain your bill
- CPT 93306 is the standard study, a complete transthoracic echo with spectral and color Doppler. It was billed 2.9 million times in office settings and 3.8 million times in facility settings in 2024 Medicare claims.
- CPT 93307 is a complete echo without Doppler, with an average submitted charge of $392.21 in office settings.
- CPT 93308 is a limited or follow-up study. Average submitted charge $328.51 in office settings, $152.50 in facility settings.
- CPT 93350 and 93351 are the stress echo codes. The complete version (93351) averaged $841.48 in submitted charges in office settings, with Medicare allowing $233.09.
What Drives the Price
Where you get it
This is the dominant factor by a wide margin. A hospital outpatient department bills a facility charge on top of the professional fee and starts from a chargemaster rate. A freestanding cardiology office bills one global fee. MDsave’s own data shows the gap: a $903 national average for the general listing against $472 when the same study is purchased as an in-office procedure.
The JAMA Internal Medicine analysis makes the point more bluntly. Looking only at the 20 highest-ranked hospitals in the country, using their own price transparency files, median echocardiogram prices ranged from $204 to $2,588. That is a twelvefold spread among peer institutions for one test.
Complete versus limited
Not every echo is a full study. A limited or follow-up echo (93308) images less and costs less. MDsave lists it at $232 to $811 with a $425 average, against $220 to $1,859 for the complete study. If a clinician is rechecking a known finding rather than working something up from scratch, ask which code is being ordered, because it moves the price by hundreds of dollars.
Whether the read is bundled
In 2024 CMS data, CPT 93306 carried an average submitted charge of $690.55 in office settings but only $309.72 in facility settings. That is not a hospital discount. In a facility the physician bills only the interpretation and the hospital bills the scan separately, so the physician file captures half the transaction. Two bills arriving weeks apart from two entities is the normal pattern for a hospital echo, not an error.
Doppler and add-ons
The default study includes spectral and color Doppler, which is why 93306 is the code you will usually see. Contrast agents, bubble studies, and strain imaging are separate line items. Ask what is being added before the appointment rather than after.
Your state, and your provider’s discount policy
New Hampshire publishes what uninsured patients actually pay by provider, and the spread is instructive. As of the August 2026 data on NH HealthCost, one hospital lands at $360 after applying a 91 percent uninsured discount, a cardiology practice charges $613 with no discount because its list price was already low, and several providers sit above $3,000. A large posted charge paired with a large uninsured discount can cost you less than a modest charge with no discount at all, so ask about both numbers.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
An echocardiogram sits squarely in the zone where paying cash often wins. Under a high-deductible plan you pay the full negotiated rate until the deductible is met, and hospital negotiated rates for this study routinely land in four figures. A prepaid cash purchase at $472 to $903, or a cardiology office’s flat $250 self-pay rate, can beat the insured price outright.
The catch is timing. Self-pay pricing almost always has to be arranged before the service. Once a claim goes out the door, most providers will not convert you to their cash rate retroactively. Say you are self-pay at booking, ask for the price of the scan and the interpretation separately, and get both in writing.
There is also a tradeoff worth naming plainly. Money you pay as a cash patient usually does not count toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum. If you are likely to hit your deductible this year anyway, running it through coverage may be the better math. This is a pricing guide, not coverage or medical advice, so run your own numbers before deciding.
How to Pay Less
- Ask for the flat self-pay rate before you book. Cardiology practices publish these. Tampa Heart lists an echocardiogram at $250 and a carotid ultrasound at $250 on its public self-pay page. The price only exists if you ask for it in advance.
- Buy it prepaid. MDsave’s in-office echo averages $472 against a $678 estimated national average, and its general listing averages $903 against $1,859. Sanity-check any quote you are given with our fair price checker before you agree to it.
- Choose an office or freestanding center over a hospital outpatient department. The scan is the same and the facility fee is not. Our ultrasound cost guide covers the same office-versus-hospital math for other ultrasound studies.
- Confirm which code is being ordered. Complete (93306) versus limited (93308) is a several-hundred-dollar difference, and adding a stress component roughly doubles the price.
- Pull the hospital’s posted prices if a hospital is involved. Hospitals must publish cash rates for shoppable services, and echo codes are always in those files. Our hospital price transparency guide walks through finding and reading them.
- Fight the bill after the fact if it arrives inflated. Request an itemized hospital bill so you can see whether you were charged for the scan and the read separately, then use our medical bill negotiation guide. For large hospital balances, check eligibility with our charity care checker and our hospital charity care guide.
Bottom Line
An echocardiogram is a mid-price test that hospitals turn into an expensive one. The honest self-pay range is $220 to $1,859, the prepaid national average is $903, and office-based purchases average $472. Published cardiology-office rates go as low as $250. Anything at or above $2,500 is a chargemaster number rather than a market price, and it is negotiable.
If your echo is part of a broader cardiac workup, price the whole sequence up front instead of one test at a time. Our guides to EKG costs, cardiac stress tests, and nuclear stress tests cover the tests that most often come before and after this one, and our Holter monitor guide covers the longer-term monitoring option.