How Much Do Nutritionists and Dietitians Make?
BLS counts nutritionists and dietitians as one job, but the two words mean different things. "Registered dietitian" is a credential. "Nutritionist" is a title some states protect and others do not. There are three honest answers to what they make, because three different things get measured: employee pay, registered dietitians' pay, and Medicare's fee for an hour.
Which answer fits you depends mostly on one choice: a salaried job, or your own practice. It also depends on where you work. Type your ZIP code below to see the official figures for your area.
The rest of this page is about which of these you would be.
Pay for dietitians and nutritionists runs from about half the national median to 61% above it
Type a ZIP code to see what dietitians and nutritionists earn where you work. The figures are official BLS pay data for 383 metro and rural areas; the other 145 areas use their state's figure. All 40,767 US ZIP codes are matched. Where we have them, your state's rules show too.
Sources: BLS May 2025 area wages for dietitians and nutritionists; the Census 2020 ZIP-to-county file; USDA rural-urban codes; state licensing agencies. Where BLS publishes no figure for an area, the tool uses the state's. No agency publishes self-employed pay by area, so the tool and the calculator use the area's dietitian and nutritionist pay level for self-employed work too. The lookup runs in your browser and loads only a small file for the first three digits of your ZIP code from this site.
California pays dietitians and nutritionists the most, Mississippi the least
The column is the median pay of employed dietitians and nutritionists in each state, May 2025. The self-employed are not in it, and small states rest on few jobs: Wyoming has 120.
| State | Dietitians and nutritionists, median a year (BLS May 2025) |
|---|---|
| United States | $76,400 |
| Highest five | |
| California | $98,850 |
| West Virginia | $89,440 |
| Alaska | $87,980 |
| New Jersey | $84,450 |
| Washington | $84,220 |
| Lowest five | |
| Mississippi | $63,700 |
| Wyoming | $64,370 |
| Arizona | $64,410 |
| Maine | $64,610 |
| South Dakota | $64,890 |
| Most people employed in this job | |
| New York | $82,480 |
| Texas | $74,440 |
| Florida | $76,050 |
| Pennsylvania | $67,410 |
| Ohio | $69,530 |
| Massachusetts | $76,660 |
BLS May 2025 state medians for dietitians and nutritionists (29-1031). Employees only; the self-employed are not counted. Puerto Rico is left out of the ranking.
The biggest pay decision: a salaried job, or your own practice
Most of what a dietitian earns comes down to this choice. Employed dietitians are in the BLS and CDR numbers at the top of this page. Practice owners mostly are not: BLS leaves out the self-employed, and CDR's public summary prints no private practice pay figure.
The calculator below runs three ways of working.
Work out what you would make before tax
Put in your own numbers to see a year three ways: as a telehealth employee, in an insurance-based practice, or in a cash-pay practice. If you entered a ZIP code above, the rate follows local pay levels.
- Sessions you bill in a year$48,000
- Your share$48,000
Example figures from the sources named, checked in October 2026. Tax, billing costs, insurance contracts and office rent are not taken off. Medicare covers only some patients for a few hours a year, and commercial insurers set their own rates. The 3% card fee is close to a card processor's published US rate, 2.9% plus 30 cents a payment. With a ZIP code entered, the rate follows that area's local pay levels.
Insurance is the second most-asked nutritionist pay question, and Medicare covers nutrition therapy for two conditions
Insurance and billing drew 156 phrasings on our chart, second only to registered dietitian pay at 195. These are Medicare's rules and fees as CMS and Medicare.gov state them, not billing advice. Commercial insurers set their own.
A patient qualifies with diabetes, kidney disease, or a kidney transplant in the last 36 months, and a doctor must refer them. Medicare.gov says a patient who qualifies pays nothing for these services.
CMS's national coverage rule for medical nutrition therapy sets 3 hours in the first calendar year and up to 2 hours of follow-up in each year after.
These are CMS's national rates outside a hospital for codes 97802 and 97803, before the 85% rule below. An hour is four 15-minute units. Actual payment varies by locality.
Federal rules base a dietitian's Medicare payment on 85% of the physician fee schedule amount, or the actual charge if that is lower. By our arithmetic from the 2026 fee schedule, that is about $108 to $125 for an hour.
What working dietitians say they charge and make, in their own words
These dietitians published their own numbers on podcasts and video. Every figure is theirs, unverified, and labeled with its period as they said it. Few publish a yearly personal income, so most of what exists is rates, wages and practice revenue.
Her 2024 payroll for her team was $218,708 and the practice's profit $27,202. Her last full-time job paid $54,000. She started solo in 2020 on about $26,000 of revenue.
About 35 appointments a week; she projects $91,000 a year before tax. Paid for no-shows, 19 days of paid time off. Her video carries a referral link to the company.
Mostly insurance-based, with one price for insurance and cash pay. She advises charging more than your highest insurance contract. No yearly income given. She sells a dietitian business plan template.
A dietitian-run salary database of 3,500+ self-reported entries. She put private practice, 4% of entries, at about $100,000 at 40 hours, or about $75,000 for the 30 hours they work.
Stacey Dunn-Emke's database collects anonymous, self-selected entries, so it is not a sample like the BLS or CDR surveys. She said its entries lean toward non-traditional roles. Its figures are averages, not medians.
The lowest-paid 10% of employed dietitians earn under $49,090 a year; one new dietitian started at $50 an hour
Starting out drew 21 phrasings on our chart. BLS does not publish pay by years of experience, so these are the low ends of the official ranges, the training BLS describes, and one new dietitian's first job.
BLS May 2025, employees only. The lowest 25% earn under $63,080. These are the lowest earners at every stage, not only new ones.
That is total cash pay from the 2024 CDR survey, against a median of $80,400. Only dietitians who answered the survey are counted.
She graduated in May 2026, passed the registration exam and joined Nourish, a telehealth company, as an employee. She projects $91,000 before tax at about 35 appointments a week.
Measured by us in October 2026, from Google's US suggestions. A row on training and credentials was measured too, at 295 phrasings, and left off because it is about training, not pay.
Nutritionist and dietitian pay questions
If you run your own practice, take bookings and payment in the same step.
The free plan takes your first 100 bookings without a credit card. It is a permanent plan, not a trial.
- A booking page that works as the link in your bio
- Each service with its own length and price: an initial consultation, a follow-up, a package of sessions
- Payment at booking, or a card on file charged with the customer's permission, into your own Stripe account
- A video call link made automatically for each online session
Sources
Where every number on this page comes from, with the release or date we used.
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025: Dietitians and Nutritionists (29-1031), national, state, industry, metro and nonmetro areas, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-05-15 Employees only; the self-employed are not surveyed. BLS does not restrict this figure to registered dietitians.
- Occupational Outlook Handbook: Dietitians and Nutritionists, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-08-27 86,300 jobs in 2025, 9% of them self-employed; education, internship and licensing; May 2025 wages.
- Compensation and Benefits Survey of the Dietetics Profession: 2024 Executive Summary, Commission on Dietetic Registration and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics January 2025. 5,652 usable responses, a 12% response rate; wages as of January 1, 2024. Self-reported. The public summary prints no private practice pay figure.
- Registry Statistics, Commission on Dietetic Registration, 2026-10-19 112,772 registered dietitians (RD and RDN) and 1,150 board-certified sports dietitians (CSSD).
- Physician Fee Schedule relative value files, CY2026 (RVU26A and RVU26D): codes 97802 and 97803, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2026-08-26 National rates outside a hospital. The $108 to $125 an hour is our arithmetic: four 15-minute units at 85% of these rates. Actual payment varies by locality.
- National Coverage Determination: Medical Nutrition Therapy (NCD ID 252), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 3 hours in the first year and 2 hours in later years, for diabetes or kidney disease.
- Medical nutrition therapy services, Medicare.gov Who qualifies, the doctor's referral, and no cost to a patient who qualifies.
- 42 CFR 414.64, Payment for medical nutrition therapy, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations Payment based on the lesser of the actual charge or 85% of the physician fee schedule amount.
- Dietitians at a glance, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation A title act, not a practice act. 10,332 licensees in fiscal year 2025.
- Florida Statutes 468.504, License required, The Florida Senate 2026 statutes. A license is required to practice dietetics, nutrition or nutrition counseling for pay.
- Dietetics and Nutrition: license statistics, New York State Education Department, Office of the Professions, 2026-07-01 8,059 registered certificate holders, 6,001 in the state. Article 157 of the Education Law protects the titles "certified dietitian" and "certified nutritionist" and does not restrict practice.
- California Business and Professions Code 2585, State of California, via california.public.law Qualifications to use the title "registered dietitian": a degree, 900 hours of supervised practice and an exam.
- 2020 ZCTA to County Relationship File, U.S. Census Bureau, 2021-12-09 Used by the ZIP tool to match a ZIP code to a county.
- 2020 Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes, ZIP code file, USDA Economic Research Service Used by the ZIP tool to label an area urban core, suburban, small city or rural.
- Eva Haldis, RD, 2024 Financials in Review, The RDtoCEO Podcast, Buzzsprout, 2025-02-26 Group practice owner. Revenue, payroll, profit and her own pay for 2024. Her 2020 figures are from her June 2024 episode, "Let's talk money part 2".
- Victoria, The Dietitian Runner, I Got a Job as a Full Time Nourish Dietitian, YouTube Upload date approximate, about September 2026. Telehealth employee, West Texas. The video carries a referral link to her employer.
- Shena Rose, How Much Should Dietitians Charge? Pricing Your Private Practice Without Guilt, YouTube Upload date approximate, about January 2026. Insurance-based private practice. She sells a dietitian business plan template.
- Dietitian Salaries with Stacey Dunn-Emke, Dietitian Side Hustle episode 249, YouTube Upload date approximate, about October 2025. Figures from her self-reported database at dietitiansalaries.com; averages, not medians.
- Named dietitians' own figures, Various the named dietitians above
- Stripe pricing, standard US card rate, Stripe, 2026-10-25 the card processor kiwilaunch uses; quoted for the 3% card fee in the calculator
Not tax, legal, financial or billing advice. Pay, rates and what you keep vary by state and city, and licensing and insurance rules change by state and by payer. Your state board, and a professional who knows your situation, can answer for you.