Method

How we check China MRI prices

Prices checked 26 October 2026 (Taipei time)

Every China MRI price on this site comes from a document or page we read ourselves, and each one shows its source and the date we read it. This page explains which sources we use, how we turn them into the numbers you see, and what the numbers do not tell you.

Three kinds of price

1. Official maximum prices. Each city's healthcare security bureau publishes the most a public hospital may charge for each exam in its ordinary service. We read the notices and their annexes in Chinese, on the bureaus' own websites: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, plus the Guangdong provincial schedule they forward. These are caps, not quotes; a hospital may charge less but not more.
2. Hospital list prices. A few private and international hospitals publish their own prices. We quote them exactly, with any warning the page carries, such as "for reference only". We have not found a public hospital's international department that publishes an MRI price, so we do not quote one.
3. Coordinator package prices. Coordination services publish "from" prices that bundle the hospital fee with booking, interpreting and reports. We quote them as published and say what they include.

How we calculate

• Unless a page says otherwise, tables show the cap for Grade 3 hospitals, the large hospitals most visitors use.
• Worked examples (two knees, a whole spine, plain plus contrast) are our arithmetic from each city's own charging rules, and are labelled as such.
• Dollar figures are converted at the official RMB central parity published by the China Foreign Exchange Trade System: ¥6.7162 to $1 on 26 October 2026. They are rounded and only a guide; your bank's rate will differ.
• Prices exclude the contrast medicine, the consultation or registration fee and printed film unless we say they are included.

Home-country comparisons

Wait times come from the official statistics where they exist: the Canadian Institute for Health Information's data tables and NHS England's monthly diagnostic waiting times. The Fraser Institute figures come from its 2025 physician survey; its own website blocked our reader, so we read them in a news report and say so. Private prices come from clinics' own price pages, and US prices from a peer-reviewed study of hospital price files from 2021, which we label with its data date.

What we do not do

• We do not estimate prices we could not find. A missing price is shown as missing, and some pages we planned, such as whole-body MRI and PSMA PET-CT, are not published because we have no reliable source.
• We do not invent reviews, patient stories or statistics.
• We do not claim that a scan is right for you, and our pages have not been reviewed by a doctor. See the medical disclaimer.
• We do not accept payment from hospitals or coordinators for listing them.

How often we check

Every page shows the date its figures were last checked, in Taipei time. Official schedules change rarely, usually with a new numbered notice; coordinators' prices can change at any time. When we find a change, we update the figure and the date together.

Corrections

If a price is out of date or wrong, email contact@chinamricost.com with the page and your source. We check it against the original and correct confirmed errors.

Start from the MRI, CT and PET-CT price table or the China MRI cost overview.