How Doctors Can Earn Online in India: Fees and NMC Rules

Doctors in India can earn online in two ways: paid teleconsultations and courses. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines let you charge "an appropriate fee" for an online consult, with a receipt, and the 2002 conduct regulations ask you to announce that fee in advance. A course must stay health education: no individual diagnosis, no cure claims, no product endorsements.

Updated 5 October 2026. Every rule below was read from the regulator's own document that day, and every fee from the platform's own page.

Key takeaways

• The 2002 regulations still govern you. NMC's 2023 conduct regulations were held in abeyance on 23 August 2023, and the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations 2002 apply again.
• No rule caps your online fee. The guidelines say to treat teleconsultation "the same way as in-person consultations from a fee perspective". That means a fee you set, announce first and give a receipt for.
• The market sits around ₹650 to ₹1,000. Our sample of 200 Apollo 24|7 listings had a median online fee of ₹800. Practo's own online consults are ₹649 to ₹799.
• On a marketplace, doctors report keeping about ₹100 of a ₹500 to ₹700 consult. On your own booking page with a 5% all-in fee, you keep ₹665 of ₹700.
• A course is not a consultation. Health education is explicitly allowed. Diagnosing individuals inside a course, promising cures or endorsing products is not. Consult fees are GST-exempt health care; a course for the public is not.

Disclosure: Peerseek (peerseek.io) is an India-first platform where creators, including doctors, sell 1:1 sessions and courses, and it publishes this guide. The rules section quotes the regulators directly with clause numbers. It is general information, not legal or tax advice. Check anything specific to your state council or your accounts with your council or a CA.

Who this is for: registered medical practitioners in India who already have an audience (YouTube, Instagram, clinic patients, a WhatsApp group) and want to charge for consults or teach a course. If you are looking for part-time teleconsultation shifts on a hospital app, this is not that guide.

In this guide: The rules · Setting your fee · What you keep · Receipts and GST · Selling a course · Doing it on Peerseek · FAQ · How we checked

What the rules allow online

Two documents decide almost everything here. The first is the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations 2002. The second is the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020, which sit inside those regulations as Appendix 5.

NMC did notify new conduct regulations on 2 August 2023, including a section on social media. Three weeks later, its 23 August 2023 notification said the 2023 regulations "are hereby held in abeyance with immediate effect" and restored the 2002 regulations. As of 5 October 2026, NMC's regulations page lists no notification reviving them. Articles about "NMC's 11 social media rules" describe those 2023 regulations, which are not in force.

What the rules say, clause by clause

What you can prescribe online

The guidelines split medicines into lists. List O (medicines the guidelines treat as safe in any mode, largely over-the-counter) can be prescribed by video, audio or text. List A can be prescribed on a first consult only by video. List B can be added only on a follow-up. Schedule X and narcotic drugs cannot be prescribed by teleconsultation at all.

A "first consult" also includes a returning patient you have not seen for more than six months, or one coming back with a new condition (clause 3.6.1). That definition is useful later, for pricing follow-ups.

Can doctors advertise in India?

Not in the way other professionals do. Clause 6.1.1 calls soliciting patients, directly or indirectly, unethical. It bars doctors from publicity that invites attention to their skill, achievements or specialities. The same clause lists the announcements that are allowed, and one of them is a "public declaration of charges".

Our reading of how these clauses fit together: Educational content on YouTube or Instagram is permitted. A plain booking page with your name, qualifications, registration number, consult types and fee is a factual declaration. "Best diabetologist in Pune, 50% off this week, DM me your reports" is solicitation with an inducement. Skip patient testimonials, before-and-after photos, discount offers on consults and outcome promises.

The advertising regulator points the same way. ASCI's influencer guidelines (Addendum II) say health influencers giving technical advice must hold a relevant qualification and disclose it upfront, for example on screen or as the opening remark.

How to set your online consultation fee

No regulator publishes a number, so the fee is yours to set. Here is the method we would use, built from the clauses above and the market data below.

1. Start from your in-clinic fee. The guidelines ask you to treat teleconsultation the same way "from a fee perspective". That does not oblige the same rupee amount, but your clinic fee is the honest anchor and patients will compare the two.
2. Price by length and mode, not by platform. A 10 to 15 minute chat review of reports and a 30 minute first video consult are different services. List them as different services with different fees.
3. Make the first consult video if you may need to prescribe. List A medicines need video on a first consult, so a cheap audio-only first consult can leave you unable to treat. Price the first consult accordingly.
4. Write the follow-up rule into the fee. Use the guidelines' own line (clause 3.6.2): a follow-up is the same condition, within six months of your previous in-person consult. A common structure is a lower follow-up fee, or one free follow-up within a fixed number of days, stated on the booking page.
5. Announce it before the consult. Clause 1.8 says so, and a booking page that shows the fee before payment does it for you.
6. Check it against the market once, then stop. If you have an audience that already trusts you, you are not competing with ₹199 app consults.

What online consults cost in India today

These are what the patient pays the app, not what the doctor receives. They are useful as a ceiling for an unknown doctor on a marketplace. A doctor whose patients already know them from their content can price from their clinic fee instead.

Worked example. A general physician charging ₹800 in clinic lists three services: a 15 minute report review by chat at ₹500, a 30 minute first consult by video at ₹800, and a follow-up within 30 days at ₹400. Every fee is visible before booking, and the booking page carries the registration number.

What you keep: marketplace vs your own page

Consultation marketplaces bring you patients, and they price that in. None of the large apps publishes what it pays doctors per online consult. Practo's page for doctors says it collects the payment and settles weekly, without a rate.

Doctors on r/IndianMedSchool have been specific about instant-consult desks, where the app assigns the patient. One June 2026 thread reports the patient paying ₹500 to ₹700 and the doctor receiving about ₹100, or ₹90 after 10% TDS. These are doctor-reported figures, not company figures. That model also applies to app-supplied patients, not to patients who come looking for you.

When your own audience books you, the maths changes.

How these are calculated: Topmate's own payout guidelines show ₹858.40 kept from ₹1,000 (10% commission + 2% transaction fee + 18% GST on that fee), applied to ₹700. Razorpay's standard rate is 2% plus 18% GST on the fee, about 2.36%. Peerseek charges 5% all-in, with payment processing included.

A bare payment link keeps the most per rupee, but you then do scheduling, the video link, reminders and fee disclosure by hand on WhatsApp. That is also the setup where consults drift into DMs, which the guidelines discourage.

Receipts and GST

What to put on a consultation receipt

Clause 3.7.3.2 asks for a receipt or invoice, and clauses 1.4.1 and 3.2.5 put your registration number on it. A teleconsultation receipt that meets both carries:

• Your name, qualification and State Medical Council registration number
• Patient name and the date and time of the consult
• Mode (video, audio or text) and whether it was a first consult or a follow-up
• The fee received and how it was paid
• A receipt number and your signature or digital signature

Keep a copy. Clause 3.7.2.1 of the guidelines also asks you to keep logs of telemedicine interactions, whether phone, chat or video.

GST on doctor consultations and on courses

Consultation fees and course fees sit on different sides of GST.

• Consultations: Notification 12/2017-Central Tax (Rate), entry 74, exempts "health care services" by an authorised medical practitioner. Health care services are defined as diagnosis, treatment or care for illness. A teleconsultation is health care.
• Courses: a course you sell to the public is education, not health care. The GST Council's education services note says private coaching is not exempt education because it does not lead to a recognised qualification.
• Registration: section 22 of the CGST Act requires GST registration above ₹20 lakh of aggregate turnover in a year (₹10 lakh in special category states).

If your course sales are growing, have a CA look at registration, rate and how your clinic income is counted before you cross the line, not after.

How to sell a course as a doctor

Clause 7.11 of the 2002 regulations lets you write and talk publicly on "public health, hygienic living", and the telemedicine guidelines explicitly allow health promotion and disease prevention messages. A recorded course is the paid, structured version of the content you may already be publishing.

What doctors teach, and what it sells for

A good first course answers one specific question your comments keep asking, and a sensible starting price is roughly two to five times your consult fee. "Understand your thyroid report" sells better than "Endocrinology basics".

Five lines a doctor's course should not cross

1. No individual diagnosis inside the course. A course teaches; a consultation treats. If a learner posts their reports in a course community, move them to a booked consult, as the guidelines require for any patient interaction.
2. No cure or guaranteed-outcome claims. Clause 6.1.1 bars boasting of cures, and the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 bans advertising remedies for a scheduled list of conditions. "Learn to manage your sugar with diet" is education. "Reverse diabetes in 21 days" is a claim.
3. No product endorsements. Clause 6.8.1(h) bars publicly endorsing a drug or industry product, so keep supplement affiliate links and brand deals out of the course.
4. Keep the sales page factual. Clause 7.12 lets a doctor-run training institution advertise its name, type of training, facilities and fees, and nothing more. A course page that lists the syllabus, format, your qualification and the price follows the same idea.
5. Do not call it CME unless a council accredited it. CME credit hours come from State Medical Council accreditation, and councils such as UP and Kerala accept applications only from listed organisations. A certificate of completion is fine. A "CME certified" badge on an individual doctor's course usually is not.

Doing it on Peerseek

Peerseek is built for the setup this guide describes: your audience finds you through your content, and you need a page that takes the booking or sells the course. New profiles are hidden from Peerseek's own search by default and there is no doctor directory, so patients who come through your link are not shown other doctors. There is no monthly fee. Peerseek keeps 5% of each sale, with payment processing included.

Set up paid consults

1. Create your profile. Add your degree, specialty and State Medical Council registration number to your profile and to each service description, as clause 3.2.5 asks.
2. Create a 1:1 service for each fee. Choose video (a Google Meet link is created and sent automatically), phone call or chat. Set the length, the price, your weekly hours and how much notice you need.
3. Add booking questions. Ask for age, the reason for the consult and current medicines. Add a file upload so patients attach reports before the call. Add a required choice question confirming the patient understands this is a teleconsultation and may need an in-person visit.
4. Write the post-booking message. Tell patients what to keep ready, the follow-up rule, and that this is not for emergencies.
5. Put the link where your audience is. YouTube description, Instagram bio, your clinic's WhatsApp status.
6. After each consult, send your prescription and receipt from your usual clinic system, mark the session complete in Peerseek, and withdraw.

Set up a course

1. Create the course with sections and lessons. Videos stream through a protected player rather than as downloadable files, and you can attach PDFs to each lesson.
2. Add quizzes if you want learners to check understanding, and turn on a certificate of completion.
3. Set the price and access period, for example lifetime or one year. You can show an original price struck through.
4. Link the course from the videos that answer the same question, and the consult page from inside the course for learners who need individual advice.

What Peerseek does not do

Peerseek is a booking, payment and course platform, not clinical software. It does not write prescriptions, keep patient records or issue receipts or GST invoices, and it has no dedicated field for your registration number yet. It does not sync with your Google Calendar. Payouts are not instant: consult earnings become withdrawable 24 hours after you mark the session complete. If you need an EMR, keep it alongside.

Doctors ke liye, short mein (Hinglish)

Online consultation ki fees aap khud decide karte ho. Rule bas itna hai ki fees pehle batao, receipt do, aur receipt aur website par registration number ho. Market mein zyada tar online consults ₹650 se ₹1,000 ke beech hain. Course bechna allowed hai jab tak woh health education hai: course ke andar diagnosis nahi, "cure" ka promise nahi, kisi product ka endorsement nahi.

FAQ

Start with one service and one link

If your patients already find you through your videos or your clinic, a Peerseek page with one consult and one course takes an evening to set up and costs nothing until someone pays.

Set up your consult and course page →

How we checked

The rules were read on 5 October 2026 from the regulators' own documents: the 2002 regulations as hosted by NMC, NMC's abeyance notification of 23 August 2023, the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines on the eSanjeevani site, ASCI's codes and guidelines page, and the GST Council's copies of Notification 12/2017 and its education services note. Quotes are exact; clause numbers are as printed.

Fees were read the same day. The Apollo 24|7 sample is every online-consult fee on the first three listing pages of seven specialties (general physician, dermatology, diabetology, psychiatry, endocrinology, gynaecology, paediatrics), each doctor counted once, no doctor named. Platform rates come from Topmate's payout guidelines and Razorpay's pricing explainer. Course prices come from the course providers' own pages. The doctor count is from a PIB release of July 2026, which puts 15,35,155 doctors on the Indian Medical Register. The "you keep" figures are our arithmetic on published rates. Peerseek's features and fees were checked against the product on the same date.

Related reading

• Peerseek for doctors
• How Therapists Make Money on Instagram in India
• How to Start a Career Counselling Business Online in India
• Topmate Charges 2026: Commission, Fees and What You Keep
• Sell an Online Course in India Without a Subscription