What a health checkup actually costs in China
There is no government price for a "full-body checkup". China prices the examination itself at ¥10 and then caps each individual test — packages are assembled by whoever is selling them. Which means you can price-check any package, line by line. Here is how.
Shanghai · Last verified 2026-08 · Reviewed quarterly · Free to reuse with attribution · Not a quote, not medical advice
The one thing worth understanding
Shanghai's health insurance bureau publishes a maximum price for each medical item. For checkups it caps two separate things: ¥10 for the physical examination across internal, surgical, gynaecological and ENT plus the summary report — with no consultation fee allowed on top — and a ceiling on every test that might be added to it.
A "package" is therefore not a regulated product. It is a list of items someone chose to bundle. When a package costs ¥1,980, the government-capped portion is often only three or four tenths of that; the rest is bundling margin, VIP or international-department access (which is market-priced and not capped at all), and non-medical extras like a guided route, breakfast or a rush report.
A standard panel, priced item by item
These are Shanghai's maximum prices for public institutions on the ordinary outpatient pathway. A hospital may charge less.
| Item | Government ceiling |
|---|---|
| Physical examination + summary report | ¥10 |
| Full blood count | ¥20 |
| Urinalysis | ¥4 |
| Stool routine + occult blood | ¥5 |
| Liver function (6 markers) | ¥30 |
| Kidney function (3 markers) | ¥15 |
| Fasting glucose | ¥5 |
| Lipid panel (4 markers) | ¥35 |
| ECG, 12-lead | ¥35 |
| Chest X-ray (DR) | ¥70 |
| Abdominal ultrasound (one set) | ¥90 |
| Thyroid + breast ultrasound (one set) | ¥90 |
| Total | ¥409 |
Add gastroscopy, colonoscopy, a tumour-marker panel, thyroid function and H. pylori testing and the government ceiling for the whole thing lands around ¥1,700–¥1,900. That is the maximum a public hospital may legally charge on the ordinary pathway — not an average.
Every item, so you can price your own panel
Page numbers refer to the official tariff PDF, so you can verify any line yourself.
The examination itself
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| General health check-up (physical exam across internal, surgical, gynaecological and ENT, plus the summary report) No consultation fee may be charged on top. Lab work, imaging and special tests are all billed separately. | ¥10 per visit | p.2 |
Routine bloods and urine
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| Full blood count (3-part differential) | ¥20 | p.22 |
| Urinalysis | ¥4 | p.22 |
| Stool routine + occult blood | ¥3 + ¥2 | p.22 |
| Liver function, per marker (ALT, AST, GGT, ALP, bilirubin) Dry-chemistry method ¥15 each. | ¥5 each | p.36 |
| Kidney function (urea, creatinine, uric acid) | ¥5 each | p.38 |
| Fasting glucose | ¥5 | p.33 |
| Lipid panel (4 markers) | ¥35 total | p.33 |
| HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin) Higher by method: ¥22 chromatography, ¥58 HPLC. | ¥20 | p.33 |
Imaging
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| Chest X-ray (digital radiography, DR) | ¥70 per region | p.11 |
| Mammography | ¥90 per side | p.11 |
| CT scan, plain Multi-region: at most 3 regions billable, the 2nd at 50% and the 3rd at 25%. Plain and contrast in one session bill as contrast only. | ¥170 (<64-slice) / ¥200 (64-slice+) per region | p.13 |
| CT scan, contrast | ¥270 / ¥300 per region | p.13 |
Ultrasound
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| Colour Doppler ultrasound, routine A "set" is a whole region — abdomen (liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen) is one set, not one price per organ. | ¥90 per SET | p.14 |
| Colour Doppler, superficial organs (thyroid, breast, nodes) | ¥90 per set | p.14 |
| Carotid / neck vessel Doppler | ¥200 | p.14 |
| Echocardiogram (colour Doppler) | ¥170 | p.14 |
| Transvaginal ultrasound | ¥48 | p.14 |
Functional tests
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| ECG, 12-lead computerised | ¥35 | p.83 |
| Holter (24h ECG) | ¥100–¥160 | p.83 |
| Treadmill stress ECG | ¥300 | p.83 |
| Lung function (spirometry, full) | ¥145 | p.81 |
Cancer markers and thyroid
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| CEA / AFP, each Chemiluminescence; ¥15 by other methods. | ¥32 | p.53 |
| CA-125 / CA15-3 / CA19-9 etc, each | ¥55 | p.53 |
| PSA (total) | ¥64 | p.53 |
| A common 5-marker tumour panel (CEA+AFP+CA125+CA199+PSA) | ¥238 total | p.53 |
| Thyroid function, 3 tests (TSH+FT3+FT4) Five-test panel ¥146. | ¥96 total | p.41 |
Endoscopy and infection screening
| Item | Ceiling | Verify |
|---|---|---|
| Gastroscopy (electronic, biopsy included) Sedation for a "painless" procedure is billed separately and was not transcribed this round. Pathology on any biopsy is ¥150 per site. | ¥380 | p.85 |
| Colonoscopy (electronic, biopsy included) Same caveats as gastroscopy. | ¥430 | p.85 |
| H. pylori rapid test | ¥50 | p.53 |
| C13 urea breath test | ¥130 | p.53 |
| Hepatitis B panel (5 markers) | ¥55–¥115 | p.49 |
| Cervical cytology (TCT) | ¥70 | p.61 |
What checkup chains actually charge
Private chains set their own prices and are not bound by any of the above. They publish two numbers, and we publish both, because quoting only one misrepresents the market in either direction: the listed price is what you pay walking in, the booked price is what you actually pay through a booking platform.
| Provider & package | Listed | Booked | Items | Same items at government ceilings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meinian (Hongqiao) Basic pre-employment panel | ¥300 | ¥150 | 8 items | ≈¥142 |
| iKang (Xikang Rd) Routine pre-employment (male) | ¥469 | ¥228 | 19 items | ≈¥240 |
| Ciming (Xujiahui) Full cancer-screening panel (female) | ¥3,427 | ¥1,884 | 42 items | ≈¥1,500–1,800 |
| Rich (Shanghai Railway Stn) Premium mid-life cancer risk screening (male) | ¥5,479 | ¥2,301 | 61 items | ≈¥2,200–2,700 |
The pattern in this sample: the booked price lands close to what the same tests would cost at government ceilings, while the walk-in listed price runs roughly twice that. Captured 2026-08 from a public booking platform; these are promotional and move.
The government-ceiling column is an estimate and deliberately conservative — several items in these packages (bone density, arterial stiffness, some immunology) have no government price we could locate, so the true comparable is a little higher than shown.
Where public hospitals fit
Counter-intuitively, a public hospital's own checkup centre is often not the cheap option. Shanghai Tenth People's Hospital — a Grade 3A public hospital — lists packages on the same booking platform starting around ¥1,263, well above the ¥409 basic panel above, because those packages default to CT, tumour markers and other higher-priced items and come with VIP-area access and report interpretation. Hospital checkup centres largely operate through the market-priced 特需 pathway rather than the capped ordinary one.
What we could not source
- MRI — not yet transcribed from the tariff schedule, so we publish no figure for it.
- Anaesthesia for sedated ("painless") gastroscopy and colonoscopy — priced separately, not yet transcribed.
- Venepuncture fee, bone-density scanning and HPV genotyping — not yet located in the schedule.
- Body-composition and arterial-stiffness testing offered by checkup chains are generally not government-priced medical items at all.
We would rather show you the holes than fill them with plausible numbers.
Sources
- 上海市医疗服务价格汇总表（2024版）— Shanghai Medical Service Price Schedule (2024)
- 沪医保价采发〔2025〕43号 — outpatient consultation fees, effective 2026-04-20
- Chain package prices captured 2026-08 from a public booking platform.
The 2024 tariff is a scanned PDF with no text layer; our figures were transcribed by reading the original pages rather than by OCR. Every row above links to its page so you can check it.
Shanghai Health Checkup Price Reference 2026-08, China Medical Journey.
https://chinamedicaljourney.com/china-health-checkup-prices
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