Georgia Medical License

A Georgia medical license costs $500 to apply and $230 every two years to hold. You apply in the Board’s Licensure Gateway, three physicians send references, third parties send transcripts and verifications to NextRequest, and the license renews by the last day of your birth month.

Key Takeaways

• Board fees: $500 to apply, $230 to renew every two years, plus 3.15% on every card payment
• References: three physician forms for an initial license, each expiring six months after signature
• CME: 40 hours per two year cycle, and none before your first renewal
• Compact: Georgia issues IMLC licenses and can act as your State of Principal License
• Processing: no published average, but you get 360 days to finish the application

The Verdict: Georgia is cheap to hold and fussy to enter. At $115 a year it costs less to keep than a Florida, Alabama or North Carolina license, but the application is a two stage machine in which you control very little. Three referees, your school, your training program, FSMB and every board that ever licensed you file directly, and you may not upload any of it. In our experience helping physicians across all 50 states, Georgia packets stall on reference forms that expired while the rest of the file was in transit.

How do you get a Georgia medical license, step by step?

You register in the GCMB Licensure Gateway, start a physician application and pay $500 at checkout. Then you upload your own documents, clear a fingerprint background check, and wait while third parties send everything else to NextRequest. Nothing moves until the parts you do not control arrive.

1. Register in the Licensure Gateway. The Georgia Composite Medical Board moved to a new system and says old credentials will not work. Sign up again at gateway.medicalboard.georgia.gov.
2. Start the application and pay $500. Checkout adds 3.15% card processing, also non-refundable. Credit or debit only, because the Board is now paperless and accepts neither checks nor money orders.
3. Upload your own documents. The notarized Affidavit of Applicant with a color passport photo, citizenship affidavit and secure ID, malpractice questionnaire, a CV explaining every date gap, and an NPDB self query if you have ever held a professional license.
4. Clear the fingerprint background check. A Background Check tab appears in the application and staff issue instructions there. The Board reissued those instructions on May 25, 2026, so older checklists are stale.
5. Ask three physicians for reference forms. Each referee must have known you six months and must send the signed PDF from an institutional address to NextRequest. You cannot forward it for them.
6. Let the third parties file. Your school sends the transcript, your GME program the training certification, the Federation of State Medical Boards USMLE scores and NBOME COMLEX, and every board that ever licensed you a verification. Kentucky is the one you may forward yourself.
7. Watch the clock. An application not completed within 360 days may be closed, and you start again at $500.

Pro tip: Order your FCVS profile before you open the application. The Board’s current physician page lists it among the documents it expects and uses it to pull everything except your resume, citizenship form and background check, so one order replaces four chases. Confirm receipt with Board staff once FSMB says it has been released.

What are the Georgia medical license requirements?

Georgia requires a medical degree, ACGME accredited postgraduate training, passing national exam scores and a clean regulatory record. Graduates of United States board approved schools need one year of training. Graduates of international or non-approved schools need three, fully documented. One board licenses both MDs and DOs.

That last point separates Georgia from several other states. Florida, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania each run a separate osteopathic board. Georgia does not, so a DO and an MD apply to the same board, renew under the same rule, and turn up in the same license search.

International graduates add ECFMG certification, which can travel inside the FCVS profile. Exam transcripts are the strict part: the Board takes a USMLE or COMLEX transcript only from FSMB or NBOME, never from you or from a credentialing agency working for you. Extra attempts at a step need a formal request form, and the Board will not read it until the transcript has arrived from the source.

Watch out: a Georgia reference form expires six months after the date it was signed. Physicians collect all three early, then spend four months chasing a training verification, and the references die before the file is complete. Ask your referees last, once the slow documents are already moving.

Everything you can control in a Georgia application takes an afternoon. Everything that decides the timeline belongs to somebody else.

How much does a Georgia medical license cost?

Board fees are $500 to apply and $230 to renew every two years, and every card payment carries a 3.15% processing fee on top. A first license therefore costs $515.75 at checkout. Add FCVS, fingerprints and exam transcript fees, none of which appear on the Board schedule.

Two numbers here are worth correcting. Guides and licensing vendors still quote $400 to apply and $200 to renew in Georgia. The Board’s published schedule says $500 and $230, and it warns that the schedule can change without notice. Budget from the schedule, not from a blog post.

Lapse penalties are steep. Renewing late costs $455. Letting the license go and reinstating it costs the full $500 again. Going inactive on purpose costs $200 up front and $300 to come back, which is $200 cheaper than lapsing by accident.

How does Georgia compare to neighboring states?

Georgia is the second cheapest license to hold among the five states compared here. Its $500 application fee matches South Carolina, sits below the $550 charged in North Carolina and the $705 in board fees a first Florida license takes, while Alabama asks about $375 to start. Renewal cycles reorder that list: Georgia works out at $115 per year, against $70 in South Carolina, $177.50 in Florida, and $300 in Alabama and $350 in North Carolina, which both renew annually. The full picture sits in our ranking of the hardest and easiest states to get licensed in.

How long does a Georgia medical license take?

The Board publishes no average processing time for a Georgia medical license. What it does publish are deadlines that bind you: 360 days to complete an application, 60 days for a compact file, and reference forms that expire six months after signature. Treat any quoted week count as a guess.

The Board asks applicants not to call about timing until payment posts, and commits to nothing after that. Every published deadline in Georgia runs against the applicant or the referee, none against the Board.

The Board meeting line matters. Staff issue a full license once the file is clean, but institutional and administrative licenses need approval at a meeting, and miss the agenda and you wait another month with nothing wrong on your side.

By the numbers: the Board’s own tally, published as of January 18, 2024, counted 45,820 active licenses on the physician side, including 42,623 full physician licenses, 2,986 resident training permits, 93 telemedicine licenses and 12 institutional licenses, alongside 7,040 physician assistants.

How do you verify or look up a Georgia medical license?

To verify a Georgia medical license, search the Licensure Gateway verification page run by the Georgia Composite Medical Board. It is free, and the Board names the fields that count as primary source verification: license number, license status, the date the Georgia license was first issued, the expiration date, and any public orders.

1. Open the official Georgia license verification search. The Board links to it from its Verify a Licensee page, and no aggregator carries the same status.
2. Search by name or by license number. MDs and DOs share one database, so a DO lookup needs no second board.
3. Read the status line, then the dates. Original issue date and expiration date are both primary source fields, which is what a credentialing team asks for when it wants a physician license confirmed rather than found.
4. Check the public orders field. A clean record carries an explicit notation, and orders issued under the Board’s former name, the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners, appear there too.
5. Save the record with the date you pulled it. A license check is only good for that day.

Two things the search will not tell you. Malpractice coverage has been collected since May 2012 under a 2011 statute but never reached the physician profile, so the Board publishes it as a separate list. And nurses sit on another system: to check an RN, LPN or APRN, start at the Georgia Board of Nursing.

A formal verification for another board is a paid letter, not a screenshot: $57 for a physician, $32 for allied professions and residency permits. You request and pay for it inside the Gateway, and the Board emails it to the receiving party you name. VeriDoc, the Board’s contracted service, is the faster route.

How do you renew a Georgia medical license?

Georgia medical license renewal falls due every two years, on the last day of the month you were born in. Renewing on time costs $230 and renewing late costs $455. You need 40 hours of Board approved CME, except before your first renewal, when the rule asks for none at all.

The birth month cycle is set in Ga. Comp. R. and Regs. 360-16-.01, which puts MD and DO licenses on one clock and makes CME a condition of eligibility rather than a formality. You renew in the same Licensure Gateway you applied in, answering compliance questions instead of uploading certificates.

Georgia accepts AMA Category 1, AOA Category 1, AAFP Prescribed, ACOG Cognates Category 1 and ACEP Category 1 credit, and puts the burden of checking approval on you. Hours used to clear a Board order cannot count again next cycle.

Keep the certificates for five years, because the Board audits a fixed percentage of renewals rather than every file. Renewal notices go out by email from 90 days before expiration and then daily, which only helps if your portal address is current. Physicians who are not United States citizens have lawful presence re-verified at every renewal, and for holders of a DEA registration the three hour course is one time only.

Does Georgia issue compact, telemedicine and administrative licenses?

Yes to all three. Georgia belongs to the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact and can act as your State of Principal License, so you can start a compact application here or finish one that began elsewhere. It also issues telemedicine and administrative licenses, both at the same $500 and $230 fees.

The compact runs on two pathways. Pathway A suits physicians who already hold a full Georgia license and want a Letter of Qualification naming Georgia as the principal state, which requires Georgia to be your residence, a quarter of your practice, your employer location or your federal tax home. Pathway B is for physicians holding a Letter of Qualification elsewhere. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact is an agreement among sovereign states, not a federal program.

Two details catch applicants here. The Letter of Qualification lasts 365 days, but the Georgia window is 60. And a compact license is approved temporarily on submission, then properly once you upload the extra documents within 30 days of licensure. The Board has posted a notice that its move to the new system has delayed compact processing, the closest thing Georgia publishes to a current wait time.

Watch out: the DEA treats a telemedicine license as a restricted license, and the Board says so on its own page. If you need DEA authority in Georgia, apply for the full license, which permits telemedicine anyway. Converting later costs another $200. Our physician licensing service handles either route.

Frequently asked questions

This page provides general guidance only. Physician licensing requirements, fees and CME rules change frequently and vary by state. Always verify current requirements with the Georgia Composite Medical Board at medicalboard.georgia.gov before submitting your application. Last fact-checked: November 14, 2026.

Written by Medicallicensing Team · Reviewed by David Ivaniuk, CEO Medicallicensing · Last updated: November 14, 2026 · Last fact-checked: November 14, 2026

About the reviewer

David Ivaniuk is the CEO of Medicallicensing, a licensing services firm that has helped physicians, PAs, nurses, and other healthcare professionals navigate state licensing, DEA registration, and payer enrollment across all 50 U.S. states.

References

1. Georgia Composite Medical Board. Fee Schedule. Retrieved November 14, 2026. medicalboard.georgia.gov.
2. Georgia Composite Medical Board. Physician and Physician License Requirements. Retrieved November 14, 2026.
3. Georgia Composite Medical Board. Verify a Licensee. Retrieved November 14, 2026. medicalboard.georgia.gov.
4. Georgia Composite Medical Board. License Certification/Verification, All Professions. Retrieved November 14, 2026. medicalboard.georgia.gov.
5. Georgia Composite Medical Board. Interstate Medical Licensure Compact License. Retrieved November 14, 2026. medicalboard.georgia.gov.
6. Georgia Composite Medical Board. Active License Count, as of January 18, 2024. Retrieved November 14, 2026. medicalboard.georgia.gov.
7. Ga. Comp. R. and Regs. R. 360-15-.01. Retrieved November 14, 2026. Legal Information Institute.
8. Ga. Comp. R. and Regs. R. 360-16-.01. Retrieved November 14, 2026. Legal Information Institute.
9. Neighboring boards, fee pages. Retrieved November 14, 2026: South Carolina, Florida, Alabama.
10. Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission. Retrieved November 13, 2026. imlcc.com.
11. Federation of State Medical Boards. FCVS. Retrieved November 14, 2026. fsmb.org.