Nurse Practitioner Salary in Maine 2026,
$130,260 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Maine figure is $130,260 a year, or $62.62 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $107,820 at the 10th percentile to $166,740 at the 90th. That is 1.5% below the national median of $132,300. Maine employs 1,650 nurse practitioners at a location quotient of 1.24 — above the national employment rate for the occupation.

Lewiston-Auburn, at $135,630, ahead of Bangor $131,460 and Portland-South Portland $130,240. Portland paying least is the useful signal: the state's largest metro has the deepest clinician supply and the least need to bid, while Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor compete for a much smaller local pool.

Yes, but it is earned rather than automatic. The Maine State Board of Nursing requires a defined period of supervised clinical practice — 24 months — after initial APRN licensure, and once that is complete the nurse practitioner may practise and prescribe independently without a physician agreement. Maine is also a Nurse Licensure Compact state at the registered-nurse level, which simplifies the underlying RN licence for practitioners moving in from another compact state.

It shapes where a new NP can work and what they can be paid. During the supervised period a post has to be structured around an available supervising provider, which rules out the rural independent practice that sits at the top of the Maine band — and that constraint is much of the reason the $107,820 tenth percentile sits so far below the $130,260 median. After 24 months the constraint disappears entirely, and the practitioner can hold a panel outright.

Maine's tax is progressive to 7.15%, so an NP at the $130,260 median is in the upper brackets and additional income — moving to a specialty at the $141,440 seventy-fifth percentile, or taking a rural independent post toward the $166,740 top decile — is taxed at a higher marginal rate than the base. Among peer states publishing nearly identical medians, including Illinois at $130,680 and Pennsylvania at $130,140, Maine's tax position is at the heavier end.

Because Portland-South Portland is where the clinicians already are. It is the state's largest health-care market, it attracts practitioners from across northern New England, and it has training pipelines feeding it — so a post there rarely goes unfilled and the wage clears at $130,240, essentially the state median. Lewiston-Auburn at $135,630 and Bangor at $131,460 draw on smaller local pools with fewer substitutes, and both have to pay above the Portland rate to fill the same job.

It aggregates population focuses that pay very differently and career stages that are structurally different in this state. Psychiatric-mental health and acute care NPs sit well above family practice, and the $141,440 seventy-fifth percentile is largely those specialties rather than a senior version of a primary-care post. Separately, Maine's 24-month supervised practice requirement means the bottom of the band contains practitioners who are legally unable to hold the independent posts that pay most — a constraint that resolves with time rather than with performance.

Independence first, then specialty. Completing the 24-month supervised period unlocks the rural and independent practice posts that carry the top of the band to $166,740, and there is no substitute for it. Within specialty, psychiatric-mental health is the clearest premium in this state, followed by acute, emergency and hospital-based practice — collectively most of the distance from the $130,260 median to the $141,440 seventy-fifth percentile. Geography contributes a few points at most.