Aims: We evaluated physicians’ willingness to trade-off benefits, risks and time to infusion for CAR T-cell therapy for relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Materials & methods: In a discrete-choice experiment survey, 150 US oncologists/hematologists chose between two hypothetical CAR T-cell treatments defined by six attributes. Results: Decreasing time to infusion from 113 to 16 days yielded the greatest change in preference weight (1.91). Physicians were willing to accept a >20% increase in risk of severe cytokine release syndrome and 15% increase in risk of severe neurological events in exchange for an increase in the probability of overall survival at 24 months from 40 to 55%. Conclusion: Physicians value reducing time to infusion and will accept incremental increases in serious adverse event risks to gain survival improvements.