How much does private dental treatment cost in 2026?

The table below shows the typical cost of nine everyday private dental treatments based on our research carried out in August 2026. They are not everything a dentist does - specialist procedures such as implants, braces and dentures all cost considerably more, and we'll cover each in separate guides.

The prices above often represent the simplest and therefore least expensive versions of these treatments such as the root canal being for a front tooth, and the fillings being for a single surface. Both cost more for teeth further back or require more surfaces filled.

More complex dental treatments cost much more

Dentures, bridges and implants all sit well above everyday dentistry in price, and each deserves a comparison of its own.

• A partial denture typically costs £690 at the practices we sampled.
• A conventional bridge typically costs £750 per unit and a typical bridge is three units, so budget around £2,250.
• A single dental implant typically costs £2,500.

Practices differ far more on price on these than they do on a check-up, so getting several quotes is worth more here than anywhere else.

Emergency private dental appointments vary significantly in price

When you're in pain, you'd be forgiven for spending less time shopping around - but that's precisely when you should. Our research shows that within five miles, the dearest emergency appointment is typically four times the cheapest, and in over 90% of cases it's at least double the price. In Glasgow, for example, emergency appointments range from £41 to £295 within five miles - the same short drive, very different prices.

What you often can't see is what emergency treatment will cost - and for most practices we haven’t been able to find it either. Our research team was only able to find the price of emergency treatment at 1 in 12 of the practices we looked at (714 of 8,755).

One of the biggest challenges when comparing private dentists is that there is no standard terminology for the treatment names. It means the name on a price list often won't match those used by other clinics nearby.

The names we've used in the above pricing table, and those on the left of the table below, are the most common, and alongside them, we've included some frequently used alternatives too.

Bear in mind this is only the most common name for nine treatments, but even then, our research shows that regardless of where you live in the UK, around four in five of your local practices will use a different name for each of them.

The picture only becomes more complicated when you consider that most dental practices publish considerably more than nine prices.

Some of the weird and wonderful names our research found

We have to say that dentists can't be accused of lacking creativity when it comes to what they name their treatments. Here are just a few of very many less commonly used names:

• Prestige Clean
• The Full MOT
• Emergency Comfort Appointment
• Happy Gas
• "Sparkle" Hygiene Therapy
• Jet wash sparkle Polish and Clean
• Standard tooth-coloured fillings - 5 star

"Happy Gas", which looks like the fun way of saying "inhalation sedation", is listed by no fewer than 14 clinics we gathered prices from. Perhaps more concerningly, three of those use that naming specifically for children!

While some of the above are amusing, the point is that all of the naming oddities make it harder to compare dental treatments and their prices between clinics.

Where you live in the UK does affect how much you pay for private dental treatment, but less than you might think. Our research found that the region you live in accounts for only 6% of price variation, and even narrowing down to your local authority explains just 15% of it.

Where dental pricing truly varies is locally, with about four-fifths of the variation coming down to which practice you choose in your own area. For example, a routine examination for an existing patient is typically £59 in Manchester and £54 in Leicester, yet, within a five-mile radius in both of those cities, you could pay as much as £94 and £82 respectively.

So while yes there is a difference across the UK, and there are certainly more expensive regions as we will go on to show next, the variation is often smaller than that found between two practices on the same street.

The South West is the most expensive region for private dentistry

Our research and results prove that, contrary to the assumption that London and the South East are the most expensive places for private dentistry, it’s actually the South West.

Across the 68 dental treatments we looked at, the South West costs more than the UK typical price on 52 of them, and is the dearest region in the country for 26.

The South West is also the region where people are pushed into paying privately most often: 38.7% of those who had been to a private dental appointment went because no NHS appointment was available - the highest share in England, and double London's 19.4%. That is ONS survey data averaged across three years of survey waves, and the South West comes top in every one of them. In June 2026, just 35.2% of adults there had an NHS dentist - the lowest of any English region.

Why prices are higher in the South West we can't say for certain, though where an NHS place is hard to find, private practices face less pressure from a cheaper alternative. What we can rule out though is a rural and urban split, as we found the higher prices are consistent across almost all of the region.

NHS dental charges in England are fixed at three bands, so an NHS patient pays the same figure wherever they are treated. That makes the NHS much the cheaper route, where you can get on it.

A private routine examination typically costs £61 against £27.90 for NHS Band 1, and a private crown typically costs £750 against £332.10 for NHS Band 3.

However, that comparison flatters the private price. An NHS band charge covers a whole course of treatment rather than each item, so several treatments in the same band are billed as one, and more treatment within two months in the same or a lower band costs nothing more. Privately, each treatment is charged separately.

Some people pay nothing for NHS dental treatment. Check whether you qualify:

• England
• Scotland
• Wales
• Northern Ireland

Qualifying for free dental treatment is one thing. Finding an NHS dentist taking new patients is another.

Going private is a choice for most of the people who do it, and a fallback for a sizeable minority. In June 2026, 48.9% of adults in England had an NHS dentist, 36.2% had a private one and 14.7% had no dentist at all. Among those who had been to a private appointment in the previous month, 60.5% chose private care, while 27.3% went private because no NHS appointment was available.

Getting seen as a new patient is the hard part. NHS England's patient survey analysis for early 2025 found returning patients got an appointment 86% of the time, against 36% for new patients. ONS data from June 2026 agrees: of adults with no dentist who tried for an NHS appointment that month, 82% failed.

Yes, private dental prices in the UK have risen in recent years, and unevenly. The price practices advertise to win a new patient has not moved between 2024 and 2026, but the treatments that happen once you are through the door rose by between 8% and 11%. We only have historical data for six treatments, so we can’t say whether prices for others have risen more or less.

Our past research only covered the above six treatments, so we can’t say or show how prices have changed for other treatments such as crowns, implants or amalgam fillings.

Yes, dental chains typically charge more than independent practices, especially for more expensive treatments.

For example, a crown at a chain typically costs about £250 more than the cheapest independent within five miles (and around £80 more than the typical price nearby). There are exceptions, however, and we didn’t find a conclusive link between the size of the group of practices and the price they charge.

What we found was that dental practices that are part of a chain usually charge roughly the same for a new patient examination or a hygiene visit, but on more complex treatments and emergencies, they carry a premium.

To see how chains and nearby independents typically compare, here is what one person might pay over five years with varying levels of treatment.

Bear in mind, the above is still for relatively common dental treatments. If you require more complex work or additional treatments, the price difference will likely be much higher.

The questions below will play the bigger role in what you pay at a private dental practice, and most can be answered with a phone call or a visit to a website.

Which dental prices should I actually compare?

Comparing the cost of treatments rather than examinations should help you see whether a practice will be affordable longer term. A good way to do this is to pick a few treatments you could see yourself needing in the next few years and tot them up for the practices you're comparing. As the UK-wide differences below show, the more complex a treatment is, the higher the potential saving.

When you sign up to a new dentist you are choosing a practice, not a single treatment - most people stay with the same clinic for years. Changing when you need a crown or a root canal usually means paying for a new examination and X-rays somewhere else, so in practice most people simply pay what their own practice charges.

That is why the expensive prices are the ones to look at and ask about before you register, not after. A practice can look perfectly reasonable on routine treatments and still be well above the going rate on the work you need later.

Do I have to see a hygienist on a regular basis?

How often you need to see a hygienist is often a clinical recommendation based on your oral health and your dentist's examinations. If you feel the frequency of hygiene appointments is more than you need, raise it with your dentist.

A clean that is clinically necessary is treated differently from one offered as maintenance, and that can decide whether it falls under an NHS band charge or lands on a private bill at around £84 a time.

Over four years of twice-yearly visits that is roughly £672, which makes it the single biggest recurring item in routine dental care - a reasonable question to put to your dentist rather than something to accept as a fixture.

Is it worth travelling further for dental treatment?

In UK cities, yes, it's often worth travelling a bit further for dental treatment, because central practices tend to be the dearest ones. Around Manchester city centre, the typical white filling is £228 within one mile, £165 within five miles and £162 within ten - and over that same distance the number of practices publishing a price rises from 19 to 236. You get a lower typical price and more to choose from at once, and every large city we looked at follows the same trend.

That said, going further for treatment doesn’t always hold true, especially if you live rurally as you’ll only have a handful of practices within a reasonable distance.

Whether you should or shouldn’t change to another nearby local private dentist usually comes down to a couple of numbers: the cost of a new examination, typically around £79, and the saving on the treatment that you need. The difference between what your existing dentist has quoted and what a local competitor charges has to beat both to make it worthwhile - and arguably a bit more, to allow for the hassle.

Switching tends to only make sense when treatment costs more than about £500

Generally speaking, our research shows that after you account for the new patient examination fee at a different dental practice, you only stand to save money if the treatment you need costs more than about £500.

Above £500 the saving might be larger; below it, you may be lucky to save anything at all

How much you’ll save very much depends on where you live, as cities tend to have lots of practices in a small area, whereas rurally you likely have a handful of options within a reasonable drive. It also depends on what your current dental practice charges, it may be that you’re already at one of the least expensive in your area, but it’s always worth checking, especially if the treatment is over £500 just to make sure.

These figures come from myTribe's August 2026 private dental price research, and throughout we report what a typical practice charges rather than a single headline average.

• We gathered 233,719 advertised prices from 8,755 UK dental practices across 68 treatments - the great majority of practices that publish prices online. Prices given only in the chair aren't included, and we make no claim about all UK dentists.
• Each figure is a median of per-clinic medians - we take each practice's own middle price first, so a long price list can't outweigh a short one - and "most practices charge" is the middle half of prices, the 25th to 75th percentile.
• For this article we use private fees only, exclude membership-plan prices, and hold each treatment to a consistent definition, such as a single-surface filling or a front-tooth root canal.
• Whenever we talk about shopping around, each practice is measured against others pricing the same treatment within five miles.
• Our 2024-to-2026 figures track the same practices in both years, about 22 months apart.
• The practices we sampled don't track the UK population evenly - London (+38%) and the South East (+21%) are over-represented, which mirrors where dental practices cluster. Re-weighting the figures by regional population made no difference to the medians: a £0 shift on every headline price.
• Every figure on this page has been reproduced and independently cross-checked against the source data more than once, and we never single out an individual practice as cheap or expensive.

These prices are a guide to what you might pay, and are useful to show trends, but they won't reflect what you pay as that will depend on the tooth, materials and your clinical needs, which only your dentist can assess. Where a figure comes from an outside source such as the NHS, we say so.

Why these figures differ from our earlier research

We published dental price research in January 2025 based on 495 practices across the UK. Those figures were later cited by the Competition and Markets Authority when it opened its market study into private dentistry in March 2026.

This round is not an update of that work. It is a different piece of research: 8,755 practices rather than 495, 68 treatments rather than six, and 233,719 individual prices. The earlier study sampled cities; this one covers the market. So the two sets of figures are not directly comparable, and we do not present them as a before and after. Where we report a change since 2024, it comes from a separate tracking series built to match how 2024 price lists were collected, not from the difference between our old and new headline prices - which is why we don't include the 2024 pricing here, and instead share a percentage change.

The prices on this page are what UK dental practices publish online. They are a guide to what you might pay, not a quote. The cost of treatment depends on your own clinical needs, which only your dentist can assess. Ask your practice for a written treatment plan and price before agreeing to any work.