Dental Procedure Cost List (2026)

The full dental cost list — filter, sort and localise

Pick a category or type a procedure name to filter the list, click any column heading to sort by low, average or high price, switch the Location menu to your state, and use the payment toggle to see cash list prices, your estimated out-of-pocket with typical PPO insurance, or the discount from a dental savings plan. Every view has its own shareable link.

Unlike a printed price sheet, this list recalculates: most cost pages bury one procedure on its own page and quote a single cash number, so you can never weigh a filling against a crown, or see what insurance actually leaves you to pay. Here all twelve procedure families sit on one screen, in your state, under the payment method you actually use.

How to read this dental cost list

Every procedure shows three numbers, and the spread between them matters more than the headline average:

• Low — the price at an efficient general practice, for the simplest version of the procedure (a single-surface filling, an incisor root canal, a metal crown).
• Average — the typical national figure, the mean of all 51 states plus the District of Columbia in our open index.
• High — what a complex case, a premium material or a specialist in a high-cost metro can reach.

The Location menu rescales the whole list to a single state. Implant, veneer and braces figures are observed state averages; the other procedures scale the national range by each state's composite Cost Index, so a state with an index of 116 (California) sits about 16% above the national baseline and a state at 76 (Alabama) sits well below it.

Dental costs by category

Procedures fall into the same families your dental plan uses to decide what it pays. The chart below puts the national averages on one shared dollar scale so you can see how the categories compare at a glance.

• Preventive — exams, cleanings and X-rays, averaging about $185. The cheapest category and the one insurance covers most fully.
• Basic — fillings ($206), deep cleaning ($220 per quadrant) and extractions ($273). Everyday restorative work.
• Major — root canals ($1,002), crowns ($1,185) and dentures ($2,734). The procedures where the annual maximum starts to bite.
• Cosmetic — whitening ($592) and veneers ($1,127 per tooth). Elective, and almost never covered.
• Orthodontic — full braces average $3,606, often with a separate lifetime orthodontic maximum.
• Implants and full-arch — a single implant averages $4,507 and All-on-4 about $13,828 per arch, usually excluded from standard coverage.

How insurance changes what you actually pay

The sticker price is only half the story. A typical PPO sorts every procedure into a tier and pays a very different share of each:

Two catches make the percentages misleading on their own. First, almost every plan caps total annual benefits at roughly $1,000 to $1,500, so once you hit the maximum you pay the rest in full — which is exactly when major work happens. Second, many plans impose waiting periods of six to twelve months before they cover major procedures at all. Switch the table to the insurance view to see your estimated out-of-pocket after the tier and the annual cap are applied.

Why dental prices vary so much

Every range in the list is wide for the same three reasons, which is why an itemized written quote beats any headline number:

1. Material and complexity — a metal crown sits at the low end and ceramic at the high end; a molar root canal costs more than an incisor; a surgical extraction costs several times a simple one.
2. Provider type — endodontists, periodontists, prosthodontists and oral surgeons charge more than a general dentist, which often pays off on complex cases.
3. Location — in our open index the priciest states run roughly 50% higher than the cheapest for the identical procedure, and major metros add another premium on top.

How to lower your dental costs

• Use pre-tax dollars from an HSA or FSA to effectively discount every procedure by your marginal tax rate.
• Consider a dental savings plan — the savings view in the table models the typical 20-40% network discount, with no annual maximum and no waiting period.
• Check dental schools and community clinics, where supervised care runs well below private-practice fees.
• Ask about payment plans — many offices offer in-house financing or third-party plans for balances spread over months.
• Stage major treatment across two calendar years to use two annual maximums instead of one.

The data behind this list

This list is not scraped from a single brand's price sheet. It is built on the open US Dental Cost Index, our own dataset of low, average and high prices across all 51 states plus DC, published under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence with the persistent identifier DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20531729. The full state-by-state file is free to download as CSV and cite, and the page carries Dataset structured data so the figures are machine-readable. See the methodology for how the index is built and updated.

Frequently asked questions

Open a procedure cost guide

Disclaimer: Real Dental Costs is an independent pricing and market-research project. The figures on this page are cost estimates for budgeting, not a benefits quote or medical advice. Confirm any treatment and price with an itemized written estimate from a licensed dentist.