Principal Dental Insurance: What It Covers and What It Leaves You With (2026)

What a Principal plan leaves you to pay

Principal publishes percentages, not dollars. The calculator applies those published percentages to the fees we measure in your own state, then shows the moment the annual maximum runs out — which is where a dental plan stops being a percentage question and becomes a cap question.

Two different products share the Principal name

Searching "Principal dental insurance" returns two products that work nothing alike, and they are easy to confuse.

Principal dental insurance is group insurance, underwritten by Principal Life Insurance Company (Des Moines, IA) and sold through an employer's benefits program — Principal's own wording is "if your company offers this product in its benefits program". It covers the employee, a spouse and dependents up to age 26. On the broker-facing side, Principal states the minimum case sizes: 2 enrolled employees for an employer-paid plan, 5 eligible employees for a voluntary plan, and 100 enrolled employees for a self-funded plan (minimum 25 in Massachusetts).

The Principal Dental Access Plan is a discount plan, not insurance: $8 a month for an individual, $10 a month for a family, in exchange for 15% to 60% off standard practice rates at more than 100,000 dental locations. Nothing is insured, nothing is claimed, and there is no annual maximum because there is no payout. It is also finished: the product page states the plan terminates on December 31, 2026 and that new enrollments are no longer being accepted.

So if you do not have a Principal plan through work today, there is no Principal dental product you can enrol in on your own. Everything below concerns the employer plan.

What Principal dental insurance typically covers

Principal describes a typical benefit shape and tells you, in the same breath, to check your own policy. Both halves of that matter:

Four "oral health programs" are described as part of the coverage: a periodontal program, a cancer treatment oral health program, a second opinion program and a general anesthesia program.

The last row of that table is the one to read twice. "May not be covered" is not an exclusion and not a benefit; it is Principal telling you the answer lives in your plan document. The calculator above therefore holds implants, braces and cosmetic work at 0% and says so, rather than quietly crediting you with a benefit you may not have.

The annual maximum is the number that matters

Principal publishes one dollar figure for the insurance: "coverage maximums typically range from $1,000 to $2,000 per year". On preventive care that ceiling is irrelevant. On a single major procedure it usually is too. On a real treatment plan it becomes the whole story.

Below: three treatment plans priced at our national average fees, run at the 50% major share, at both ends of Principal's published maximum range. Crowns and dentures are in the major class Principal names (crowns, bridges, dentures). Principal's page does not say where a root canal falls, so we run it at the major share too; at the 80% basic share the plan would pay more.

Read the first row against the last. A single $1,369 crown is a coinsurance problem: the plan pays $685 and you pay $685, and the cap never enters the calculation. Add a root canal and a full denture case and the arithmetic inverts — $4,422 of work is eligible for $2,211 of benefit, but a $1,000 plan stops at $1,000 and leaves you $3,422. The same plan with a $2,000 maximum leaves $2,422. That $1,000 difference is the entire value of knowing which end of Principal's published range your employer bought.

There is one lever, and it is in the calculator: the maximum refreshes every benefit year. Taking the crown and root canal this year ($1,000 paid, at the cap) and the dentures next year ($977 paid) draws $1,977 from the plan instead of $1,000 — $977 more, for identical treatment, purely because it crossed a plan year. That is a conversation for your dentist, not a rule: deferring care is only an option when deferring is clinically acceptable.

Waiting periods, deductibles and what the Principal pages do not say

One sentence is published on waiting periods: "No waiting period for coverage when purchased during your employer's annual benefits enrollment." That is a real advantage over individual dental policies, which often carry a waiting period on major work — but it is conditioned on enrolling during the annual window, and the pages we read say nothing about enrolling outside it.

On deductibles, the broker page says only that "deductibles are waived when satisfied with prior carrier" — useful if your employer is switching carriers mid-year, and silent on what the deductible is in the first place.

So, plainly: the Principal pages we read publish no premium, deductible or annual-maximum schedule for its group dental plans; your employer's plan document is the source. We found no monthly premium for Principal dental insurance on any of them. That is also why this page has no premium calculator and no "starting at" figure: we will not invent one, and the four numbers you need — premium, deductible, your actual annual maximum, and your actual coinsurance per class — are all in the benefit summary your HR team can email you today.

The Principal dental network

Principal publishes two network counts on two of its own pages: 136,000+ dentists nationwide, in 50 states on the individuals page, and 135,000+ dentists on the page written for financial professionals. We report both rather than picking one — the gap is small, both are Principal's own, and neither page explains the difference. The network is described as usable in the USA or Mexico, as Principal's page puts it.

You can confirm whether your dentist participates before enrolling, on Principal's own directory: principal.com find a dentist. Do that first. Network status matters because, in Principal's words, in-network fees are "pre-established with Principal": the coinsurance then applies to that negotiated fee rather than to the cash price our calculator uses.

Principal dental insurance reviews: what the public signals say

The honest summary is that there is very little public signal, and what exists is small and negative.

BestCompany publishes an overall score of 2.0 out of 5 for Principal, and a user rating of 1.1 out of 5 across 20 reviews, with 90% of those at one star (consulted September 17, 2026). Twenty self-selected reviews is a small sample for a carrier operating in 50 states, so this is a signal to investigate, not a verdict. A Trustpilot profile for principal.com and Reddit threads about Principal dental also surface on these queries; we publish no figure from either, because we could not verify their contents directly.

What we will not do is convert that into a rating of our own. How a group dental plan feels in practice depends heavily on the plan your employer bought — the maximum, the coinsurance, the network fit — and those vary employer by employer under the same carrier name.

If your employer does not offer Principal

Principal is not a route you can take on your own, so the practical question is what is. Start with how dental insurance actually works — the coinsurance tiers, caps and waiting periods are the same vocabulary across every carrier. If you are shopping as an individual, Ameritas and Physicians Mutual both publish individual plan grids and premiums, which the Principal pages we read do not. If you expect major work soon and cannot wait out a waiting period, dental savings plans work like the discontinued Dental Access Plan: a discount on the fee, with no annual maximum and no claim. And if you are the employer in this story, small business dental insurance covers what group coverage costs and what the minimum participation rules mean in practice.

Methodology and limits

Every Principal figure on this page comes from a page Principal publishes, listed below with the date we read it. Nothing about Principal's premiums, deductibles or waiting-period schedules appears here, because the Principal pages we read do not give them for this product.

Procedure fees are the US Dental Cost Index national averages used across this site, computed as the mean of our 51 market observations, not a Principal fee schedule. The out-of-pocket figures are an illustration under the percentages Principal publishes: they assume every listed procedure falls in the major class, that the full fee is allowed, and that no deductible applies — three assumptions your plan document can overturn. An in-network negotiated fee is normally below the cash price we publish, so these figures are a ceiling on what the same benefit would leave you, not a quote.

Three limits, stated plainly. We cannot tell you what your plan pays, because Principal publishes a "typical" shape and nothing binding. We cannot tell you what it costs, because we found no premium for the group product on the pages we read. And the review signal is too thin to rate: 20 reviews on one platform is not a market verdict.

Frequently asked questions

This page is pricing and market research, NOT insurance, medical or financial advice. Real Dental Costs is not affiliated with, endorsed by or compensated by Principal Financial Group or Principal Life Insurance Company, and sells no insurance. Benefit terms change; your employer's plan document and Principal are the only authorities on your own coverage.

Keep reading

• Dental insurance: how coverage really works — caps, coinsurance and waiting periods across carriers.
• Ameritas dental insurance — an individual line with published premiums and tiers.
• Physicians Mutual dental insurance — published tiers, benefit schedule and waiting period.
• Dental savings plans — the discount model the Dental Access Plan used, from providers still enrolling.
• Small business dental insurance — if you are the employer deciding whether to offer a plan.