No government agency publishes what a crown, an implant or a set of braces costs. The American Dental Association’s fee survey is sold, and the largest free price table we found comes from a lender that finances dental work. So every cost page on The Tooth Bill shows its work in three layers: published estimates side by side, a build-up from the parts of the treatment, and your own share once a plan pays. This page sets out how each layer works and where its limits are.
General information about costs, not dental, medical, insurance, tax or financial advice. Your dentist decides what treatment suits you; your plan’s documents and a pre-treatment estimate decide what it pays.
The three layers
1. Published estimates, side by side
Each cost page opens with a small table of named, dated figures. For each one we give who published it and what kind of publisher it is, the figure and its unit (per tooth, per arch, per quarter of the mouth, per visit), the date it was published or read, what it measures, and one line on why it might lean. We label them “published estimates” and look for at least three named sources for each procedure; where we find fewer, the page says so plainly, and a lender’s figure is never the only price we give. We don’t use lead-generation, find-a-dentist or affiliate sites as sources. The kinds of source we use:
- A lender’s survey. CareCredit, a medical credit card issued by Synchrony Bank, publishes national averages from a survey of dental offices it commissions. It is the fullest free table we found. It comes from a company that sells financing for the same treatments, so we always say so in the sentence, and it never stands alone in a table or a calculator.
- An insurer’s estimate. Delta Dental, Humana, MetLife, Cigna and others publish cost pages. Some use their own claims data, some one city’s prices, some no stated source. An insurer sells plans, and out-of-network fees can make a plan look more valuable, so we name each as an insurer’s figure and say what area and data year it covers.
- A survey or a model. A trade journal’s survey of practices, or a cost guide from a company that sells software to dental offices. We say how each was made, if the publisher says, and how the publisher earns money.
- A government survey. The federal Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (AHRQ’s MEPS) records what was actually paid for dental visits by patients, insurers and public programs together. We tabulate its public files ourselves and label the figures “our tabulation of AHRQ’s MEPS 2023 data”. It counts visits, not whole treatments, and it is in 2023 dollars.
- A Medicaid fee schedule, as a floor. A state Medicaid fee schedule is the most that program pays a participating dentist for a procedure. It is not a market price, and we never put it inside a price range, but it shows how low a paid fee can go.
We never average these into one number, and we never judge whether a figure is fair or tell you what to pay. Figures that measure different things don’t make a truer figure when blended; they just hide what each one means. Where a source’s own figures disagree, we say so. Where one publisher copies another’s figure, we cite the original and count it once.
An example: a molar root canal
A root canal on a back molar is usually billed as D3330, and that fee does not include the crown that often follows. Code numbers are from the CDT Code, maintained by the American Dental Association; the descriptions here are our own.
| Publisher (type) | Figure | Date | What it measures | Why it might lean |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Dental (insurer) | about $1,500 | page 17 Jul 2026, 2025 data | average out-of-network charge, crown not included | sells plans; out-of-network fees run higher |
| CareCredit (lender) | $1,220 average ($833 to $2,171) | 11 Sep 2026, 2026 survey | national average from a survey it commissioned; crown extra | sells financing for this treatment |
| Humana (insurer) | $1,175 | updated 1 Jun 2026 | its pricing tool, Orlando, Florida only; final restoration not included | sells plans; one metro area |
| AHRQ MEPS (federal survey) | median $775, mean $976 per visit | 2023 data | paid from all sources for visits with a root canal, any tooth (our tabulation) | one visit, not always the whole treatment; 2023 dollars; small sample |
| Virginia Medicaid (state fee schedule) | $909.18 maximum fee | effective 1 Jul 2024 | most Virginia Medicaid pays a dentist for D3330 | a floor, not a market price |
None of these is wrong. They answer different questions: a dentist’s full out-of-network charge, a survey average, one city’s prices, what was actually paid by everyone together, and what one state’s Medicaid program pays. Holding your own quote against them, line by line, tells you more than any one of them alone.
2. What the price includes: a build-up
Many treatments are several procedures billed together or separately: an exam and X-rays, sometimes an extraction or a bone graft, then the treatment itself and what goes on top. So we list the parts, each with the code number it is usually billed under, its published range with sources and dates, and whether it is often billed apart. A single implant is a good example. The ranges below are the ones our implant cost estimator uses, each running from the lowest published low to the highest published high among the named sources (our arithmetic), never an average.
| Part (our words) | Code | Range | Named sources | Often billed apart? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full exam, new patient | D0150 | $65 to $165 | Pearl (May 2026); MetLife (insurer), $112 in one Philadelphia ZIP code (Apr 2026) | yes |
| Panoramic X-ray | D0330 | $100 to $343 | CareCredit (lender), MetLife (insurer) | yes |
| Implant post placed in the jaw | D6010 | $1,000 to $5,255 | Dental Economics (Feb 2026), CareCredit (lender), Pearl, MetLife (insurer) | sometimes quoted with the abutment and crown |
| Abutment, stock or custom | D6056 / D6057 | $500 to $1,300 | Dental Economics, MetLife (insurer) | often billed with the crown |
| Crown on the implant | D6058 / D6065 | $800 to $3,000 | MetLife (insurer), Guardian (insurer, second-hand) | yes, sometimes by a different dentist |
| One tooth, no extraction or graft | $2,465 to $10,063 | sum of the rows above (our arithmetic) |
For the exam, the abutment and the crown on the implant, only two published sources were found. That total is wider than any single published figure for a finished implant tooth, such as Delta Dental’s $2,800 to $5,600 (its 2022 data) or the Dental Economics survey’s median of $4,000, because it stacks each part’s lowest and highest figures. A simple or surgical extraction (D7140, D7210) and a bone graft in the socket (D7953) are often added and billed apart. The pages and the estimator name every source and date beside each line.
Anything no source states is labelled “our assumption”, with a sentence on how we got there, and you can change it in the calculator: how many teeth, which add-ons, how many visits, and, in the lifetime comparison of implants, bridges and dentures, how often something is replaced. Those intervals are assumptions for arithmetic, not a statement about how long any treatment lasts in your mouth.
3. Why figures differ, and your own share
We then explain what each source includes or leaves out: the crown or no crown, per tooth or per arch, region, in or out of network, sedation, lab fees, the exam and X-rays. That is usually where a large gap comes from. Then we work out what you might pay with a plan, using the same steps as our out-of-pocket calculator. Here it is with round, made-up numbers:
| Step | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Fee the plan allows | example figure | $1,000 |
| Deductible still to meet | example figure | $50 |
| Plan’s share for this service | 50% (example) × ($1,000 − $50) | $475 |
| Annual maximum left | example figure | $1,500, so no cap applies |
| You pay | $1,000 − $475 | $525 |
If only $300 of the annual maximum were left, the plan would pay $300 and you $700. A waiting period or a missing tooth clause can bring the plan’s share to zero, and a plan may pay only for a cheaper treatment that would also work. Out of network, a dentist may bill you the difference between the fee and what the plan allows. Real plans differ widely, so pages show their terms from named plan documents, and your plan’s pre-treatment estimate decides.
How we treat the age of a figure
Published figures come from different years. We never change a source’s number, but we say how much dental prices have moved since, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for dental services (series CUUR0000SEMC02). Dental prices were 6.0% higher in September 2026 than a year earlier. CareCredit’s older cost tables are dated October 2023; the index was 14.4% higher in October 2026 than in October 2023 (our arithmetic from the BLS figures, read 11 November 2026). For the national picture, CMS’s National Health Expenditure tables show that people paid $72.5 billion of the $189.2 billion spent on dental services in the US in 2024 out of their own pockets, 38.3% (NHE Table 12).
Code numbers
Treatment plans and explanation-of-benefits statements list procedures by a code number, such as D2740 for a porcelain or ceramic crown, so we put the number next to our own plain description wherever a page names a procedure. Code numbers are from the CDT Code, maintained by the American Dental Association, which owns it; the descriptions on our pages are our own. We never copy the ADA’s official descriptions, and we publish no code list, code table or code lookup. Every number we use is printed in a public source we read, such as a state Medicaid dental fee schedule or the federal employees’ dental plan brochures. We name the CDT version year only where that source names it. A number we could not confirm stays off the page. Using the numbers does not mean the ADA endorses our pages.
The cost register
Every shared figure, such as a published estimate, a component range, a Medicaid fee or a yearly limit, goes into one register before a page uses it, with its value, unit, source and link, the date we read it, what it measures and why it might lean. Each page also keeps a list of every figure it uses, and pages are compared with each other, so the implant figures on the implant pages and the estimator agree. We recheck any price older than 12 months, and the price tables once a year with the change in the dental price index. A page shows an updated date only when its content really changed.
What we don’t use, and why
- The ADA’s Survey of Dental Fees. It is sold, and we have not bought it. Pearl, a publisher we cite, says its figures draw on ADA fee survey data; we show those figures as Pearl’s, labelled with what it says about its method, never as the ADA’s.
- FAIR Health’s figures. Its consumer site’s terms bar copying its content for commercial use, so we don’t quote or tabulate its figures. We link to its dental cost lookup, where you can look up your own zip code.
- Lead-generation, find-a-dentist and affiliate sites. A site that earns from referring readers to dentists, insurers or lenders, or from affiliate commissions, has a reason to lean, so we don’t use it as a source, even where that leaves fewer figures for a procedure.
- A dental chain’s own prices. A chain’s figure is an advertisement for its own offices, so it is never a price source on our pages.
- Figures we couldn’t open or trace. Some cost pages refuse automated reads. A figure seen only in a search result, or one whose origin and meaning we can’t find, stays off the page or is called unconfirmed.
What an estimate can’t know
- Your area and your dental office. Most figures are national. Fees vary by state, city and office, and by whether a dentist or a specialist does the work.
- Your treatment. What you need is your dentist’s decision, made after an exam. The number of teeth, the materials, imaging, sedation and lab work all change the fee, and some needs only show once work starts.
- Your plan. In-network fees are set by contract, and plans differ in deductibles, coinsurance, maximums, waiting periods and exclusions. Only your plan’s documents and its pre-treatment estimate tell you what it pays.
- Your credit terms. A payment plan’s real cost depends on your own agreement: the rate, the promotion’s end date and whether interest is deferred.
So our numbers are estimates, not quotes, and never a verdict on whether a dentist’s fee is right. Use them to ask better questions: ask the office for a written treatment plan with each procedure and its code number, what the fee includes and what is billed apart, and ask your plan for a pre-treatment estimate. Every source we use is listed on sources we use, and our how we check page covers rules and coverage. If a figure looks wrong, please tell us.
Sources on this page checked on 11 November 2026.