What does a private dentist cost?

The figures below are the prices dental practices are currently publishing on Quokka, read from their own booking systems.

The short answer

Appointment	Practices	Cheaper quarter	Typical	Dearer quarter
Check-up / examination	671	£45	£60	£79
Hygienist / scale and polish	538	£78	£95	£125
Emergency appointment	523	£60	£79	£96
Implant consultation	237	£50	£75	£110

Measured 26 August 2026. "Typical" is the median: half cost less, half cost more.

The appointment is not the bill

This is the thing worth understanding before booking. A check-up is a diagnostic appointment: it tells you what, if anything, needs doing. The treatment is priced separately and is usually the larger number: a filling, a crown, a root canal or an extraction each carry their own fee, and what you need cannot honestly be quoted before someone has looked.

So a £60 check-up is not a £60 visit to the dentist if you have a problem. It is £60 to find out.

A reasonable practice will give you a written treatment plan with prices before doing anything beyond the examination. Ask for one. If a price is quoted verbally at the chair, ask for it in writing before you agree.

Private or NHS?

NHS dentistry in England is priced in three fixed bands regardless of how much work is in the band, which is often cheaper than private treatment for anything substantial. The catch is availability: many practices are not taking new NHS patients, and waits can be long.

The honest summary is that the choice is usually made for you by what you can get. If you can register with an NHS dentist and are not in a hurry, that is normally the cheaper route. Private practices are typically what people use when they cannot, when they want a specific dentist, or when they want something the NHS does not cover: whitening, orthodontics for adults, implants and most cosmetic work are private-only.

Emergency care is the case where the difference bites hardest, which is why that row is in the table above: a private emergency appointment is usually available within a day or two.

Whitening, and why that price range is so wide

Whitening shows a typical price of £65 but a top quarter starting at £299, and that is not noise: it reflects genuinely different things sharing a name. The low end is usually a top-up, a consultation or a single-arch treatment; the high end is a full supervised course with custom trays. Read what the listing actually describes rather than comparing headline numbers.

Anything advertised as tooth whitening must be carried out by a registered dental professional. It is illegal in the UK for a beauty salon to perform it.

Hygienist appointments

At a typical £95, hygienist appointments often cost more than the check-up itself, which surprises people. They are also the appointment most often bought as a course: every three or six months: so it is worth asking what interval is actually being recommended for you and why.

You can see a dental hygienist directly in the UK without a dentist's referral.

Where these figures come from

Prices are read automatically from each practice's own booking system and refreshed regularly. The table groups appointments by what the practice calls them, priced between £10 and £5,000, at practices whose listings were live on the date shown. Grouping by name is imperfect: practices name things differently, so treat these as the shape of the market rather than a quote.

Always check the price on the practice's own listing before booking. Browse dentists.