How we collect prices

Every price on DentalCosts comes from the practice's own published price list or from the practice itself, and shows the date we checked it.

Where prices come from

• On the practice's website: we read the practice's own fee page and record the treatment, the price and what it includes, with a link to the page.
• Confirmed by the practice: the practice has given or corrected the price itself.

Making prices comparable

Each treatment has one unit, so prices compare like for like. A dental implant price must include the implant, the abutment and the crown; if a practice lists them separately we add them up and say so. Whitening is split into home kits and in-chair treatment. A "from" price is shown as "from".

Keeping prices current

• We check fee pages every month and record any change.
• A price we have not checked for 6 months is hidden.
• A price a practice disputes is hidden while we check it.

The middle price

The middle price (the median) is the price in the middle when every practice's lowest price for that treatment is put in order. Half of practices charge less and half charge more. We show it with the full range and the number of practices.

Practice details

Names, addresses, phone numbers and CQC details come from the Care Quality Commission, under the Open Government Licence. NHS charges come from nhs.uk.

How we visit websites

Our crawler identifies itself as DentalCostsBot, follows each site's robots.txt, reads one page at a time and records facts only. We never copy text or images. A practice can ask us to stop at any time through the corrections page.