Where you live in London can change the price of dental treatment by hundreds of pounds, even for an identical procedure. To find out by how much, we analysed the published price lists of 1,305 dental practices across the capital, taken directly from each practice’s own website, and ranked every borough by cost.
The headline: private dental care in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea costs around 24% more than the London average, while Newham comes in 22% below it. On a single course of Invisalign, that gap is worth more than £1,500.
A note on the numbers before we start: these are advertised “from” prices, the starting figures practices publish, rather than the final all-in cost of a course of treatment, which is usually higher and depends on your individual case. They are most useful as a like-for-like comparison between areas, which is exactly what this study is.
Key findings
- Central London is the most expensive place to see a private dentist. Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea top the index at 24% above the London average, followed by the City of London at 20% above.
- Newham is comfortably the cheapest borough, at 22% below average, with Hillingdon, Tower Hamlets, Bexley, Ealing and Redbridge all 8-9% below.
- The same treatment can cost roughly double depending on the borough. A root canal starts at £319 in Redbridge but £625 in Kensington and Chelsea; a private check-up is £30 in Newham and £120 in Westminster.
- The biggest savings are on big-ticket treatments. Shopping by borough could save up to £1,505 on Invisalign, £1,250 on a single dental implant, and £519 on dentures.
The London Dental Cost Index
Each borough is scored against the London average (set at 100) across ten common treatments. A score of 110 means treatment there is typically 10% more expensive than the London norm; 90 means 10% cheaper.
| Rank | Borough | Cost index (London = 100) | vs London average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Westminster | 124 | +24% |
| 2 | Kensington and Chelsea | 124 | +24% |
| 3 | City of London | 120 | +20% |
| 4 | Waltham Forest | 111 | +11% |
| 5 | Greenwich | 107 | +7% |
| 6 | Southwark | 106 | +6% |
| 7 | Sutton | 105 | +5% |
| 8 | Hackney | 104 | +4% |
| 9 | Camden | 104 | +4% |
| 10 | Havering | 103 | +3% |
| 11 | Harrow | 103 | +3% |
| 12 | Richmond upon Thames | 103 | +3% |
| 13 | Croydon | 102 | +2% |
| 14 | Hammersmith and Fulham | 102 | +2% |
| 15 | Haringey | 101 | +1% |
| 16 | Kingston upon Thames | 101 | +1% |
| 17 | Islington | 101 | +1% |
| 18 | Bromley | 101 | +1% |
| 19 | Lambeth | 100 | average |
| 20 | Enfield | 99 | -1% |
| 21 | Merton | 98 | -2% |
| 22 | Lewisham | 97 | -3% |
| 23 | Hounslow | 97 | -3% |
| 24 | Wandsworth | 97 | -3% |
| 25 | Barnet | 97 | -3% |
| 26 | Brent | 95 | -5% |
| 27 | Redbridge | 92 | -8% |
| 28 | Bexley | 92 | -8% |
| 29 | Ealing | 92 | -8% |
| 30 | Tower Hamlets | 92 | -8% |
| 31 | Hillingdon | 91 | -9% |
| 32 | Newham | 78 | -22% |
What dental treatment typically costs in London
Across the whole city, these are the typical advertised starting prices and the range most practices fall within (the middle half of all published prices).
| Treatment | Typical price | Typical range | Practices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single dental implant | £2,100 | £1,728-£2,800 | 300 |
| Invisalign | £2,500 | £1,890-£3,250 | 756 |
| Teeth whitening | £375 | £300-£450 | 947 |
| Veneers (per tooth) | £330 | £220-£650 | 949 |
| Root canal | £400 | £299-£600 | 741 |
| Dentures (from) | £600 | £350-£844 | 804 |
| Tooth extraction | £280 | £191-£380 | 674 |
| Gum treatment | £150 | £110-£198 | 545 |
| Hygienist (scale & polish) | £75 | £65-£95 | 883 |
| Private check-up | £75 | £49-£125 | 1149 |
NHS treatment, where you can get it, is charged at three fixed national band rates rather than these private prices, so it costs the same in every borough. Our NHS dentist in London guide explains what each band covers and the current charges.
Same treatment, very different price
The borough you walk into matters most on expensive treatments, where a percentage difference is a lot of money. Here is the cheapest and dearest borough for each treatment, among boroughs with enough published prices to compare fairly.
| Treatment | Cheapest borough | Dearest borough | You could save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single dental implant | Barnet (£1,750) | Bexley (£3,000) | £1,250 |
| Invisalign | Newham (£1,995) | Sutton (£3,500) | £1,505 |
| Teeth whitening | Newham (£275) | Kensington and Chelsea (£450) | £175 |
| Veneers (per tooth) | Harrow (£250) | Waltham Forest (£500) | £250 |
| Root canal | Redbridge (£319) | Kensington and Chelsea (£625) | £306 |
| Dentures (from) | Bexley (£306) | Sutton (£825) | £519 |
| Tooth extraction | Newham (£140) | Westminster (£400) | £260 |
| Gum treatment | Brent (£100) | Kensington and Chelsea (£217) | £117 |
| Hygienist (scale & polish) | Harrow (£65) | City of London (£120) | £55 |
| Private check-up | Newham (£30) | Westminster (£120) | £90 |
A patient in Sutton paying the local going rate for Invisalign would pay £3,500; the same shopper in Newham would start at £1,995. For an implant, the spread runs from £1,750 in Barnet to £3,000 in Bexley. None of this means the cheaper practice is worse, it simply reflects how much local rents, positioning and patient mix shape what practices charge.
Central versus outer London
The pattern is clear and consistent: the three central boroughs (Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and the City of London) are the most expensive, and the cheapest boroughs sit out east and west, led by Newham, Hillingdon, Tower Hamlets, Bexley and Redbridge. A Westminster practice charges, on average, about a third more than a Newham one for the same work.
For Londoners near a borough boundary, that is a real, actionable saving: it can be worth travelling one borough over for a planned, higher-cost treatment like implants, Invisalign or dentures, while keeping routine check-ups local.
How we did it
This study uses published “from” prices collected from the websites of 1,305 CQC-registered dental practices across London, the same verified pricing that powers the practice listings on Dentist-London.com. For each practice we took its lowest advertised price for each treatment (for implants, single-tooth prices only, excluding full-arch and All-on-4 quotes). Borough and London figures are the median of those per-practice prices.
Boroughs are only ranked where at least five practices publish a price for a treatment, and a borough needs prices across at least six treatments to appear in the index. On that basis 32 of London’s 33 boroughs qualify; Barking and Dagenham had too few published prices to include. All figures are rounded to the nearest £5 and reflect prices published in mid-2026. These are advertised starting prices, not quotes: always confirm the full cost with the practice.
Cite this study
Journalists and researchers are welcome to use these figures with attribution to Dentist-London.com, linking to this page (https://dentist-london.com/advice/london-dental-cost-index/). For the underlying borough-by-borough dataset or a comment, get in touch via our contact page.
Related guides
- How much does a dentist cost in London? - every treatment, NHS and private
- Dental implants in London and Invisalign in London
- Find a dentist in your borough
- NHS dentists in London - charges and how to register