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 1,293 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 Kensington and Chelsea costs about 31% more than the London average, with Westminster at 29% and the City of London at 27%. Newham comes in 19% below. On a single course of Invisalign, that gap is worth about £1,000.
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.
Updated 12 August 2026. These figures were recalculated from scratch against our current price data, which has been cleaned and re-extracted since the first version of this study in June. Several rankings moved. The method is now published as a script so the same analysis can be re-run and checked.
Key findings
- Central London is the most expensive place to see a private dentist. Kensington and Chelsea tops the index at 31% above the London average, followed by Westminster at 29% and the City of London at 27%.
- Newham is comfortably the cheapest borough, at 19% below average, with Tower Hamlets, Hillingdon and Ealing all 10% below.
- The same treatment can cost roughly double depending on the borough. A root canal starts at £320 in Hammersmith and Fulham but £625 in Kensington and Chelsea; a private check-up is £30 in Newham and £90 in Westminster.
- The biggest savings are on big-ticket treatments. Shopping by borough could save around £1,195 on a single implant, £1,005 on Invisalign, and £525 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 | Kensington and Chelsea | 131 | +31% |
| 2 | Westminster | 129 | +29% |
| 3 | City of London | 127 | +27% |
| 4 | Waltham Forest | 109 | +9% |
| 5 | Greenwich | 106 | +6% |
| 6 | Southwark | 106 | +6% |
| 7 | Haringey | 105 | +5% |
| 8 | Islington | 105 | +5% |
| 9 | Richmond upon Thames | 104 | +4% |
| 10 | Barnet | 103 | +3% |
| 11 | Bromley | 103 | +3% |
| 12 | Camden | 103 | +3% |
| 13 | Hammersmith and Fulham | 103 | +3% |
| 14 | Harrow | 103 | +3% |
| 15 | Sutton | 103 | +3% |
| 16 | Croydon | 102 | +2% |
| 17 | Hackney | 102 | +2% |
| 18 | Havering | 102 | +2% |
| 19 | Hounslow | 102 | +2% |
| 20 | Enfield | 101 | +1% |
| 21 | Lewisham | 100 | average |
| 22 | Kingston upon Thames | 99 | -1% |
| 23 | Lambeth | 97 | -3% |
| 24 | Merton | 96 | -4% |
| 25 | Wandsworth | 95 | -5% |
| 26 | Redbridge | 94 | -6% |
| 27 | Bexley | 93 | -7% |
| 28 | Brent | 92 | -8% |
| 29 | Ealing | 90 | -10% |
| 30 | Hillingdon | 90 | -10% |
| 31 | Tower Hamlets | 90 | -10% |
| 32 | Newham | 81 | -19% |
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 | £1,700-£2,800 | 289 |
| Invisalign | £2,500 | £1,895-£3,300 | 750 |
| Teeth whitening | £375 | £300-£440 | 942 |
| Veneers (per tooth) | £325 | £225-£650 | 945 |
| Root canal | £400 | £300-£600 | 735 |
| Dentures (from) | £600 | £350-£825 | 794 |
| Simple tooth extraction | £180 | £120-£260 | 157 |
| Gum treatment | £150 | £110-£195 | 548 |
| Hygienist (scale & polish) | £75 | £65-£95 | 887 |
| Private check-up | £55 | £40-£75 | 613 |
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 the 32 boroughs that qualify for the index. The practice counts are shown so you can see how firm each figure is: a median drawn from 5 practices is a weaker signal than one drawn from 100.
| Treatment | Cheapest borough | Dearest borough | You could save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single dental implant | Camden, £1,800 (11) | City of London, £2,995 (5) | £1,195 |
| Invisalign | Newham, £1,995 (8) | Harrow, £3,000 (24) | £1,005 |
| Dentures (from) | Ealing, £325 (32) | Hammersmith and Fulham, £850 (28) | £525 |
| Root canal | Hammersmith and Fulham, £320 (23) | Kensington and Chelsea, £625 (26) | £305 |
| Simple tooth extraction | Croydon, £90 (5) | Kensington and Chelsea, £320 (12) | £230 |
| Veneers (per tooth) | Harrow, £250 (33) | Greenwich, £450 (28) | £200 |
| Teeth whitening | Newham, £275 (13) | Westminster, £450 (103) | £175 |
| Gum treatment | Sutton, £95 (5) | Kensington and Chelsea, £220 (16) | £125 |
| Hygienist (scale & polish) | Harrow, £65 (30) | City of London, £125 (21) | £60 |
| Private check-up | Newham, £30 (7) | Westminster, £90 (74) | £60 |
A patient in Harrow paying the local going rate for Invisalign would start at £3,000; the same shopper in Newham would start at £1,995. For a single implant, the spread runs from £1,800 in Camden to £2,995 in the City of London. None of this means the cheaper practice is worse. It 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 (Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and the City of London) are the most expensive by a wide margin, and the cheapest boroughs sit out east and west, led by Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hillingdon and Ealing. A Kensington and Chelsea practice charges, on average, about 60% more than a Newham one for the same work.
Waltham Forest is the one that breaks the pattern: an outer borough sitting fourth on the index at 9% above average.
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 CQC-registered dental practices across London, the same verified pricing that powers the practice listings on Dentist-London.com. 1,293 practices publish at least one price.
For each practice we take its lowest advertised price for each treatment. Borough and London figures are the median of those per-practice prices. For implants we count single-tooth prices only, excluding full-arch work such as All-on-4, which runs into five figures and would distort the median. Extraction figures cover simple extractions, excluding surgical and wisdom-tooth removal.
A borough is ranked for a treatment only where at least 5 practices publish a price, and a borough needs prices across at least 6 of the 10 treatments to enter the index. On that basis 32 of London’s 33 boroughs qualify; Barking and Dagenham publishes too few prices to include. All figures are rounded to the nearest £5.
The analysis is run by scripts/cost_index.py in our own codebase, so it can be reproduced, checked and re-run as the data is refreshed. 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, the chart as a file, 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