Should London Dentists Publish Prices Online? What GDC Rules and AI Answers Expect From Your Fees Page in 2026

Last updated: 2 October 2026.

Yes, a London dental practice can and should publish prices online. GDC guidance lets a practice state fees as a "from-to" range rather than a single fixed figure, which covers most of the hesitation practice owners have about publishing. The bigger problem is that most London practices still don't do it at all, and that gap shapes what an AI assistant tells a patient asking about cost.

In short

• GDC guidance allows a practice to show prices as "from-to" ranges and requires a simple price list in the practice itself, plus clear pricing on the website.
• Only 368 of around 1,283 London practices listed as offering orthodontic treatment publish a price for it, a directory count current as of August 2026.
• The CMA opened a market study into private dentistry on 5 March 2026, naming price transparency as one of its three focus areas, with a statutory deadline of 4 March 2027.
• Where a practice publishes nothing, an AI answer falls back to directories, price-comparison pages and other practices that did publish, not to silence.

Should a London dental practice publish prices online?

Yes. GDC guidance requires every practice to display a simple price list in its reception or waiting area, covering items such as a consultation, a single-surface filling, an extraction, radiographs and hygienist treatment, and to give clear pricing information in practice literature and on the website. For treatments where cost genuinely varies by case, such as Invisalign or implants, the guidance explicitly allows a "from-to" price range instead of one fixed number. There is no GDC rule against publishing prices online. The barrier most practices cite, that a published range might be wrong for a specific patient, is already solved by the range format the regulator itself endorses.

What does GDC guidance actually require on a fees page?

Four rules matter most for a fees page specifically:

• A visible price list, covering the core treatments, displayed in the practice and stated clearly on the website, with "from-to" ranges allowed for variable-cost items.
• A GDC registration number included in advertising and publicity, which in practice means on the site the fees page sits on.
• No implying specialist status unless the named dentist is on the relevant GDC specialist list. Everyone else uses wording such as "experienced in" or "special interest in," never "Orthodontist" or "specialist" as a standalone claim.
• No comparing your own skills or qualifications with other dental professionals. GDC guidance is explicit that a practice must not display information comparing its clinicians' skills or qualifications against those of other dental professionals, which rules out "better than" framing on a fees or treatments page.

A fifth rule sits behind all of them: advertising that is false, misleading or has the potential to mislead is treated as unprofessional conduct, and statements likely to create an unjustified expectation of results, the territory "best dentist in London" or "guaranteed results" sits in, fall foul of the same guidance.

What ASA and CAP rules apply to fees and cosmetic claims?

A fees page for a practice offering cosmetic treatment has three further rules to respect, beyond GDC advertising guidance.

None of these rules stop a practice publishing its prices. They constrain how cosmetic results are shown and named alongside those prices, which matters because a fees page that lists whitening or "smile makeover" pricing next to unverified before/after images is a compliance risk independent of the pricing itself.

Why do most London practices still not publish prices?

A directory count of London practices listed as offering orthodontic treatment found around 1,283 practices in that category, of which only 368 publish a price for fixed braces or general orthodontics. That is roughly three in ten. The gap is not a regulatory one, since GDC guidance already permits range pricing. It looks more like an inherited habit of quoting only after a consultation, carried over from a market where most comparison still happened by phone or in person rather than by a patient reading a page before they ever call.

That habit is now getting direct regulatory attention. The Competition and Markets Authority opened a market study into private dentistry on 5 March 2026, covering the UK's roughly £8.4 billion private dentistry market. Price transparency, whether a patient can find out what they will be charged before committing to treatment, is one of the study's three named focus areas, alongside quality information and overall market competitiveness. The CMA's statutory deadline for a final report is 4 March 2027. A practice that already publishes clear price ranges is simply ahead of where the regulator is pushing the whole sector.

What happens to an AI answer when a practice publishes no prices?

It doesn't go quiet. It cites someone else. When a page gives an AI assistant nothing to quote on cost, the assistant still has to answer the patient's question, so it pulls from whichever source did publish a number: a comparison directory, a different practice's price list, or a general guide. In our own tracking of AI answers about London dental practices, nhs.uk was the single most retrieved source behind the answers checked, ahead of every individual practice, and several practices' own pages were read directly often enough to outdraw the dedicated directories in that set, as our guide to getting recommended by AI covers in full. A practice with no visible pricing simply removes itself from being the source quoted, while competitors who did publish stay in the running.

This is exactly the gap our Dental website AI readiness checker is built to catch. It fetches your own site, checks whether fee ranges are visible for the core treatments, and reports which page the information came from, or that it wasn't found at all. If you want to see who is actually being named for your treatment and area right now, the Dentist AI recommendation checker runs a live answer sample and shows which sources it leaned on.

What should a compliant, AI-readable fees page actually include?

A fees page structured as a treatment-by-treatment price table gives a patient, and an AI assistant, a specific number to work from. Illustration, not a real practice website.

A usable fees page does three jobs at once: it meets GDC guidance, it gives an AI assistant something specific to quote, and it sets patient expectations before a consultation.

For NHS bands specifically, England's three charge bands from 1 April 2026 are Band 1 at £27.90 (examination, X-rays, prevention advice, a scale and polish where clinically needed), Band 2 at £76.60 (Band 1 plus fillings, extractions and root canal treatment) and Band 3 at £332.10 (Bands 1 and 2 plus crowns, dentures, bridges and other lab-made appliances), with urgent or unscheduled care charged at the Band 1 rate. A patient pays one band charge per course of treatment, at the highest band needed, not a separate charge per procedure.

Structured data helps here too, though it is not the main lever. Accurate schema for your business details, including a priceRange property where it applies, makes the page easier for a crawler to parse correctly. It is not, on its own, what gets a page quoted. A page a model can actually read and extract a number from, in plain visible text, is what gets cited; schema is the finishing touch, not the mechanism.

A fees page checklist

1. State fees as ranges, using GDC's own "from-to" format, for every treatment with variable cost.
2. Show your GDC registration number on the same page or clearly linked from it.
3. Avoid "specialist" wording for any clinician not on the relevant GDC specialist list.
4. Never compare your clinicians' skills against named competitors.
5. Hold signed, dated evidence for any before/after image or whitening claim shown near your pricing.
6. Never name Botox or botulinum toxin products in public-facing fee copy.
7. State NHS and private status plainly, with current NHS band charges if you run a mixed practice.
8. Add accurate schema for your business and pricing, as a finishing step, not a substitute for the visible text.

Checking all eight by hand takes longer than it should. The Dental website AI readiness checker runs through fees, NHS and private status, GDC and CQC details and crawler access automatically, and the full Schmitdy AI visibility audit checks how your practice is actually named once the page is live.

Sources

1. General Dental Council, "Dental costs". Source for the price list display requirement, the "from-to" range allowance, and the NHS band reference.
2. General Dental Council, "Guidance on advertising". Source for the GDC registration number requirement, the specialist-title restriction, the ban on comparing skills or qualifications, and the unjustified-expectation rule.
3. Advertising Standards Authority, "Before and after photos". Source for the before/after evidence requirement.
4. Advertising Standards Authority, "Botox and non-surgical cosmetic interventions". Source for the botulinum toxin advertising ban and its narrow exceptions.
5. Dentist-London.com, "Orthodontics and braces in London". Source for the 1,283 listed practices and 368 publishing a price figure, a directory count last reviewed 14 August 2026.
6. GOV.UK, "Private dental services market study". Source for the 5 March 2026 launch date and the 4 March 2027 statutory deadline.
7. GOV.UK, "CMA launches review of private dentistry". Source for the £8.4 billion market value and the price transparency, quality information and competitiveness scope.
8. NHS, "How much will NHS dental treatment cost?". Source for the Band 1, 2 and 3 charges and the urgent treatment charge.
9. Legislation.gov.uk, "The National Health Service (Primary Dental Services and Dental Charges) (Amendment) Regulations 2026". Source for the 1 April 2026 effective date of the current NHS charge bands.
10. Whites Dental, "Cost of Invisalign in London". One of three published practice price lists behind the Invisalign range.
11. Pure Smiles, "How much does Invisalign cost in London 2026". One of three published practice price lists behind the Invisalign range.
12. Bond Dental, "How much does Invisalign cost in London: a complete 2026 pricing guide". One of three published practice price lists behind the Invisalign range.
13. TreatCompare, "Private dentist London 2026". Source for the single dental implant price range.
14. Dentists Closeby, "Dental bonding cost UK guide". Source for the composite bonding price range.
15. Teeth.co.uk, "Cosmetic dental prices 2026". Source for the teeth whitening price range.