🔩

I need a dental implant

A single-tooth implant: the titanium post, the abutment, and the crown on top.

The three prices nobody explains to you

What you'll see quoted $5,274 The billed charge. A list price. Nobody pays this.
What a dentist actually accepts $3,352 The allowed amount — payment in full, in-network.

⚠️ This is a composed figure, and we're telling you. No source publishes this as a single bundled price — it's several separate procedures. This is our arithmetic summing published components, not someone else's published bundle.

Source: Colorado All-Payer Claims Database (CIVHC) — dental analysis, commercial claims (CY2024) — the only US source publishing dental allowed amounts from actual commercial claims.

COMPOSED FIGURE — and we're telling you, because nobody else will. No source publishes a single-tooth implant as one price; it's three separate procedures (post + abutment + crown). This is our arithmetic summing published components, not someone's published bundle. The implant post alone is an allowed $1,617.

What you'd actually pay

Your plan pays
You pay

Remember: dental plans have no out-of-pocket maximum. Medical insurance protects you from catastrophe. Dental insurance caps what the insurer pays, not what you pay.

The thing nobody tells you

Here's what actually matters, and it has nothing to do with whether your plan 'covers' implants. On a typical $1,500-maximum plan, your insurer pays $1,500 and you pay $1,852 — the ANNUAL MAXIMUM runs out before the coinsurance even matters. On a $1,000 plan you pay $2,352. Only on an unusually generous $2,500 plan does the coinsurance become the binding constraint, and even then you still pay $1,701. Whichever way you cut it, the implant costs you more than your insurance pays.

An estimate, not a quote. Prices are Colorado commercial claims — the only state that publishes this. Colorado's data misses roughly half of covered lives (self-insured employers don't report). Coinsurance tiers (100% preventive / 80% basic / 50% major) are an industry convention, not a measured average — nobody publishes what share of plans actually use them. Not dental or financial advice. Our methodology →