Dental fees on your practice website: what the law requires and how to present them

A duty written into the code of ethics

Many practices assume fees have no place on a website. The opposite is true. Article R.4127-240 of the French Public Health Code is part of the code of ethics for dental surgeons. The dentist must make sure the patient knows the amount of the fees before treatment. And a dentist who presents their practice to the public, including on a website, must include information on the fees charged, the payment methods accepted and the legal obligations that allow everyone to access care without discrimination. The dentist must also answer any request for an explanation of the cost of a treatment.

This text was rewritten by decree no. 2020-1658 of December 22, 2020, which opened up information to the public and removed the general ban on advertising from the code, while keeping two bans: buying a priority listing (R.4127-217 II) and advertising for a third party (R.4127-225). Fees sit on the information side. Showing them is not promotion, it is a duty. You can read article R.4127-240 on Légifrance: it is only a few lines long.

A website that stays silent on fees is therefore incomplete under the code. The guide what the Dental Council allows on a dentist website places this rule among the others set by the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes).

Which procedures to list: what the order of May 30, 2018 sets out

The code talks about information on the fees charged, without saying how many procedures. For the display inside the practice, the list comes from the order of May 30, 2018. The dentist must display, legibly, in the waiting room and where payments are taken:

• the fee for a consultation;
• at least five of the most frequent routine procedures (restorative, surgical, preventive care);
• at least five of the most frequent prosthetic or orthodontic procedures;
• a mandatory sentence depending on your status with French national health insurance (Assurance Maladie): fees in line with national health insurance rates, fees set freely, or dentist not contracted with national health insurance.

For the website, the Dental Council recommends listing the fees for five to ten procedures, the ones you perform most. The information must be clear, honest, precise and free of any comparison with another dentist. The same rule applies to the titles, degrees and credentials shown on the website. The simplest approach is to copy the list from your waiting room onto the website.

A useful detail: the DGCCRF, France's consumer fraud authority, inspects the display in the practice and treatment estimates. The website falls under the code of ethics, and therefore under the Dental Council. One answer satisfies both: the same amounts everywhere, with a date.

Why this page also helps your visibility

The legal duty is not the only argument. Price is the patient's first question. "Dental implant" is searched 33,100 times a month in France (Semrush, August 2026), and many patients add the word "price" or "cost". When a patient types "dental implant price" followed by your city, Google looks for a page that answers with numbers. The case of a practice that places one hundred implants a year is covered in the article on SEO for an implant dentist.

AI search is even more demanding. 56.6% of French people already use artificial intelligence, including to find a dentist (Arcom and Médiamétrie, April 2026). Since July 22, 2026, Google has shown its AI Overviews and AI Mode in France. An AI that has to answer "how much does a crown cost in Nantes" looks for a precise amount, a date and a source. If your website gives none, it takes the number from somewhere else, often from another practice. The guide how AI chooses a dentist explains how this works.

Finally, the page reassures patients before they call. A patient who knows the ballpark figure calls to book an appointment, not to ask for a price. Fees are part of what patients look for on a website before calling. They matter even more for cosmetic procedures, as the article on SEO for a cosmetic dentistry practice shows.

A dedicated page, and what it should contain

The right format is a separate page called "Fees", with its own URL, linked from the menu and from every treatment page. A patient reading your implants page should reach the fees in one click. Here is what the page contains, in this order:

1. An opening sentence: the exact amount depends on the exam and the treatment estimate.
2. A table by procedure, with a fee or an honest range.
3. The statement "a personalized treatment estimate is provided before any prosthetic or orthodontic treatment".
4. Your status with national health insurance, with the sentence required by the order.
5. The Assurance Maladie reimbursement base and the role of supplemental health insurance (mutuelle), without promising an out-of-pocket amount.
6. The payment methods accepted: card, check, bank transfer, installment payments if you offer them.
7. The date of the last update, visible next to the table.

The table must be text on the page, not an image or a file to download: that way it can be read on a phone, found on Google and quoted by an AI. The dental practice website page shows where this page fits among the others.

Sample layout for a fictional practice

Here is the shape of the table, to copy with your own procedures and your own amounts. We leave the numeric cells empty on purpose: an amount written here would become a reference for readers who have not examined your patient, and your fees have no reason to look like those of an invented practice.

Below the table, three lines: "Fees updated on September 1, 2026." "Practice contracted with national health insurance. For prosthetic, implant and orthodontic procedures, the dentist sets fees freely, and they may be higher than the national health insurance rates." "Payment methods accepted: bank card, check, bank transfer. Installment payments available on the basis of the treatment estimate."

The range starts from a simple, real case, never from a fraction of a procedure. And every line points to the treatment estimate, the only document that is binding. The page informs, the estimate commits.

The mistakes we see most often

• Fees hidden in a PDF (a document to download). It opens poorly on a phone, and for Google as for AI, it is a separate file, often forgotten for years.
• An empty "Fees" page, or one that just says "contact us". It sits in the menu and answers nothing. For the patient as for the code, that is an absence of information.
• Amounts without a date. The patient does not know whether they are still valid, and neither does an AI looking for an up-to-date number.
• The misleading "starting at": an amount that only covers the implant, without the abutment or the crown. The patient discovers the real total on the treatment estimate and feels tricked. Always say what the amount covers and what comes on top.
• A table displayed by a script (a small program that fills in the page after it loads). The crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity do not read JavaScript. The patient sees your fees, the AI sees an empty page.

Each of these can be fixed in a single work session. Most come down to one thing: nobody at the practice is in charge of this page.

Keeping the page accurate over time

A fees page is not written once and for all. Assign one person at the practice, often the dental assistant or the front desk, to reread it every time fees change and at least once a year. That person checks that the waiting room, the treatment estimates and the website say the same thing, and updates the date at every review. A short, accurate page beats a long, wrong one. If you have doubts about a wording, your local branch of the Dental Council (conseil départemental) can review it.

This page is one piece of a whole. Dental SEO relies on pages that each answer one precise patient question: a treatment, a location, a cost. After the fees page, the next page to review is the one for each treatment. And if the practice posts on Instagram or Facebook, the same information duties apply there: we went through them article by article in social media ethics for dentists.

Read next