Facelift Cost Turkey vs US: What Each Price Includes

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons published its 2025 Procedural Statistics Report on 1 September 2026.¹ Cosmetic surgical volume rose 7% over the previous year, to an estimated 1,523,330 operations.² Nearly all of the fast growth was in the face.

The Society puts brow lifts up 29%, neck lifts up 21%, facelifts up 13% and facial fat grafting up 39%.² Clinics selling surgery abroad now have a fresh year of American demand figures to set against their own price lists. Two things decide whether that comparison means anything: what the percentages count, and what each price actually covers.

What the 2025 report actually counted

The report is an estimate, not a census. For its 2024 and 2025 figures the Society drew on its member surgeons, on CosmetAssure, a complications-insurance company it partners with, and on a national claims dataset. Those sources together cover more than 3,000 board-certified plastic surgeons. The Society then extrapolated the totals to national and regional estimates.²

It is also the only body publishing a national count of American cosmetic surgical volume. A search for a second organisation counting the same operations turned up retellings of this report rather than an independent tally. So every figure below is the Society's estimate, and this article treats it that way.

On those estimates, the percentage rises look very different once converted into operations. Facelifts went from 69,097 to 77,933. Neck lifts went from 22,592 to 27,315. Brow lifts went from 12,052 to 15,506.² The largest percentage among the five facial operations the report names belongs to facial fat grafting, at 39%. Brow lifts are second, at 29%.

Rank the same five by operations added and the order barely holds. Brow lifts fall from second to last. Eyelid surgery is the slowest grower of the five by percentage, at 19%. It added the most operations of any of them.

That is the first thing a 29% figure hides. A small base makes a large percentage cheap. Eyelid surgery was already the fifth most common cosmetic operation in the United States before it grew, on the Society's ranking for 2025.³

Why the face grew, on the report's own account

The Society puts the cause in the same sentence as the growth. More than four in five of its member surgeons, 82%, reported consultation requests connected to the new weight-loss injections.² Rapid weight loss leaves loose skin. The report describes patients arriving to finish what the drug started.

The pattern is sharper among facial procedures than the headline suggests. Surgeons reported weight-loss-related consultations most often for facelifts, at 71%, then neck lifts at 64%, eyelid surgery at 37% and brow lifts at 19%.² The operation with the largest percentage rise had the smallest share of those consultations.

The report is explicit that consultation requests do not turn directly into completed operations.² So this is a stated association between two things the Society measured separately, not a measured cause.

The age data moves the same way. Procedure volume among patients aged 66 and over rose 24%, while volume among patients aged 18 to 25 fell 9%.¹ Facial restoration is what an older cohort buys. Neither figure is broken down by procedure in the press release, so the link to the facial totals is a direction rather than a quantity.

The shift towards the face is not only American

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery runs a separate global survey, and its 2024 edition points the same way. It counted about 38 million procedures worldwide, of which 17.4 million were surgical. The United States came first by volume at 6.1 million, with Brazil second at 3.1 million.⁴

Within that total, face and head procedures reached 7.4 million, up 4.3%. Breast procedures fell 14.1%, and body and extremity procedures fell 14.8%.⁴

Eyelid surgery topped that global ranking for the first time, at 2.1 million operations and up 13.4%. Rhinoplasty fell 10% to about 1 million.⁴ The two bodies survey different populations in different years, so their numbers are not interchangeable. What they agree on is direction. Surgical demand moved towards the face while breast and body work fell.

That agreement matters for the price question. The operations growing fastest are the ones where a clinic abroad quotes a package and an American surgeon quotes a fee.

What the face and neck operations cost, and what the price covers

Each figure below is in the currency its source published. No exchange rate is applied, because the point is what the numbers contain rather than what they convert to.

Two American figures, two different answers. The Society's surgeon fee for a facelift is $11,395. The Synchrony study's national average procedure cost is $12,327.⁵⁸ They do not describe quite the same thing. The Society's number is what one surgeon charges. The Synchrony figure comes from a survey of cosmetic practices across all fifty states and the District of Columbia, run for a lender that finances the procedure.⁸

On brow lifts the two diverge in the other direction. The Society says $5,460. Synchrony's 2026 study says $4,834.⁷⁹ Neither publishes a per-procedure sample size, so the gap cannot be traced to a count.

The Turkish and Korean figures come from the clinics and guides selling the operation. That is the only place this research found them published. Turkey does have an official body in this market: USHAŞ, an affiliate of its Ministry of Health, runs the HealthTürkiye platform through which patients order treatment and check its cost.¹⁴ It routes a request to a facility rather than publishing an average, so there is no state price to check a clinic's quote against.

Why the destinations care about this year's numbers

Korea's scale is documented outside the clinic websites. Foreign patient visits reached 1.17 million in 2024, up from about 600,000 in 2023.¹⁵ Medical spending by those patients reached 1.24 trillion won, against roughly 400 billion won in 2019.¹⁶ Japanese patients were the largest group over 2019 to 2023, at 43.6%. Chinese patients came next, at 31.2%.¹⁵

The Korea Herald reports that Korea takes 62% of China's outbound medical and beauty tourism.¹⁶ That is a single outlet's figure and no second source for it turned up, so treat it as that outlet's estimate rather than a settled share.

Turkey's facial packages are sold into the same demand. Neither country publishes a count of foreign patients by operation. So nobody can say how much of the American facelift and neck lift demand left the country to be met.

What the headline numbers leave out

Neither American figure includes the room or the anaesthetist. Both say so on their own pages.⁵⁸ The Williams Center is a facial surgery practice in New York State. It publishes its own operating-room fee at $1,600 to $3,100, and its anaesthesia fee at $1,200 to $2,500.¹⁷ That is one practice and not a market. It does suggest the missing items run to thousands rather than hundreds.

No year is attached to the Society's fee figures. Its cost pages credit "the latest statistics" without naming a year.⁵⁶⁷ The 2025 Procedural Statistics Report contains no fee figures at all. The older average-cost documents that would date them returned a 404 error when requested on 29 September 2026. So the $11,395 is a real published figure of unknown vintage, being set against 2026 package prices.

Korea's 10% tax refund for foreign cosmetic patients ended on 31 December 2025. The scheme started in April 2016. It let visitors reclaim the value-added tax on cosmetic and dermatological treatment.

It lapsed when the National Assembly left the enabling clauses out of its December 2025 revision of the tax law. That account comes from The Korea Herald and Korea Biomedical Review.¹⁶¹⁵ An attempt to reach the amended statute itself did not succeed, so the status of the rule here rests on those two reports.

The money involved was not small. Refunds reached 95.5 billion won in 2024. A foreign dermatology or plastic surgery patient was getting back about 150,000 won per visit.¹⁶

As of 29 September 2026, the Korea Tourism Organization's English-language page on the refund still explains how to claim it. It names the 2016 start date and carries no notice that the scheme has closed.¹⁸ A patient budgeting from that page would be short by a tenth of the invoice.

A Turkish package is not a guarantee. HayatMed Clinic lists what falls outside its price: flights, medical travel insurance, extra hotel nights, medication needed after getting home, and revision procedures.¹² Revision is the one that matters. A facelift that needs redoing is a second operation, a second flight and a second bill. The package that covered the first covers none of it.

And none of these sources reports outcomes. Not one publishes a complication rate, a revision rate or a follow-up period for either country. What is available here is a comparison of prices and volumes. It is not evidence about results, in either direction.

How to use these numbers

Ask any quote to name five things. The surgeon's fee, the anaesthetist, the room, the nights in hospital, and what happens if the result needs revising. Then compare only the quotes that answer all five.

That one step removes most of the apparent saving on a limited lift. It removes almost all of it on a deep one. A Seoul guide's $12,000 to $20,000 band for a deep facelift sits inside the American range published by the Synchrony study.¹³⁸

The cheap version of an operation and the deep version are not the same purchase. A growth percentage in an association report cannot tell you which one a clinic is quoting.

Then ask for the year on every figure you were shown. One of the most-quoted American prices in this field does not carry one.