Root Canal Cost: NHS £76.60 vs Private UK and Turkey Prices

A root canal on the NHS in England costs £76.60. Clinics in Turkey quote €130 to €400 for the same treatment, before the crown many back teeth then need. Private dentists in the UK charge several times either figure.

So for a UK patient, the cheapest root canal on offer is usually the NHS one. The real comparison is not between Britain and Turkey. It is between an NHS dentist you can get into, and one you cannot.

This article sets out the prices across England, Wales, Scotland, private UK practices and Turkey, as of October 2026, and what each price leaves out.

What a root canal costs, by where you pay

The chart shows the price of the root canal alone. Euro and dollar prices are converted to pounds at the European Central Bank's reference rates for 2 October 2026, when €1 bought £0.85 or $1.12.¹ The conversion is ours.

England: one fixed charge

NHS dental treatment in England is charged in three bands. Root canal treatment sits in Band 2, which costs £76.60 from 1 April 2026.² Band 2 also covers fillings and extractions.³

You pay the band charge once per course of treatment. If you need several Band 2 items, the charge does not rise.³

A crown moves the course into Band 3, at £332.10.² Band 3 "includes all items in Bands 1 and 2," the NHS says.³ So a root canal and a crown on the same course cost £332.10 in total, not £76.60 plus £332.10.

Wales and Scotland: different systems

Wales replaced its bands in 2026. A new contract and charging system came in under regulations made in February 2026, with charges applying from 1 April.⁴ Patients now pay per "care package".

The NHS Business Services Authority lists a Welsh root canal on a front tooth at £91.18, and on a back tooth at £182.72.² That makes a molar root canal in Wales more than twice the English charge.

Scotland charges a share instead of a fixed price. Patients pay 80% of the cost of NHS treatment, up to £384 per course.² There is no single Scottish root canal price to put on the chart.

Private UK practices

Without NHS access, prices rise sharply. Dentists Closeby, a UK price guide, gives ranges of £350 to £800 for a front tooth, £450 to £750 for a premolar, and £600 to £1,400 for a molar.⁵

One London practice publishes its own. Whites Dental quotes £400 to £455 for a front tooth and £600 to £695 for a molar.⁶ It estimates a crown at £700 to £900 or more on top.⁶

Dentists Closeby puts a private root canal plus crown at £950 to £1,600 in total.⁵ The guide does not say how many practices it surveyed, so treat its ranges as indicative.

Turkey: lower than private, rarely lower than the NHS

Acıbadem, a large Turkish hospital group, quotes €130 to €400 for a root canal on one tooth.⁷ With a crown, its range is €300 to €850.⁷ At October 2026 rates, that is about £110 to £340 for the root canal alone.¹

The medical-travel marketplace Bookimed lists root canals in Antalya at $100 to $150, updated in March 2026.⁸ At current rates that is about £76 to £114.¹ The cheapest Antalya listing roughly matches England's Band 2 charge. It does not beat it.

An older Bookimed listing, from 2022, priced a root canal at Bahçeşehir University Dental Hospital in Istanbul at $285 to $395, depending on the number of canals.⁹ Turkish prices vary widely by city and clinic.

Every Turkish price reviewed here is below the lowest private UK quote reviewed. Against the NHS in England, only the very bottom of the Turkish range comes close, and that is before flights and hotels.

Why the NHS price is hard to get

The NHS charge only helps if a dentist will see you. Many cannot get in.

The Office for National Statistics surveyed adults in England in October and November 2024. Among adults without a dentist who had tried to book an NHS appointment in the previous 28 days, 94.1% said they were unsuccessful.¹⁰ That is a narrow group, people already struggling, so it is not a national failure rate.

The wider picture comes from the GP Patient Survey. Reporting on the 2025 results, the British Dental Association estimated that 5.7 million people had tried and failed to get NHS dental care in the previous two years.¹¹ It put the number of UK adults unable to access NHS dentistry at nearly 14 million.¹¹ Those are the association's own estimates from the survey data.

This is what drives the private and overseas market. The Turkish price is competing with a £600 private molar, not with £76.60.

What the headline prices leave out

The crown. The NHS says a crown "may be needed if the tooth was badly infected."¹² For back teeth, it matters for survival. A 2010 systematic review from UCL's Eastman Dental Institute found a crown after treatment was the strongest factor in whether a root-filled tooth survived.¹³

Survival is good, but not certain. The same review pooled 14 studies. It found 86% to 93% of root-filled teeth survived over two to 10 years.¹³ The authors called the evidence on prognostic factors weak, and most included studies were retrospective.¹³

More than one visit. The NHS says treatment usually takes two or more appointments of one to two hours.¹² A clinic abroad has to fit that into one trip. Acıbadem says root canal and crown can fit a four-to-six-day stay when the crown is milled on site.⁷

Follow-up. If a tooth treated abroad flares up at home, re-treatment at a private UK practice is quoted at £650 to £1,200 or more in London.⁶ Acıbadem advises patients to get the clinic's re-treatment policy in writing.⁷

Price is not a quality signal either way. None of the Turkish or private UK price sources reviewed publishes success rates for its own work.

How to use these numbers

If you live in England, check the NHS first. A root canal and crown together cost £332.10 on one course of treatment.² Use the NHS "find a dentist" service and ask practices about their NHS waiting lists, not only whether they have space today. If a crown is planned, ask whether it can go on the same course of treatment as the root canal, so one Band 3 charge covers both.

If you cannot get NHS care and are pricing private treatment, compare root canal and crown as one package. A cheap root canal followed by an expensive crown elsewhere is not a saving.

If you are pricing Turkey, add flights and a hotel for four to six days. Then compare that total with a UK private quote for the same tooth, not with the NHS charge you could not use.