Most private dental websites hide their prices behind a contact form, usually for a reasonable-sounding reason: every treatment plan is different, so a published number might be wrong for this particular patient. The trouble is what happens in the silence where that price should be.
By the time someone's looking at a private dentist's website, they've usually already decided they can probably afford it, roughly. What they're actually trying to work out is whether they can afford it comfortably, and whether this particular practice is in their range at all before they invest the time in calling. A page that says nothing about cost doesn't protect them from a wrong number. It just leaves them to guess, and a lot of people guess high and quietly go elsewhere.
What "contact us" actually signalsSilence gets read as expensive
In the absence of any number, most people assume the worst, not the best. A missing price on a private healthcare website reads to a lot of patients as "this is going to be more than I want to spend", whether or not that's true. The practices with the most reasonable prices are often the ones hiding them hardest, and losing exactly the price-conscious patients who'd have been pleasantly surprised if they'd only seen a number.
Hiding pricing doesn't filter out patients who can't afford treatment. It filters out patients who won't ring to find out, and that's a much larger group.
"But every treatment plan really is different"
This is true, and it's also not actually a reason to publish nothing. A from price, "Invisalign from £2,500", or a clear range for the most commonly asked-about treatments, gives a genuinely useful anchor without pretending every case is identical. The alternative, a page that mentions no numbers at all, isn't more accurate, it's just less useful, and it pushes the entire pricing conversation onto a phone call the patient has to initiate first, which is exactly the moment a lot of people quietly decide not to.
A price range does more good than harm
A worked example does more for trust than most practices expect. Something close to: "a single dental implant typically costs £X to £Y depending on the case, we'll confirm the exact figure at your consultation" answers the actual question, why am I here, what am I roughly looking at, without over-promising a number that might change once your dentist has actually examined you. It also does something for the practice: it pre-qualifies enquiries, so the calls that do come in are from people who already know roughly what they're signing up for.
A published range doesn't lose you patients who were never going to book. It loses you the awkward call where you find out too late that you weren't in the same range at all.The other half of the anxiety
Price isn't the only thing left unsaid
Pricing anxiety usually travels with a related worry, whether this practice is actually qualified to do the treatment being priced. Both fears get worse in silence and both get better with specifics, named credentials rather than a generic GDC badge, and an honest price range rather than "contact us". There's a fuller method for the credentials half of this in how to show your credentials without sounding like you're covering yourself, which pairs naturally with pricing transparency on the same page.
Where this needs a lighter touch
NHS pricing, set by the NHS itself, doesn't need this treatment, it's already fixed and published nationally. This applies specifically to private and mixed practices, where the pricing genuinely does vary by provider and by treatment, and where that variation is exactly what's making patients hesitate to call in the first place.
A number with a sensible range beside it builds more trust than no number at all. Silence isn't neutral, it's just a worse answer than the honest one.