Real Dental Costs

What it is

Real Dental Costs provides a free, open JSON API delivering dental procedure pricing data across all 51 U.S. state markets for 12 procedures, including implants, crowns, braces, and dentures. The API requires no authentication key or signup, features open CORS headers, and maintains static versioned endpoints documented with an OpenAPI 3.1 specification.

The data is sourced from published implant-pricing datasets, the ASQ360°/CareCredit Average Procedural Cost Study, Medicaid payment records from the HHS T-MSIS dataset, and published payer and provider fee data from 2024-2026. Each price includes a confidence score reflecting source quality, geographic granularity, freshness, and sample size.

Licensed under CC BY 4.0, the API permits commercial use, redistribution, and derivative works with proper attribution. The service maintains stable contracts with v1 endpoints, ensuring existing fields never change or disappear, though new fields may be added. Data is refreshed on a rolling basis as new sources are published.

Questions from the bench

Do I need an API key?

No. Every endpoint is a static, publicly cached JSON file with open CORS headers. There is no authentication, no rate-limit tier and no signup. Attribution under CC BY 4.0 is the only requirement.

Can I use this API in a commercial product?

Yes. The data is licensed CC BY 4.0, which allows commercial use, redistribution and derivative works, as long as you attribute Real Dental Costs with a link to https://realdentalcosts.com or cite the dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20531728.

Will the API change and break my integration?

v1 is a stable contract: existing fields never change meaning or disappear, new fields may be added. Any breaking change would ship under /api/v2/ with v1 kept online. Each payload carries an edition field so you can detect data refreshes.

Where do the numbers come from?

Data is compiled from published implant-pricing datasets, the ASQ360°/CareCredit Average Procedural Cost Study for braces, veneers, crowns and dentures, and published payer and provider fee data from 2024-2026. Each page shows a source and a corrections log is maintained publicly.

What does the confidence score mean?

Each price carries a provenance block with a price_type (how the figure was obtained: measured survey, estimate from the cost index, Medicaid paid per claim line, ...) and a confidence score from 0 to 100 that weighs source tier (35%), geographic granularity (25%), freshness (20%) and sample size/dispersion (20%). Modelled values are capped at 60. It does not change the figure; it tells you how much weight it deserves.