Root Canal Cost UK 2026: £600-£1,400 by Tooth

The dentist just said two words that made your stomach drop: root canal. You want to know what this medieval-sounding procedure is about to do to your bank account, so let's put the number on the table straight away.

Root canal treatment in the UK costs £600-1,400 privately. The exact number depends entirely on which tooth decided to die and where you live, because private root canals are priced by the tooth: front teeth are the cheapest, molars are the most expensive. On the NHS it falls in Band 2, which is £76.60 in England. At UrgentCare Dental, root canal treatment runs from £399 to £950 per canal, and you get the exact figure for your own tooth in writing before anything starts.

That's the whole answer. Now here's everything sitting underneath it, because a root canal has a couple of costs that nobody mentions until the day.

Root Canal Cost by Tooth: The Full Picture

Here's how the three routes compare, so you can find your own tooth in a couple of seconds.

The private figures are the typical ranges you'll be quoted around the UK, and they move with the tooth and the postcode. Our own list works differently. It carries one root canal range, £399 to £950 per canal, and the figure for your tooth is confirmed in writing once a dentist has looked at the X-ray. It doesn't change by clinic either, so the same list applies whether you come to us in Leeds, Manchester or our Bradford practice in Bingley, and there's no postcode lottery to it.

A word on the NHS column before we move on. Band 2 really does cover root canal treatment, and £76.60 really is the charge. The difficulty has nothing to do with the price: it's finding a practice taking on new NHS patients at all, which across much of the country now means joining a waiting list. That's why most people reading this end up looking at the private column, and we've set the two side by side in our guide to NHS versus private dentist costs.

Why a Molar Costs Double What a Front Tooth Costs

This is the question everyone asks, and the answer is lovely and simple: you're paying for canals, and back teeth have more of them.

A front tooth has one canal. One canal means one path to clean, one space to fill, and it's usually done in about an hour. That's why front teeth sit at the bottom of just about every price list in the country.

Premolars have one or two, and your dentist often won't know which until they're inside. It's a bit like renovation work: you find out what you're actually dealing with once you open up the wall.

Molars are where it gets busy. An upper molar usually has three canals, a lower molar two or three, and some have four. Each one has to be found, cleaned, shaped and sealed, and each one adds time in the chair. The inside of a molar root looks rather like a river delta seen from above, channels branching and rejoining, and every branch is somewhere bacteria could hide. A molar root canal typically takes 90 minutes to three hours, sometimes across two visits. There's a fuller breakdown in our guide to how long a root canal takes.

So when you see a molar priced at double a front tooth, you're simply looking at three or four times the work.

What the Price Includes, and What It Doesn't

This is the part that catches people out, so let's be straight about it.

The X-ray to find out what's going on. Some practices bill diagnosis and imaging as separate line items on top of the treatment. At UrgentCare Dental the emergency appointment is £20 and your digital X-rays are included in it, so a dentist finds the problem and quotes you a fixed price in writing before any treatment begins. Follow-ups afterwards are free. If you're seen after 11pm, the late-night appointment is £50, and everything it includes stays the same.

The crown afterwards, which is almost always separate. This is the big one, and it's covered properly in the next section.

A specialist endodontist, if your tooth needs one. Endodontists are dentists who did extra years learning to do nothing but root canals, and they work under microscopes that find canals a general dentist can struggle to see. Expect roughly 40% on top of general-dentist prices for that expertise, and more again in central London. Most teeth never need it; awkward anatomy sometimes does.

Re-treatment, which costs more than the first time. If a root canal fails years later, redoing it means removing the original filling material before the real work can even start, so it's more involved than the original and priced accordingly. We go through that properly in our guide to failed root canal retreatment.

The Crown Question Nobody Mentions Upfront

Your root canal isn't quite finished when the root canal is finished, and this is the single most useful thing on this page.

A root-treated tooth has had its inner tissue removed, which leaves it hollower and more brittle than it was, so back teeth almost always need a crown afterwards to hold everything together under the force of chewing. Front teeth sometimes get away with a filling instead, especially when there's plenty of healthy tooth left.

Around the UK that crown is typically another £600-1,200 on top. At UrgentCare Dental a crown is £650 to £895. Both stages sit on the same published price list, and both are confirmed in your written quote before any work starts, so neither one turns up as a surprise later.

The point of saying this out loud is simply that you can budget for the whole thing from day one. A molar root canal is really a root canal plus a crown, and knowing that now is much nicer than finding out at the second appointment.

Where You Live Changes the Number

London runs 30-50% above the rest of the country, though the pattern isn't uniform. These are the typical private ranges you'll be quoted around the UK.

Cities with dental schools tend to have more endodontists around, and that bit of competition takes some of the edge off the top end.

When the Root Canal Starts as an Emergency

Plenty of root canals don't begin as a planned appointment at all. They begin at eleven o'clock at night with a tooth that's throbbing hard enough that you're googling prices one-handed.

That's one of the most routine things we deal with. You come in, we take an X-ray, and where the situation allows we get the tooth opened and the pressure released at that first visit, which is usually the moment the pain stops. It's £20 to be seen, X-rays included, and we're open 24/7, so it doesn't have to wait for Monday.

If you've been given antibiotics for it, they're worth understanding: they calm the surrounding tissue and buy you a few comfortable days, and sorting out the inside of the tooth is what actually ends the problem. So use the comfortable days to get the tooth seen. And if you're ever unsure how urgent yours is, just ring us and ask; that's a thirty-second phone call and we'd far rather you made it.

Saving the Tooth or Replacing It

Sometimes the answer is that the tooth isn't worth saving, and it's fair to want the sums side by side.

A simple extraction is the cheapest option on the day, at £149 with us. The catch is the gap it leaves, because neighbouring teeth drift into the space over the years and the bill arrives later instead. Replacing the tooth properly with a single implant is £1,999 on top of that, because extraction is only the first half of the bill.

So for most people, most of the time, saving your own tooth is the cheaper road as well as the better one, and your written quote will put both sets of numbers in front of you before you decide. Your own root sitting in your own jaw is a hard thing to improve on, and a root canal keeps it. Where a tooth is cracked below the gum line, or there's very little tooth left above it to build on, saving it stops being realistic and replacement becomes the sensible plan. That's a conversation to have with the X-ray on the screen in front of you both, and we walk through it in more depth in root canal vs extraction.

Spreading the Cost

You don't have to pay for it in one go. On treatment over £500 we offer 0% finance, subject to status, so a root canal and crown becomes a manageable monthly figure instead of one lump, and longer plans of up to 60 months are available at 12.9% APR representative. Our guide to dental finance lays out how the sums land in plain English.

Common Questions About Root Canal Costs

Why is a root canal so expensive?

Because you're paying for time and precision inside a space narrower than a pencil lead. Every canal in the tooth has to be found, cleaned along its full length, shaped and then sealed so bacteria can't get back in, and a molar can have three or four of them branching away in different directions. That's up to three hours of careful work under magnification, plus single-use instruments and the X-rays to check the seal, and it's why the price follows the tooth instead of sitting at one flat fee.

Does the price include the crown?

Usually not, and this is worth asking any practice directly before you commit. The root canal price covers cleaning and sealing the inside of the tooth; the crown that protects it afterwards is quoted separately almost everywhere, because not every tooth needs one. At UrgentCare Dental root canal treatment is from £399 per canal and a crown is £650 to £895, and we'll tell you in writing whether your tooth needs both.

Why is a root canal more expensive on a molar?

It comes down to how many canals are inside the tooth. A front tooth has one, so there's one path to clean and fill and it's often done inside an hour. An upper molar usually has three and sometimes four, each needing to be found, cleaned, shaped and sealed individually. More canals means more chair time and more materials, so a molar commonly costs roughly double a front tooth anywhere in the UK.

Can I get a root canal on the NHS?

Yes, in principle: root canal treatment sits in NHS Band 2, which is £76.60 in England, and that one charge covers the whole course of treatment. The obstacle is getting seen at all. Many practices aren't taking on new NHS patients, so most people find themselves on a waiting list. If a tooth is hurting now, that wait is the thing that pushes them to look privately.

Is a root canal cheaper than an implant?

Usually, yes. Taking the tooth out is only the first half of that bill, because replacing it afterwards with an implant is £1,999 with us on top of the extraction. Saving your own tooth also keeps the root in the jawbone doing its job, and no replacement quite matches that, so where the tooth can realistically be saved it's usually both the cheaper and the better answer. Your written quote gives you the figures for your own tooth so you can compare the two properly.

Does a root canal hurt?

Far less than its reputation suggests, and honestly less than the toothache that sends most people in. The tooth is numbed completely first, so the appointment itself feels much like having a filling done, just longer. Most of the fearsome stories date from a time before modern anaesthetic. If the very idea makes you tense, IV sedation from £249 an hour means you can have the whole thing done calmly, and there's more detail in our piece on whether a root canal hurts.

Getting an Actual Number for Your Tooth

Every figure on this page is a range, because until somebody has looked at an X-ray of your particular tooth, a range is the only honest thing anyone can give you.

So the useful next step is small: come in, we'll take the X-ray, and you'll get a fixed price in writing for your tooth before a thing happens. That's £20 at UrgentCare Dental, X-rays included, and we're open 24/7 across our Leeds, Manchester and Bingley clinics.

The tooth won't fix itself, and the real number is usually a good deal less frightening than the one you've been imagining. Give us a ring and let's find out what you're actually dealing with.