Australian Orthodontic Pricing Transparency Survey (2026)

How many specialist orthodontic practices publish a comprehensive treatment price on their own website? Across the five Australian capital cities reviewed, the share ranges from 2.5% in Sydney (2 of 81 practices) to 14.8% in Melbourne (9 of 61 practices) — a wide gap that is itself a central finding of this survey.

Compiled by Cumberland Dental (Cumberland Park, Adelaide). Last updated June 2026.

What this survey measures

For each capital city, we review every specialist orthodontic practice’s own website, one page at a time, and record what pricing — if any — the practice publishes for a comprehensive course of treatment. Each practice is classified only after opening its own live fee or cost page, not from a search-result snippet. Practices are grouped into four mutually exclusive categories:

• Publishes a comprehensive price — a stated fee, fee band, or named-tier table that includes a comprehensive course of treatment.
• Publishes only a weekly payment figure — a single periodic amount (for example “$60 per week”) with no total.
• Publishes only a fee range — a broad or hedged range with no single comprehensive price.
• Publishes no treatment price — no price is shown on the practice’s own website.

Results

All five capital cities have now been reviewed. The figures below describe specialist orthodontic practices only; general dentists who also provide orthodontics are surveyed separately.

City detail: Sydney results · Adelaide results · Brisbane results · Perth results · Melbourne results.

Why we report by city rather than a single national figure

Across the five cities the result varies more than fivefold — from 2.5% in Sydney to 14.8% in Melbourne. A single averaged “national” figure would obscure that spread and imply a uniformity the data does not show. We therefore report each metropolitan area separately, on the same method, rather than reducing them to one number.

Method and scope

• Who is included: registered specialist orthodontic practices in each metropolitan area. General dentists who provide orthodontics are recorded as a separate cohort.
• How a practice is classified: by opening its own live fee, cost or payment page in June 2026 and recording the pricing it publishes there. Generic or third-party market figures (for example “braces in Australia typically cost…”) are not counted as a practice publishing its own price.
• What “comprehensive” means: a full course of treatment, as distinct from a limited, single-arch or short-case fee.
• Updates: practice websites change. Each city page notes the month its figures were last verified.

This survey is compiled by Cumberland Dental, a general dental practice with a special interest in orthodontics, as a public-interest record of how orthodontic pricing is presented online. It describes how practices publish information and does not rank or evaluate the practices themselves. In the spirit of that transparency, Cumberland Dental publishes its own Adelaide braces pricing in full.