Pricing data & methodology
Everything on this site is recomputable. This page publishes the cost formula, the comparability rules, the ranking weights, and every raw price report we hold — with sources.
1. The real 3-year cost formula
3-year total = software licence/subscription + implementation + training + hardware + data migration.
Payment processing markups are excluded from the total and listed separately on each product page with their amounts. Reason: processing fees bill per transaction, not per software use — including them would load vendors that bundle payment processing (making software revenue on transactions) with a burden their competitors do not carry, making the totals incomparable.
Every product page shows the full assumption behind its 3-year figure (practice size, self-hosted vs cloud, which add-on modules are included) and an itemized breakdown. A 3-year total without its assumption line is marketing, not data.
2. Billing-unit comparability rule
Prices are never compared across different billing units. Per-location, per-provider, per-user and per-seat quotes measure different things, and mixing them produces nonsense rankings. Every price on this site carries its unit, and "user" definitions are documented where vendors define them at all. See the billing-unit guide for the full explanation.
3. Ranking algorithm (published)
Overall score = feature fit × 0.4 + user sentiment × 0.3 + value for money × 0.2 + transparency × 0.1. Ties break by data export freedom score, then alphabetically. The four exclusive dimensions (★) are displayed on every comparison but are not weighted in this formula — their role is documented, and any future change will be recorded in the change log below before it takes effect.
Paid status (Sponsor) does not enter the calculation anywhere. Sponsors are labeled and kept in separate visual blocks. Anyone with our data can recompute every ranking and get the same order — that is the point.
4. Rating scales for the exclusive dimensions
Data export freedom (1–5)
- 1 — Locked in — export requires vendor approval
- 2 — Limited — partial export, vendor-dependent
- 3 — Moderate — operational data out, full record needs help
- 4 — Good — most data exportable without vendor
- 5 — Full autonomy — open structure, self-serve export
Contract lock-in (1–5)
- 1 — No lock-in — cancel anytime
- 2 — Light — monthly, low exit cost
- 3 — Moderate — annual terms, notice required
- 4 — Heavy — multi-year, termination fees
- 5 — Very heavy — long term, high total exit cost
Claim approval rates: we withhold the number entirely until the user-reported sample is large enough to be honest about (currently n = 0 across all products — below threshold). An estimated number here would be worse than none.
5. Price reports (11)
Raw price data behind the 3-year figures: official pricing where published, plus user-reported real transaction prices from public forum posts. User reports are the ground truth — vendor quotes are negotiation starting points. 5 of 11 reports are human-verified; unverified ones are shown as-is, never silently blended.
| Software | Practice profile | Monthly | One-time | Term | Quote year | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curve Dental | UNRESOLVED — the billing unit is disputed between two camps of sources and cannot be settled from public data. Curve publishes no prices at all, so every number in circulation is a third-party estimate. Recorded here as a range with the dispute made explicit. | $299 | $2,000 | 12-month initial term that auto-renews annually "at then-current fees", with no published cap on increases. Cancellation requires 90 days' written notice before the renewal date; cancelling mid-term leaves the practice liable for the remaining balance. | 2026 | UNRESOLVED. Curve's own pricing page was read directly and contains NO figures — it is contact-sales only and lists value propositions instead of prices. The two camps below therefore both consist of third-party estimates. accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: low | unverified |
| Denticon | Multi-location DSO network, per location | $280 | $3,300 | Enterprise agreements commonly 24–36 months | 2026 | Aggregated DSO-network pricing figure; another source quotes $400–1,200/month per location, so treat this as the low end of a wide range accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: low | unverified |
| Dentrix | Single location, cloud (Dentrix Ascend), package-dependent | — | — | Cloud subscription | 2026 | Commonly cited Ascend annual range of $12,000–19,000 per location (midpoint used here) accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: low | unverified |
| Dentrix | Single location, server-based Dentrix G — base licence plus mandatory annual support plan only | $500 | $7,500 | Support plan auto-renews annually; renewal increases reported | 2025 | Aggregation of practitioner reports from G2 and DentalTown — this is a secondary source quoting primary forum posts, not a forum post we have read directly accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: medium | unverified |
| Eaglesoft | PARTIALLY RESOLVED — the $17,604-to-$54,000 spread is driven by two billing units that public sources conflate: per-PROVIDER and per-WORKSTATION (seat/login). Eaglesoft prices on both; sources almost never say which one they mean. | $200 | $6,500 | Changing. Subscription-only for new customers since 2024; existing perpetual-licence holders are being migrated to subscription during their normal renewal cycles, with the transition targeted for completion across the installed base through 2026. Historical contracts ran 36–60 months, often bundled with Patterson equipment financing. | 2026 | Eaglesoft publishes no pricing. Patterson quotes by sales call. Findings below are assembled from aggregator estimates and practitioner reports; the unit definition remains unconfirmed by the vendor. accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: medium | unverified |
| Eaglesoft | Payment processing cost — practice processing $50,000/month in card transactions | — | — | Tied to the software agreement | 2025 | DentalTown discussions on exclusive Global Payments integration — quoted via a secondary aggregator, primary threads not yet read directly accessed 2026-09-24 · confidence: medium | unverified |
| Open Dental | RESOLVED — eServices is not one thing. Some communication features are free with support; the marketing/self-scheduling/texting set is a paid bundle or paid per item. The $165/month figure is real, but it is conditional, not automatic. | $165 | — | Month-to-month. Support must remain active to use any eService. | 2026 | Open Dental official fee page — "Additional Services" table. Read directly. Resolves the contradiction between sources that say "$199 includes eServices" and sources that say "eServices is +$165/month": both were partly right. accessed 2026-10-07 · confidence: high | verified |
| Open Dental | Per-provider surcharge on the self-hosted licence — the second half of the same story. Confirms the "no per-provider upcharge" claim is only true up to 3 providers. | $20 | — | Month-to-month, alongside the base support fee. | 2026 | Open Dental official fee page — "More than 3 providers per office or location (not counting hygienists)". Read directly. accessed 2026-10-07 · confidence: high | verified |
| Open Dental | US practice, one location, first 12-month contract, up to 3 dentists, self-hosted | $199 | $0 | 12-month initial contract, then month-to-month. Rate locked for the initial term. | 2026 | Open Dental official fee page — primary source, read directly (not via aggregators). This is the single most authoritative pricing document in the whole dental category, because it is the only major vendor that publishes prices at all. accessed 2026-10-07 · confidence: high | verified |
| Open Dental | RESOLVED CONFLICT — the $179/$129 figure and the $199/$149 figure are the same rate at two different points in time. Not a scope difference, not a bad source. A price rise. | $179 | — | Superseded. $179 was the US initial rate for offices that signed BEFORE 2 February 2026; those offices keep $179 for their full 12-month initial term. The reduced (13th month onward) rate at that time was $129. Current rates are $199 initial / $149 reduced. | 2026 | RESOLVED via the vendor's own fee page, which explicitly grandfathers the old rate — "Offices which started at an initial rate of $179 (prior to February 2nd, 2026) will keep that rate for the entire initial 12 month period, rather than $199." accessed 2026-10-07 · confidence: high | verified |
| Open Dental (Open Dental Cloud) | US only, single location, managed cloud hosting. This entry exists because the cloud product CONTRADICTS the most widely repeated selling point about Open Dental — "flat fee, no extra charge for more providers." On the managed cloud product the fee is not flat at all, and it does not replace the support fee either. It is a capacity package charged on top of it. | $520 | $400 | Month-to-month for the hosting package itself, but each location must remain on Open Dental support for the duration of its cloud usage, so the per-location support fee ($199 initial, $149 from month 13) continues in parallel. | 2026 | Open Dental official Open Dental Cloud page — package table read directly from the raw page source on 2026-10-07. The product is in LIMITED RELEASE and US-only, and the vendor states "An official quote will be provided before signup." The vendor's fee page states on the same date that cloud hosting is charged in addition to the support fee. Third-party claims of "$125–159/month cloud hosting" refer to third-party hosts (DentalTek, Darkhorse Tech) or are simply wrong for this product. accessed 2026-10-07 · confidence: high | verified |
Monthly figures show the recurring software cost for the stated profile. One-time covers implementation, training, hardware and migration where applicable. Payment processing fees are tracked separately per product and excluded by rule (section 1).
6. Change log
2026-10-07 — Open Dental cloud pricing restructured; correction logged. The vendor has replaced its per-provider cloud pricing with capacity-based hosting packages ($250 / $520 / $1,300 / $1,850 / $2,370 per month, sized by concurrent sessions and storage), and now states explicitly that the hosting fee is charged in addition to the per-location support fee, which must stay active. Our earlier record cited "$430/month including one provider, plus $150/month per additional provider, plus $18/month per additional session", which no longer appears anywhere on the vendor's page; that figure and the per-provider cloud argument built on it have been withdrawn and are kept only as a documented superseded version. The self-hosted three-year figure is unaffected. Paid training rates on the same page were also corrected — online training is $80/hour and on-site training is $4,325 per day per trainer, not $50/hour — and prepay discounts are now stated per term (5% for 6 months, 10% for 1 year, 15% for 2–3 years).
2026-09-29 — Tiered indexing begins. Pages whose content does not depend on
unverified vendor quotes are now indexable: the three guides, the software-stack overview,
this methodology page, and the Open Dental product page (the only vendor whose figures are
verified line by line, including written confirmation from the vendor). Pages that rank or
price products against each other — the homepage, product index, alternatives, comparisons
and scenario rankings — stay noindex until the remaining vendor data clears
verification. Nothing that is still noindex is listed in our sitemap.
2026-09 — Initial publication: ranking weights v1.0 (features 40% / sentiment 30% / value 20% / transparency 10%), 3-year cost formula v1.0 (payment processing excluded by rule), export freedom and lock-in scales v1.0.
Spot an error? Corrections are welcome and logged. Reach us as an independent editorial team — contact details are on the site footer of the live domain.