Price tops how patients pick a cosmetic provider. Does posting prices help?

Who this is for

This is for the physician or medical professional who owns a plastic surgery or aesthetic medicine practice with self-pay cosmetic patients, including a dermatology practice, cosmetic dental practice or med spa, whether physician, nurse, physician assistant, or other clinician. It is also for the operations lead who writes treatment pages and sets the consultation fee. That person also trains the front desk to answer price questions, so the guidance below covers both jobs.

What we found

The American Society for Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS), a society of dermatologic surgeons, surveyed US consumers online in 2023. Of those consumers, 33% named price as a top factor in choosing a provider, more than named any other factor.¹

One plastic surgeon, Dr. Jonathan Kaplan, put a price estimator on his practice's website. In his study of its first year, consultation patients who had already seen his prices were 41% more likely to book a procedure than the rest of his consultation patients.^2,3 He also founded BuildMyBod, the company that sells the estimator.³

How much does price weigh when consumers pick a cosmetic provider?

Price was the most-named factor in choosing a provider in the society's 2023 consumer survey, fielded online from May 11 to 30. Specialty and before-and-after photos followed, at 23% each. Referrals came next: physician referral and friend referral each drew 22%. Level of licensure, meaning the kind of license the practitioner holds, drew 21%.¹

The society's 2016 survey gathered answers from 7,322 consumers through a blind online survey in spring 2016. Half of them, 50%, named price as a factor in selecting a practitioner. Board certification mattered too. The physician's board-certified specialty was named by 40% of consumers.⁴

How do aesthetic prices vary by patient and by region?

In a 2024 article on service mix, the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa), which represents med spa owners, gave sample neurotoxin prices. Neurotoxins (Botox, Dysport, Xeomin, and others) relax the muscles that cause wrinkles and lines. In 2024, AmSpa's example put a volume-based med spa at $10 per unit and premium med spa pricing closer to $12 or $13. In the same example, a membership program lowered the premium price for VIP customers.⁵

AmSpa put the average patient spend at $536 per visit in 2022.⁶ For more about what a medspa visit brings in, see medspa spending data.

The Real Social Company's MedSpa Weekly newsletter relayed patient-transaction data from Guidepoint Qsight, a market data company. In Qsight's data, neurotoxins made up 35% of new patients. For the third quarter of 2026, the newsletter put the average neurotoxin transaction for a male patient at $529. Men received 10% to 15% more units per visit than women on average, while paying the same price per unit.⁷

Posted surgical prices also vary by region. A 2023 study appeared in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, published by Oxford University Press for The Aesthetic Society. Its abstract reports a significant price difference between regions for every procedure studied except breast augmentation and liposuction. For those two surgeries, the regional difference observed was not statistically significant and could have been chance.⁸

The authors conclude that "publicly reported prices provide greater insight than national averages into specific pricing factors and strategies that can be employed when setting surgical prices."⁸ We'd argue owners setting fees could treat competitors' posted prices as a regional benchmark and adjust accordingly, which may be positive or negative for patients.

Posted prices can push prices up as well as down. In 1993, Denmark's competition authority began publishing the prices each firm charged for ready-mixed concrete. Within less than a year, average prices of the reported grades rose 15% to 20%, while annual inflation ran at 1% to 2%. The authors trace the rise to firms using the published prices to coordinate.⁹

The same worry has reached US rents. In October 2025, New York made it illegal for landlords to set rents with software that pools price data from two or more competing landlords.¹⁰

Patients can gain from seeing prices too. In a 2014 JAMA study of 502,949 people insured through 18 US employers, payments in claims from 2010 to 2013 were 13.93% lower for lab tests and 13.15% lower for advanced imaging when patients looked up prices before care.¹¹ On our reading, posted prices help patients compare, and they also let practices see each other's fees, which can pull prices up. Which effect wins likely depends on how closely nearby practices watch each other's prices.

Do patients who see prices before a consultation book more often?

They did in one surgeon's first year with an online estimator. Becker's Hospital Review, a trade publication for hospital and health system leaders, reported the results in 2016 from a study by Dr. Kaplan, a board-certified plastic surgeon in San Francisco.^2,3 Visitors to his website could submit a wishlist, a request for a breakdown of costs tailored to Dr. Kaplan's medical fees. The estimate arrived by email only after the visitor left a name, email address and phone number, and his office followed up on every wishlist. Visitors who found his fees beyond their budget still joined his email list.^2,3

In its first year, with no money spent on advertising, the website received 412 wishlists from 208 unique consumers. Of those who submitted a wishlist, 17.8% came in for a consultation, and 62% of them booked a procedure. That adds up. Becker's reports that leads from the estimator generated more than $92,000 in revenue for the practice that year.²

Dr. Kaplan split his own consultation patients into two groups by whether they had seen his prices through the estimator before they came in. Those who had seen them booked a procedure 41% more often.^2,3 Patients who saw prices first booked more, but causation isn't proven. The study also found that posting prices brought greater efficiency and fewer consultations ending in surprise medical bills.² Time matters. On our reading, each of those consultations also takes surgeon, owner or team time to discuss a price some patients are surprised by. Some of those patients were never going to book at that price, which only became clear in the office. The website could have made it clear earlier, at lower cost.

Which federal rules reach a practice that posts a price?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid, publishes a provider page on the No Surprises Act. It lists which providers and facilities the requirements cover and which they exclude.¹² Ask your counsel. Whether those requirements apply to a cosmetic visit at a given practice is a legal question that only that practice's own counsel can answer.

For more about how a regulator treated a low advertised price for an elective procedure, see willingness to pay.

What do marketing agencies advise med spas about showing prices?

Two marketing agencies (SkillMammoth and Theory Road) say med spa treatment pages should show prices. SkillMammoth reports that the search "Botox cost" draws 12,100 US searches a month at low competition. Its advice is blunt: "the clinic that publishes its per-unit price answers it."¹³

SkillMammoth also cites an operator who listed green flags for patients choosing where to book. Visible pricing on the website was among them.¹³

Theory Road, a marketing agency for med spas and aesthetic clinics, advises that treatment pages include price ranges, packages, financing, and memberships.¹⁴ Costs matter. To see what financing costs patients and practices, read our piece on patient financing.

We read both agencies' advice as putting the onus on patients to look up prices before they call to book a consultation or appointment.

We might suggest posting the per-unit neurotoxin price with a note that the total depends on the dose. The Aesthetic Surgery Journal authors point owners to nearby practices' posted prices when setting fees.⁸ We'd read competing practices' prices to understand the local market and to weigh what posting your own might do. A price page might show ranges for your most common procedures. Consultation fees, and whether a fee counts toward the procedure when a patient books, are more standard and easier to post.

We'd suggest three small steps for your practice if you want more control over how visible prices shape what patients do. First, ask each new consultation patient whether they saw a price on your website before calling. Their answers show whether posted prices bring in the patients you want, and whether posting prices for more treatments is worth it. Second, before you add an estimator, make sure your front desk can answer each estimate request quickly and follow up with everyone who asked, as Dr. Kaplan's office did.³ Third, if you run a membership like the one in AmSpa's example, consider showing both the standard and member per-unit price. How patients respond can help you decide whether the member discount is worth keeping.

About this review

We read 14 sources in October and November 2026: one federal government page from CMS, one New York State law, three peer-reviewed papers, one trade press report, one surgeon's own column in a trade magazine, two society surveys, and one trade association article. The rest were one newsletter relaying market data, one of our own earlier reviews, and two marketing agency pages. For the 2023 Aesthetic Surgery Journal paper and the 2014 JAMA paper, we read only the abstracts. We report each number under its own publisher. We add, subtract or average nothing across publishers.

The ASDS surveys polled US consumers online in spring 2016 and May 2023. Becker's Hospital Review reported on one plastic surgery practice's first year with an online price estimator, from Dr. Kaplan's study, and his 2016 Modern Aesthetics column gives his own account of the same year. The journal study covers cosmetic surgery prices that practices post publicly. Qsight's data, as relayed in October 2026, covers male neurotoxin spending from 2022 through the third quarter of 2026. AmSpa's per-unit prices are examples from 2024. The concrete study covers Denmark from 1993, and the JAMA study covers claims from 2010 to 2013. The agency pages date from 2026.

Fractional Aesthetics is a growth strategy practice for aesthetic medical businesses.