What an All-on-4 price actually covers

This guide covers travel, process and cost. It contains no clinical advice.

All-on-4 restores a whole arch on four implants, and it is a genuinely good technique — it is why people who have not eaten properly in years can do so again within a day. The pricing is where it gets confusing: the same phrase is used for a same-day temporary bridge and for a finished permanent one, and the difference between them is thousands of pounds. One question settles it. Ask whether the prosthesis in the price is the temporary or the final one, and what the other one costs.

Why one arch has two prices

The Bucharest figure explicitly covers four implants and a temporary fixed prosthesis. The UK figure explicitly covers the arch including bone augmentation where required and the final permanent restorations. Once you add a permanent prosthesis to the first, the gap narrows — though it stays large, and on both arches it stays very large indeed. Full-arch work remains the category where travelling makes the most financial sense of anything in dentistry.

"All-on-4 from €X" is the most misleading price format in this industry, and the fix takes one sentence: "Please confirm whether that price includes the final prosthesis, and if not, what the final prosthesis costs." Send it before anything else. The reply tells you as much about the clinic as about the money.

What actually happens, and when

Two visits, then. That is the fact that should shape your flights, your leave and your budget — and it is also the reassuring part: nobody is sending you home toothless between stages. The temporary is fixed, not removable, and people eat, work and go to weddings with it.

Four implants or six?

You will see All-on-4 and All-on-6 quoted side by side. More implants generally means better load distribution and a higher price; fewer means less surgery and less cost. Which is right depends on your bone volume and bite, and it is a clinical judgement made after the scan, not a shopping decision. What you can do is ask why the recommended number is the recommended number — a clinician who explains it in terms of your scan is telling you something good about how they work.