For patients
One place to find and compare dentists in the UK
NHS and private practices across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own page. This page explains what Dentist Locator is, what it does for you, and why we built it.
What is Dentist Locator?
A directory of UK dental practices, NHS and private, in one place. Three parts to it.
Dental practices
NHS and private practices across all four nations, each with its own page.
Fields of patient info per page
Opening hours, treatments, the team, whether it takes NHS patients, photos, prices where a practice publishes them, and a link to book online.
Treatments to filter by
Narrow the list by treatment, by whether a practice takes NHS patients, opens on a Saturday or has step-free access, then look at what is left side by side.
What it does for you
NHS and private in one search
The NHS website lists the practices that do NHS work. Private practices each have their own website. Here they sit in the same list, so one search shows you both, with the same details on each.
- Opening hours
- Takes NHS patientsYes
- Open SaturdayYes
- Step-free accessYes
- Patient rating★★★★★ 4.8 312 reviews
- Opening hours
- Takes NHS patientsPrivate only
- Open SaturdayYes
- Step-free accessYes
- Patient rating★★★★★ 4.7 198 reviews
Whether a practice provides NHS care, and whether it is accepting new NHS patients
The NHS publishes a record of dental activity every month. We take each release as it comes out and use it to show whether a practice provides NHS treatment. In England we also read each practice's profile on the NHS website every week, which says whether it is accepting new NHS patients and when the practice last confirmed it. Every page says when each was last checked.
Star ratings, and how practices are ordered
Star ratings come from patients on public review platforms. A practice with a handful of five-star reviews does not outrank one with hundreds, because the order allows for how many reviews sit behind each score. We don't write, invite, pay for or edit reviews, and no plan can change them.
Where each fact came from
Every page names its sources and carries the date it was last checked. Where we could not verify a detail, we left it blank rather than guess.
Free, with no account
Searching is free and you do not need an account. Practices can pay to add photos, a description and other details to their own page. That never changes a rating. How practices can pay is set out in our commercial disclosure.
Why we built it
Looking for a dentist meant checking several places. NHS practices are on the NHS website. Private practices each have their own site. The big dental groups list their own practices. None of them showed the whole picture for a town.
What did not exist was one directory that puts NHS and private together, holds this much detail on every practice, and says where each fact came from. So we built it.
Where the information comes from
- Public regulators The regulator for each nation: the Care Quality Commission in England, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and the RQIA in Northern Ireland, and in Scotland Public Health Scotland's list of NHS dental practices. This is where each practice, its address and its registration come from.
- Practices' own websites The details a practice publishes itself: contact details, opening hours, treatments. Where a practice keeps its own page here up to date, the page says so.
- NHS data The NHS's monthly record of dental activity, which tells us whether a practice is doing NHS work. In England, each practice's profile on the NHS website, read every week, which says whether it is accepting new NHS patients.
We went to a lot of effort to check everything we could source. Where we could not match a detail to a practice as accurately as we wanted, we did not publish it. A blank on a page means we could not verify it. If you spot a mistake, tell us and we will fix it.
More on how the site is put together: how we work, our data sources and methodology.