Clear aligners · prices read at source · no dentist reviewer
Count the trays. Then count the questions.
Crooked in the first tray, even in the last.
Illustration. How many trays a course needs — and whether trays are the right treatment at all — is decided by the dentist or orthodontist who examines you.
Clear aligners are sold as a product and delivered as a medical procedure. Tray Count keeps the two apart: prices read off the sellers' own pages with the date attached, the closure of three mail-order brands set out as dated record, and the regulators quoted in their own words rather than paraphrased.
Who says what about buying aligners by post
Quoted in full from each body’s own page, with the date we read it
US Food and Drug Administration
“The FDA has not authorized clear aligners that are marketed directly to consumers without supervision by a dentist or orthodontist.”
General Dental Council (UK)
“At present, there is no effective substitute for a physical, clinical examination as the foundation for that assessment.”
statement on direct-to-consumer orthodontic treatment, read 24 September 2026
American Association of Orthodontists
“Moving teeth is a medical procedure that involves complex biological processes and should be monitored in-person by a trained dental professional.”
Tray notes
All 12 notes →Aligner chewies: what they do, and whether you need them
A small soft cylinder you bite to press a tray fully onto your teeth. How often to use one depends on whose advice you read.
How clear aligners work, from the first scan to the last tray
Plastic trays, each worn for a week or two and each a fraction different. The planning and checking are the real treatment.
What before-and-after photos cannot tell you
They are marketing, they are selected, and since 2024 the rules about how they may be gathered have teeth. Here is how to read a pair of pictures, and what to ask for instead.
Retainers after aligners: the cost nobody quotes you
Teeth drift, so a course does not end with the last tray — it ends with a habit. Here are the retainer prices sellers publish, and why they add up to more than people expect.
How to clean clear aligners without wrecking them
Rinse them every time they come out, keep the water warm rather than hot, and read what the cleaning products actually cost before you commit to a branded routine.
Why this site counts rather than recommends
Three of the best-known names in mail-order teeth straightening stopped selling within three years of each other, and two of them left a regulator to work out what happened to the customers. That is not a reason to avoid clear aligners. It is a reason to be precise about what you are buying, from whom, and with whose supervision.
So Tray Count does three narrow things well. It prints prices only where a seller publishes them, with the date they were read. It keeps a dated record of who stopped trading and what their customers were told. And it quotes the FDA, the General Dental Council and the American Association of Orthodontists in full, so you can weigh their words instead of ours.
What you will not find here
No star ratings on companies whose treatment we have not received. No "average cost" assembled from other people's blog posts. No before-and-after photographs, real or generated — a pair of pictures tells you about somebody else's teeth and nothing about yours. No claim that any of this has been checked by a dentist, because it has not.
The one recommendation we repeat costs us money rather than earning it: get examined in person before you buy an aligner course, whatever it costs and whoever sells it.
Where to start
If you want the numbers, start with what clear aligners cost, read at source. If you are here because a brand you trusted disappeared, start with what happened to Byte, SmileDirectClub and Candid. If you are already wearing trays and something is puzzling you, the tray notes cover the ordinary daily questions — attachments, cleaning, coffee, pain, retainers.