What clear aligners cost, read off the sellers' own pages

Searching for the price of clear aligners returns a wall of confident ranges. Almost none of them can be traced to a company that actually charges the money. This page takes the opposite approach: every figure below was read on the seller's own website on 24 September 2026, or comes from a regulator's published record, and each one is labelled with what it includes and what it leaves out.

One number is missing on purpose. The best-known brand in this market publishes no price at all, and that absence is the single most useful fact on the page.

What a clear aligner course is, and what the price is for

A course of clear aligners is a run of thin, removable plastic trays. Each tray is shaped slightly differently from the last, you wear one for a set period and then swap to the next, and the sequence is designed to walk the teeth along a planned path. Align Technology, which makes Invisalign, tells teenage patients to wear their aligners "20 to 22 hours per day, removing them only to eat, drink anything other than water, and brush and floss".

What you are buying, then, is three separate things bundled into one price: a treatment plan, a stack of manufactured trays, and some amount of supervision by a licensed clinician. The three can be split apart, and the difference between an at-home plan and a course run from a dental chair is mostly a difference in how much of the third thing you get.

The US Food and Drug Administration is blunt about the category: clear aligners are prescription devices, "meaning they are only safe to use under the supervision of a licensed practitioner, such as a dentist or orthodontist". That sentence is the reason the cheapest option on this page is not automatically the best-value one.

What the sellers actually publish

Two mail-order sellers put prices on their own home pages, and both were showing a discount on the day we read them. AlignerCo listed its All-Day plan at $725, struck through from $1,095, and its NightOnly plan at $925, struck through from $1,295; its impression kit was $29.99, down from $75. NewSmile listed one plan, Fast Track Aligners, at $1,095, struck through from $1,795, described as including the impression kit, a 3D image, the aligners, remote monitoring and whitening.

Those struck-through figures matter. A promotional price is real while it lasts and meaningless as a benchmark: the list prices behind them are $1,095, $1,295 and $1,795, and a course bought in a different week may cost any of those.

The fourth bar on the board is history rather than an offer. When the New York Attorney General settled with SmileDirectClub in December 2024, the settlement notice described the company's typical payment structure as "a $250 up-front payment, followed by 26 monthly installment payments of approximately $89 per month, for a total of more than $2,500". That is what the biggest mail-order aligner brand charged before it closed — and it sits close to the top of the same axis as the survivors.

Night-only plans cost more, not less

AlignerCo's cheaper plan is the one you wear for 22 hours a day; the night-only plan, worn 10 hours a day, costs $200 more and the company's own page gives it a longer window — 6 to 8 months against 4 to 6 for the all-day plan. That is the trade the category makes: less wear time is bought with more weeks and more money, not fewer trays at a discount. Both windows are the seller's own published claims about its own product, and neither is a promise about your teeth.

Why Invisalign has no price on this page

Because Align Technology does not publish one. Its own cost page says "your doctor will determine the cost of your treatment based on how complex your case is and how many aligners you need", that "pricing is independently determined by the doctor and may vary based on your case", and that "in most cases, the cost of Invisalign treatment is comparable to the cost of braces". The manufacturer does not publish a price, so neither do we.

Every specific Invisalign figure in circulation therefore comes from somewhere other than the company. Some of those sources are worth reading with their provenance attached. Humana's consumer page on aligner coverage, for example, cites a range of $1,800–$9,500 — but it credits that figure to Authority Dental, not to its own claims data or to Align. Quoted that way it is a third party's published estimate, which is a different kind of thing from a price.

The practical consequence is that the only Invisalign number that means anything to you is the one on a written quote from the practice that examined you. Two practices on the same street can price the same case differently, and nothing obliges either of them to match a figure you found online.

What a published price leaves out

None of the figures above buys you the examination that should come first. The FDA tells consumers to "make sure you receive an evaluation by a dentist or orthodontist, preferably in-person to determine whether clear aligners are appropriate for you" and to "attend recommended appointments during treatment". An examination, X-rays and a hygiene appointment are separate costs, and they are the costs that rule out the problems aligners must not be moved on top of.

Retainers are the other gap. Teeth drift back, so a course does not end with the last tray. AlignerCo publishes retainer prices on its own site: $125 for a one-time set (down from $150, including an impression kit worth $59.99 per that page), or $110 for the first set on a twice-yearly subscription and $100 for each set after. Buy aligners at $725 and replace retainers twice a year on that subscription and the retainers overtake the treatment in the fourth year — $210 in the first year, then $200 a year after it.

Three more things a price rarely spells out:

• Refinements. If the teeth do not land where the plan said, extra trays are needed. Whether they are included, and for how long, is a term to read before you pay — not after.
• Attachments. Some cases need small tooth-coloured bumps bonded to the teeth so the tray has something to push against. They are placed and removed in a chair, which a mail-order plan by definition cannot do.
• What happens if the seller stops trading. For three brands in this market, this was not a hypothetical.

Paying for it: instalments, insurance and tax-free accounts

One of the two at-home sellers publishes monthly figures: AlignerCo's own page lists its All-Day plan at $60/mo through Affirm or $92/mo through Partial.ly. NewSmile's page showed only the one-time price on the day we read it. Whether a plan is interest-free, and what happens if you miss a payment, is set by the lender, not the aligner company.

On insurance, Align's own resource says "you may qualify for up to $3,000 in coverage for orthodontic treatment, including Invisalign aligners" but attaches the necessary caveat: "how much coverage you can expect will depend on your coverage type, plan, and provider." Orthodontic benefits are usually a separate lifetime maximum rather than part of the annual one, and plenty of adult plans exclude orthodontics entirely. The only way to know is to read your own plan document, or ask your insurer in writing what it pays toward case-type orthodontics.

Align also notes that "you can use your FSA or HSA to pay for Invisalign treatment using tax-free dollars". That is a route to paying less tax on the money, not a discount on the treatment.

UK readers have a narrower field than this page suggests. The two sellers above quote in dollars and ship in North America; NHS orthodontic treatment for adults is rarely available on cosmetic grounds, so a UK course is generally private and quoted by the practice. The General Dental Council's position applies whoever sells the trays: remote or not, the service "falls within the legal definition of dentistry so can only be performed by dentists and dental care professionals who are registered with the GDC". Checking a name on the GDC register costs nothing and takes a minute.

The first step that costs nothing extra

If you take one thing from this page, take this: book an in-person examination before you buy any aligner course, including a cheap one. No aligner seller pays us to say that, and none of them is better off if you do it. A dentist looking at your mouth and your X-rays can see the gum disease, decay and bite problems that have to be dealt with before teeth are moved — the kinds of things the FDA lists among the risks of unsupervised aligners, alongside "new or worsening dental pain", "bite problems", "worsening tooth misalignment" and "new gaps between teeth".

You can arrange that appointment however you like, and the cheapest routes pay us nothing: ring a local practice directly, or — if cost is the barrier to the examination rather than to the treatment — try a dental school clinic or a community health centre, which usually see people for less than a private practice.

What no price can buy

A cheaper course is not a worse course by definition, and an expensive one is not a guarantee of anything. What separates them is who is responsible when something goes wrong, and how easily you can reach that person. The UK's General Dental Council puts the principle plainly: "Should a dentist rely upon information from another source to inform their own clinical judgment, the responsibility for that judgement rests wholly with the prescribing dentist." Before you pay anyone, you should be able to name that dentist.

If you are weighing a specific brand against a chair-side course, the in-office and at-home options compared sets out what each model can and cannot do, and the dated record of the closures explains why the question of who holds your treatment plan is not academic.