Your French dental practice against peers in your département

What the calculator compares, and against what

You start from your own activity for the year: the fees you collected, all procedures included, as shown in your receipts ledger or the receipts line of your 2035 return (the sole-practice profit form). Assurance Maladie, the national health insurer, does not see all of that. It records procedures listed in the national procedure classification, at the agreed tariff and with any extra fees, but not freely priced care: implants, unreimbursed periodontics, orthodontics started after 16, whitening. DREES, the health ministry’s statistics office, says these are “very poorly measured by public statistics”. So the calculator asks for that share, removes it, and compares the rest, like for like, with three averages: your specialty in your département, in your region and in France.

The averages cover “full-time active” practitioners: under 65, with a full year of private practice under the national agreement. Newly installed dentists, those over 65 and hospital doctors seeing private patients in hospital are left out. It is a population working close to capacity, worth remembering if you practise part time.

Then come management ratios: fees per chair, per day worked, per full-time staff member, and the weight of staff, dental laboratory and rent in receipts. Enter your costs and the profit is yours; leave them blank and it is estimated with the cost ratio of practices of a similar size, taken from the 2024 accounts of members of UNASA, the federation of approved management associations. Finally, that profit is placed in the DREES distribution of private dentists’ income.

Why the département matters so much

Two general dentists billing exactly the same amount sit in very different places depending on where they work. At €233,004, Paris has the lowest average in France; Haute-Saône has the highest, €447,855, 1.92 times as much. A practice at €302,480 is 30 % above the Paris average and 32 % below the Haute-Saône one.

The driver is less patients’ wealth than the number of dentists. Across the 96 départements of mainland France, we computed the correlation between general dentists per 100,000 residents and their average fees: -0.77. The denser the département, the more demand is shared and the lower the average per dentist. Paris has 102 general dentists per 100,000 people, France 55. It is also why the national average quoted in most articles on the subject tells you so little: it blends markets that have nothing in common.

The 27 départements with at least 510 dentists in private practice have their own page, with the split of fees, practitioners’ ages, history since 2015 and the calculator set to that area. The rest stay in the calculator and in the ranking of all 101 départements.

Three specialties, three scales

Specialty	Private practitioners	At agreed tariff	Extra fees	Average fees	Patients a year	Aged 60+
General dentists	38,065	€164,450	€138,030	€302,480	837	19 %
Orthodontists (ODF)	2,084	€245,972	€496,218	€742,190	1,166	24 %
Stomatologists (doctors)	686	€297,157	€231,209	€528,366	1,144	36 %

Orthodontics is a different business: extra fees make up 67 % of fees against 46 % for general dentists, because treatment is largely billed above the reimbursement base. Stomatologists are doctors specialised in the mouth and jaws; they are ageing (36 % are 60 or older) and their number is falling. Oral surgery and oral medicine, two dental specialties, have no statistics of their own: Assurance Maladie counts them with general dentists. Each specialty has its own page: general dentist, orthodontist and stomatologist and oral surgery.

From fees to profit

On €309,713 of average net receipts, the 1,969 dental practices in the 2024 UNASA sample keep €107,474 as profit, 34.7 %. Purchases (supplies, and probably outsourced prosthetics) take 18.8 % of receipts, staff 10.8 %, rent 4.6 %, personal social contributions and deductible CSG 15.6 %. The calculator compares your ratio with practices in the same quarter of receipts, because the structure shifts with size: the smallest practices pay proportionally more rent and contributions, the largest more staff. The guide to the cost ratio has the detail, and the one on dental nurse pay prices the biggest line after purchases.

Placing your income

For income, a distribution does exist. In September 2026 DREES published 2021 earnings of private dentists: average €118,100, median €93,700, a quarter below €57,500, a quarter above €145,700, one in ten above €218,700. The gap between women (€94,900) and men (€137,700) remains wide. The calculator interpolates between those published points to place your profit; above the top decile or below the bottom one it says nothing more, as no source does. The guide to dentists’ income covers these figures and Insee’s.

Ten years of average fees

Year	General dentists	Orthodontists	Stomatologists
2015	€240,376	€537,118	€305,885
2019	€258,551	€625,423	€348,466
2020	€247,695	€604,939	€331,015
2021	€293,340	€655,561	€401,843
2023	€299,343	€702,234	€481,566
2025	€302,480	€742,190	€528,366

Between 2015 and 2025, average fees rose by +25.8 % for general dentists and +38.2 % for orthodontists, in current euros. The 2020 dip matches the spring closure of practices outside emergencies; the 2021 rebound matches the roll-out of “100% Santé” dental care, which capped prices on many crowns and dentures. Since then the general dentist average has crept up: +1.0 % between 2023 and 2025.

What these figures do not tell you

An average is not a standard. It shows neither the spread, which Assurance Maladie does not publish for fees, nor quality of care, nor how profitable any one practice is. Where a département has fewer than five practitioners in a specialty, nothing is published (statistical confidentiality), and the calculator falls back on the regional average. No public cost statistics exist for stomatologists, so the dentists’ benchmark is used and flagged. Results are indicative estimates and replace neither your accountant nor your approved management association. The method lists every source, formula and test.

Départements in detail