A retired engineer from Yorkshire arrived at an Antalya clinic earlier this year holding two quotes. One said £990 per jaw for All-on-4 implants. The other said £1,750. He wanted to know why he should pay nearly double.
He shouldn’t have been comparing them at all. The cheaper quote covered four implants and nothing else — no abutments, no temporary bridge, no final prosthesis. Added together, the real figure was over £3,000. The clinic simply hadn’t itemised it.
This is the most common way patients get caught out on dental work abroad, and it has little to do with which country they travel to. “From £X” figures get compared as though they cover the same things. They rarely do.
What a full mouth implant quote should include
Five items should appear in any written quote. If some are missing, that quote is not comparable to one where they are present.
- The implants themselves — with the brand and model named, not just “titanium”
- Abutments, the connectors between implant and bridge
- A temporary bridge, fitted same-day or within a few days
- The final prosthesis, and what material it is made from
- CT imaging, the surgery itself, sedation if used, and all follow-up appointments
The last one catches people out. Some quotes cover surgery only, with the final bridge billed separately on a second trip.
What the numbers look like
Smile Dental Turkey, an AACI-accredited clinic in Antalya operating since 2009, publishes the following per-jaw pricing inclusive of all five items above:
| Procedure (per jaw) | Implants placed | Antalya price | Typical UK private |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-on-4 | 4 | £1,750 | £7,000–£13,000 |
| All-on-6 | 6 | £2,351 | £9,000–£16,000 |
| All-on-8 | 8 | £3,500 | £12,000–£20,000 |
For a full mouth restoration across both jaws, totals generally fall between £3,500 and £11,600 depending on implant brand and how many fixtures the patient’s bone volume will support. The Yorkshire patient, quoted £28,000 privately in the UK, completed treatment for £6,310.
The gap is largely explained by property costs, staffing and laboratory margins rather than by the hardware, which is often identical.
Why the implant brand matters more than the price
The clinics operating at the credible end of this market place Straumann, Nobel Biocare or Neodent systems. Not because they are cheapest — a single Straumann SLActive fixture costs the clinic around £788 — but because of what happens years later.
“If a component needs attention in five years, a dentist in Manchester can order the part,” says D.D.S., Ph.D. Özkan Özkaynak, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with 25 years’ experience. “With an unbranded regional system, often they can’t, and the patient needs the whole thing redone. That is the single most common reason people arrive at our clinic with problems from treatment done elsewhere.”
Patients are advised to request the system name and batch numbers in writing and keep them. It costs nothing, and it is the difference between a repairable restoration and a disposable one.
Where full mouth implants are not the answer
The treatment is not suitable for everyone, and marketing rarely says so.
- Insufficient bone volume may require grafting or a sinus lift first, adding both cost and a healing period before implants can be placed.
- Uncontrolled diabetes and heavy smoking both raise failure rates significantly. Clinics that never decline patients on these grounds should be treated with caution.
- Implants slow the bone remodelling that follows extractions. They do not prevent it entirely.
- Two trips are normally required, three to six months apart. Any clinic promising a permanent full-arch result in five days is describing a temporary bridge.
Before booking anything
Patients considering treatment abroad are advised to send a recent panoramic X-ray to two or three clinics and compare the written treatment plans rather than the headline prices.
Accreditation is worth checking properly. Smile Dental Turkey holds accreditation from the American Accreditation Commission International against its International Accreditation Standards for Dental Organizations, alongside ISO 9001:2015 certification. AACI is itself accredited by ISQua’s External Evaluation Association — the body that assesses healthcare accreditors, which distinguishes it from marks a clinic can issue or purchase for itself.
The clinic publishes its full breakdown of full mouth dental implants in Turkey including per-brand costs and a 2026 UK comparison, with no gated pricing.
One rule holds across the market: a quote dramatically cheaper than everything else is not a bargain. It is an incomplete quote, and the question to ask is what has been left out.