What we read
Public business listings of 15,702 dental clinics in Australia and New Zealand, and the 858,524 written patient reviews on those listings, collected to Sep 2026.
The clinics' own websites: 6,284 sites, read in Oct 2026. Where a site couldn't be read directly we use public archive copies of it.
Review themes
A theme is something patients raise in their own words, such as being put at ease when nervous, or costs being explained before treatment. A fixed pattern finds every review that may mention it; samples of the matches are then read against a written definition.
A theme is shown only when at least 90% of the sampled matches were genuinely about it, and its count is corrected for the ones that weren't. We use 44 themes. A count is reviews, not people; one review can mention several themes. A theme that mostly appears in 1–2 star reviews is shown as a complaint, not as praise.
“1.8× the city average” compares the share of a clinic's written reviews that mention a theme with the average share across clinics in the same city. We only compare clinics with 20 or more written reviews, in cities with at least 5 of them.
How it compares
On each clinic page, the clinic's own figure sits beside its city's: written reviews against the middle (median) clinic, the share of 1–2 star reviews against the city average, its published check-up price against the middle published price, and opening days or treatments that fewer than half (or a quarter) of the city's clinics have. A row appears only when both figures exist and the city has enough clinics to compare.
What a tick means
A tick is a confirmed fact: the category on its business listing, a statement on the clinic's own website that we checked is a statement (not a blog post or a “we don't”), a page on its website about the treatment, or a detail the clinic set on its listing. A treatment needs two independent sources, or a specialist listing category, to be confirmed. One source is shown as “also mentioned”.
A listing category is not registration. Specialist titles such as orthodontist or periodontist are protected: check a dentist's registration and specialist status on the AHPRA register (Australia) or the Dental Council of New Zealand register.
Business register
For Australian clinics we show the business behind the clinic from the Australian Business Register: the ABN, whether it is active and since when, the kind of entity (company, trust, partnership or sole trader; never its name, which often includes people's names), and when the clinic's business name was registered with ASIC. We match a clinic to a register record only when the ABN is printed on the clinic's own website, or when a registered name is exactly the clinic's name in the same postcode. Source: ABN Lookup bulk extract and ASIC Business Names dataset, Australian Government, licensed under CC BY 3.0 AU.
Health funds, CDBS, ACC and payment
Fund networks, HICAPS, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, payment plans, DVA, ACC and Work and Income quotes are shown as each clinic states them on its own website. Check with your fund, Services Australia or ACC before relying on them.
Prices
Prices are those clinics publish on their own websites (1,956 clinics publish at least one). Where the clinic says “from”, we say “from”. City figures are the middle of each clinic's lowest published price, shown only when 5 or more clinics in the city publish one.
Ratings, hours and order
Ratings are floors that stay true as new reviews arrive, such as “4.5+ stars in 500+ reviews”. A clinic with fewer than 20 reviews shows its review count, not stars.
Opening hours come from the business listing. Hours that look wrong (open all day, closing after 9 pm, or longer than 13 hours) are shown with a caution and never used in a filter.
Lists are ordered by how much evidence we hold about each clinic. No clinic pays to be listed or to change its place.
What we leave out
Whether a clinic is taking new patients, words like “best”, quotes from reviews, photos taken from other sites, and anything we can't trace to a source. Listings that aren't dental clinics, placeholders and copies of the same business are removed.
How AI is used
No AI writes about clinics. AI models help us read: they suggest themes from samples of reviews and check samples of pattern matches against each theme's definition. Everything on a clinic page is a count, a figure or a statement we can trace to the listing, the reviews or the clinic's website.
Corrections
If something is wrong, use “Report a mistake” on the clinic's page. A person checks it against the source and fixes it.