Dental costs in Colorado: implants, crowns, braces and more
Colorado's estimates rest on the adult dental rates the state Medicaid agency printed for July 1, 2024; a molar root canal comes to $2,946 before insurance.
You pay for crown in Colorado
$667
$1,285 billed, $617 paid by the plan.
| Estimated dentist charge (full fee) | $2,255 |
| Estimated in-network price | $1,285 |
| Plan pays (50 % after deductible) | $617 |
| Deductible | $50 |
| Colorado Medicaid fee, same codes (2024) | $849 |
Estimate: Colorado Medicaid fee ÷ 42.8 % (Medicaid pay as a share of dentists' charges, ADA HPI 2024). Brought to September 2026 with the dental services price index (BLS). Not a quote.
| CDT code | Service | Count | Medicaid fee, 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| D2740 | Crown, porcelain or ceramic | 1 | $849.16 |
Compiled by Radif Partners · How prices are estimated · Health First Colorado (Colorado Medicaid) dental, administered by DentaQuest fee schedule, ADA ratios of Colorado · not a quote
For Colorado the site estimates a molar root canal at $2,946, a porcelain crown at $2,255, one complete denture at $2,261 and a checkup with cleaning and X-rays at $444, all in September 2026 dollars and before insurance. The base is unusual. The dental fee schedule of Health First Colorado, the state's Medicaid program, is published through its dental administrator in a form this site could not download, so the fees come instead from a document of the state's own rate review, which lists the Medicaid allowable effective July 1, 2024 for 50 of the codes used here. That date is exactly the one the ADA's 2024 ratios describe. Colorado's adult ratio is 42.8 % of dentists' charges, well above the national 29.9 %, which means Medicaid fees there sit closer to what offices charge.
A rate review instead of a fee schedule
Colorado reviews its Medicaid rates on a cycle and publishes the working papers. One of them, Appendix H on dental rates and benchmark ratios, reproduces the adult part of the dental fee schedule with a column headed as the total Medicaid fee-for-service allowable effective July 1, 2024. The site reads its fees from that column. The current schedule is posted only through the program's dental administrator, which blocked every download we attempted, so the price list below has no column for today's Medicaid fee: the state has not been left out, its current file simply could not be read.
Because the document covers the adult tab, codes that the program pays only for children, among them comprehensive orthodontics, are not in it. Teen braces therefore have no Colorado estimate. That says nothing about whether the program covers them; it only means the fee is missing from the document the site uses.
Colorado price of a procedure, plan or no plan
You pay for root canal, molar in Colorado
$864
| Estimated dentist charge (full fee) | $2,946 |
| Estimated in-network price | $1,678 |
| Plan pays (50 % after deductible) | $814 |
| Deductible | $50 |
Where the high ratio leads
A high ratio means each Medicaid dollar stands for fewer dollars of dentist charges, so in Colorado the estimate is the 2024 fee multiplied by 2.34, then by the price index, where the national adult ratio would multiply it by 3.34. The molar root canal shows how it plays out: Colorado's estimate of $2,946 is exceeded by one state among the 25 states that price it, whose median is $1,646. A simple extraction is estimated at $290 and a deep cleaning of the four quadrants at $2,831. The network price a private plan allows is lower in every row, by the gap between the adult private ratio of 73.1 % and the charge ratio.
Prices across Denver, the mountain resorts and the eastern plains are not separated in any public file, so the figure is one average for the state. The root canal page compares the three kinds of teeth, and the insurance calculator runs your own plan on any quote.
Colorado price list, procedure by procedure
| Procedure | Unit | Full fee | In network | Medicaid fee, 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crown | per tooth | $2,255 | $1,285 | $849 |
| Root canal, front tooth | per tooth | $2,124 | $1,210 | $800 |
| Root canal, premolar | per tooth | $2,437 | $1,388 | $918 |
| Root canal, molar | per tooth | $2,946 | $1,678 | $1,109 |
| Full dentures, both arches | both arches | $4,526 | $2,579 | $1,704 |
| Full denture, one arch | one arch | $2,261 | $1,288 | $851 |
| Partial denture | one arch | $2,232 | $1,272 | $840 |
| Simple extraction | per tooth | $290 | $165 | $109 |
| Surgical extraction | per tooth | $463 | $264 | $175 |
| Wisdom teeth, four impacted | four teeth | $3,146 | $1,792 | $1,185 |
| Deep cleaning (scaling and root planing) | full mouth | $2,831 | $1,613 | $1,066 |
| Filling | per tooth | $373 | $213 | $141 |
| Checkup and cleaning | one visit | $444 | $253 | $167 |