Cost of Braces in Singapore (2026): What You Pay, and What Moves the Number

How much do braces cost in Singapore?

At NoFrills Dental, metal or ceramic braces are $3,500 to $6,500 before GST. That is the fee for the treatment from the day the brackets go on to the day they come off, not a per visit charge and not a deposit, and it is the same at every one of our Singapore clinics. Our full price list sets out where every figure on this page comes from.

Across the rest of the market the published dental braces quotes spread much wider. We compiled the table below from the price pages the clinics themselves publish, on the date shown, because a braces price quoted without a source is worth very little when you are trying to budget.

Compiled 28 September 2026 from the published price pages of Casa Dental, Nuffield Dental, Advanced Dental, Align Braces Clinic, Tetra Dental and Orthodontics.com.sg, plus our own. Bases differ: Casa Dental and our own figures are before GST, Nuffield Dental publishes inclusive of 9 per cent GST, and the others do not state. The clear aligner low end is our own Invisalign starting figure.

Why do the quotes vary so much?

On 1 September 2025 the Ministry of Health published Singapore's first dental fee benchmarks: recommended charge ranges for 18 common procedures, from a consultation up to a molar root canal. We went through the full list in our guide to the 2026 dental fee benchmarks. Braces are not on it. Neither are implants, wisdom tooth surgery, veneers or whitening; the Fee Benchmarks Advisory Committee has said surgical and orthodontic procedures are a later phase.

So orthodontics is one of the largest sums a Singaporean household will spend at a dentist, and it is the one with no published reference price at all. That is the honest reason a quote can be $3,000 at one clinic and $8,000 at another for what sounds like the same treatment. Four things explain most of the difference, and only one of them is the clinic being expensive.

1. What is actually wrong. Mild crowding moved with a straightforward appliance is not the same job as a deep bite, an open bite, a crossbite or a buried canine that has to be exposed and pulled into line. The second takes longer, needs more appointments and sometimes needs teeth out first.
2. Which appliance. Metal brackets are the cheapest thing that works. Ceramic costs more because the brackets cost more. Lingual braces are custom made for the inside of your teeth, which is why they sit at the top of every list.
3. Who is treating you and how long it takes. A longer case means more visits, and a specialist orthodontist is usually priced above a general dentist doing straightforward alignment. Some clinics publish two prices for the same appliance for exactly this reason, and a complex bite is work for an orthodontist rather than a price to shop around on.
4. Whether GST is in the number. A quote of $6,500 before GST is $7,085 to pay. A quote of "$6,800 including GST" is $6,239 of dental work. Those two look a few hundred dollars apart and are not. Ask which basis you are being shown, every time.

What does each type of braces cost?

The choice is mostly about visibility and money, because on ordinary crowding the results are broadly comparable. Our own conventional braces and self ligating braces pages go into what each system does mechanically; this is what each one costs.

NoFrills Dental fees, before GST, current as at 6 August 2026. Most adult Smartee cases land between $4,800 and $6,800 all in. We also offer Zenyum and Invisalign First for younger children, and the cost of Invisalign is set out separately.

Where the two genuinely differ is in what they ask of you. Braces are fixed on and work whether or not you cooperate. Aligners come out, which makes them easier to clean around and easier to abandon in a drawer. If you are weighing them against each other rather than against your budget, we compared them properly in Invisalign versus braces, and what clear aligners can and cannot do covers the cases where an aligner is the wrong tool.

What the whole bill looks like, line by line

The course fee is the big number, but it is not the only number. This is a complete lower end and upper end bill with us, including the first set of retainers, which is the part most quotes leave out.

Illustrative, using our published fees as at 6 August 2026 and 9 per cent GST. Assumes one set of clear retainers at the lower end of our retainer range and no extractions. Anything extra your case needs is quoted in writing before it is started, which is what our written treatment plan is for.

Compare that with the cost of a night guard or a denture and braces look enormous. Compare it with what it prevents and the picture changes, which is the section below.

What do you actually pay each month?

Almost nobody pays for braces in one go, and orthodontics is set up that way by design rather than as a favour. With us the money falls at three points.

NoFrills Dental fees, before GST, as at 6 August 2026. These are the payment points across the course, not separate charges to add to the course fee. Where your case sits in the $3,500 to $6,500 range is set out in writing before the brackets go on.

Spread across a course of about 20 months, a $3,500 treatment is roughly $175 a month and a $6,500 treatment is roughly $325 a month, which is exactly why the monthly visit band is $150 to $350. One arithmetic check is worth doing on any advertised monthly figure, at any clinic: multiply it by the number of months quoted and see whether the answer matches the total you were given. A low monthly number over a long course and a higher one over a short course can come to the same money. Compare totals, not months.

Can you pay for braces in instalments in Singapore?

Yes. Whether your clinic spells it instalments or installments, and whether it calls the arrangement a payment plan or simply its fee schedule, the answer is the same, because that is how orthodontics is billed everywhere. The fee is not a lump sum with a payment plan bolted on: it is collected across the appointments you attend over about two years. A clinic saying it offers an instalment plan is usually describing the normal structure rather than a concession.

What differs between clinics is the shape of it. Some take a large down payment and then small monthly amounts; others spread it more evenly. Two published Singapore examples, both checked 28 September 2026: Smilepoint Dental Centre lists student metal braces at $3,950 before GST with instalments of $200 a month, and standard metal braces at $4,550 before GST at $240 a month. WeSmile Dental Care publishes a $128 nett first visit for consultation and records followed by a $1,500 down payment at the bonding appointment. Neo Smiles includes an in-house instalment plan in its student package.

With us the shape is $250 for planning and records, from $500 when the brackets go on, and $150 to $350 at each monthly visit thereafter. There is no separate financing agreement, no interest and no third party, because nothing is being lent to you: you are paying for appointments as you attend them.

1. Ask what the down payment is. A low monthly figure with a $1,500 first payment is a different cash flow from an even spread, even at the same total.
2. Ask whether the monthly amount is fixed or per visit. If you are billed per visit and the case runs long, more visits means more payments.
3. Ask what happens if you miss appointments. Gaps lengthen treatment, and a per visit structure means a longer course costs more.
4. Check the card and insurance angle separately. Some dental plans and employer panels pay a fixed sum towards orthodontics even where they do not cover it fully, and that is worth confirming before you start rather than after.

What do braces cost for a student?

Student rates are a real and widely published part of this market, usually for full time students at local schools, polytechnics and universities, and usually tied to weekday appointments. They are worth asking about anywhere, because the discount is often several hundred dollars on the same treatment.

Competitor packages as published on their own websites and checked 28 September 2026; conditions such as full time student status and weekday appointments apply at those clinics. Our own figure is our standard braces price, not a student promotion, and is before GST.

We do not run a separate student package, and we would rather say that plainly than imply one. Our starting figure is at the lower end of the published student rates above, and where a student case is straightforward it lands near the bottom of our range. For a school age patient the far bigger lever is not a student discount at all, it is the Child Development Account, which is covered below and which no discount can match.

One caution about the cheapest braces price you can find. A package that quotes a headline number and then bills the records, the extractions, the removal appointment and the retainers separately is not the same product as one that does not. Get both in writing and total them before deciding which is cheaper.

Braces at a polyclinic or in the public sector

Polyclinics do not fit braces. What they do is refer you into a public specialist orthodontic service, principally the National Dental Centre Singapore or, for younger patients, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, where subsidised rates apply if the referral is in order. This is the genuinely cheaper route in Singapore, and it comes with a longer wait.

What is actually published is the consultation. At NDCS a subsidised first visit is $33 to $78 against $142 to $186 privately, with a sterile supplies fee of $17 to $18 on top, and GST is absorbed by the government for subsidised patients. The referral letter has to be dated before the consultation for the subsidy to apply. Neither NDCS nor KKH publishes a fee for the orthodontic treatment itself, so anyone quoting you a precise public sector braces price is quoting something that is not on the record. One clinic website does circulate a comparison table of public hospital braces fees, but it is labelled as last updated in 2018 and is eight years old, which is long enough that it should not be relied on for budgeting.

It is worth knowing what the first search result for this query actually is, because most readers will have seen it: a National Dental Centre page carrying a Channel NewsAsia article on adults getting braces. The price ranges in it, metal at about $4,500 to $6,000 and ceramic or self ligating at about $5,000 to $7,000, are attributed to a private orthodontist quoted in the piece rather than to an NDCS fee schedule. They are a reasonable picture of the private market and they are not a public sector price list.

The costs that sit outside the headline price

Every clinic in the table above bills some things separately. None of it is hidden, but it only appears when you read the fee schedule rather than the headline. These are the usual ones.

1. The records before you start. Photographs, models and x-rays are how the plan is made. Ours are inside the $250 planning fee. Elsewhere an OPG runs about $70 to $100 a film and a 3D scan about $150.
2. Extractions to make room. Crowded mouths sometimes need teeth out first. A simple extraction with us is $150 to $350 a tooth, and a check-up before treatment will tell you whether yours needs any.
3. Fixing what the x-ray finds. Brackets do not go onto active decay or untreated gum disease. A filling starts from $100 and scaling and polishing is $100 to $120, and both are cheaper before treatment than after it.
4. Retainers, which are not optional. From $350 a set for clear ones, $300 to $600 an arch for a fixed wire. Teeth move back without them, and the type you are given depends on the case rather than on preference.
5. Breakages. A bracket knocked off by hard food is refitted at a visit. Habitual breakages lengthen the course, which is the real cost of them.
6. Keeping the teeth clean for two years. Braces trap plaque, which is why brushing and flossing around them is a different job. Our braces maintenance guide covers it, and white marks left by poor cleaning are permanent.

Cost per year, and how long the result lasts

Braces are not a purchase with a service life in the way a night guard or a denture is. The appliance is removed after about 20 months and then it is gone. What you keep is the correction, and you keep it for as long as it is retained.

Illustrative and clearly labelled as such. It uses the midpoint of our published course fee, our published retainer fee and a three year replacement assumption for clear retainers. Replacement intervals vary with how you wear and clean them; a fixed retainer at $300 to $600 an arch can last far longer, and we do not hold published audit data on our own patients' retainer lifespans.

The other half of the arithmetic is what stays uncorrected. Crowded and overlapping teeth are harder to clean, and the places a brush cannot reach are where decay and gum disease start. We are not going to claim braces prevent a specific dollar amount of future treatment, because nobody can honestly put a number on that for an individual mouth. What is fair to say is that the cost of straightening is one figure, once, and the cost of repeatedly repairing teeth you cannot clean properly is open ended.

How long do braces actually take?

Treatment time drives cost, so it is worth knowing what the evidence says rather than what a brochure says. A systematic review in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics in 2016 pooled 22 studies covering 1,089 patients and found a mean treatment time with fixed braces of 19.9 months, with a mean of about 18 appointments across the course.

The second finding is the one that surprises people. A 2020 meta-analysis in Progress in Orthodontics, covering 2,969 adolescents and 1,380 adults, found no significant difference in treatment duration between them. The one exception was pulling a palatally displaced canine into line, which took about 3.8 months longer in adults. The authors rate confidence in the estimates as low because the underlying studies carry a risk of bias, so treat it as a strong steer rather than a guarantee. Being 34 rather than 14 is not, by itself, a reason to expect a longer or more expensive course.

If you are comparing against aligners on time rather than money, we set out the measured timelines in how long Invisalign really takes. One thing to treat carefully when you are comparing prices: a six month or three month advertised course is almost always cosmetic alignment of the front teeth only, not correction of how the teeth meet. It is a smaller job at a smaller price, and it is not the same purchase.

Is it too late to get braces?

This is the question behind a great many braces price searches, and the numbers say no. Adult orthodontic patients at the National Dental Centre Singapore rose from 244 in 2011 to 375 in 2017, a jump of more than 50 per cent, and the centre has averaged 312 adult orthodontic patients a year over the following six years, with preliminary data suggesting a further 4 to 5 per cent rise since 2020. Orthodontists there and at KKH report patients in their 60s and 70s.

Cost is not the reason to hesitate either, because as the pooled evidence above shows, being 35 rather than 15 does not make the course longer, and length is what drives the fee. What does change with age is the mouth around the teeth. Adult bone remodels more slowly, gum support may already be reduced, and old fillings, crowns and missing teeth all have to be planned around. That is a reason for a careful assessment, not a reason to assume a higher price.

The bite problems people most often ask about, an overbite where the upper front teeth sit too far over the lower, an underbite where the lower jaw sits forward, a crossbite, or simple crowding, are treated at any adult age. Where a jaw discrepancy is skeletal rather than dental, the plan may involve surgery alongside the braces, which is a different conversation and a different figure. Whether you need braces at all is the right first question, and it is answered by looking rather than by reading.

What CHAS, MediSave and the CDA pay towards braces

This is the shortest section on the page for three of the four schemes, and the most useful one for the fourth.

Scheme positions as at 28 September 2026. Which scheme pays for which treatment, across the board, is set out in our guide to insurance versus MediSave versus CHAS.

The CDA is the one worth acting on. Every eligible Singaporean child receives a First Step Grant of $5,000, or $10,000 for a third or subsequent child born from 18 February 2025, and deposits are matched by the government up to a cap. That money can pay for early orthodontic treatment at any of our four Singapore clinics. It also has a deadline: the account closes on 31 December of the year your child turns 12, and whatever is left moves to the Post-Secondary Education Account, which cannot be spent on dental care. Braces started at 13 cannot be paid for from an account that shut at 12.

On insurance, the short answer is to check rather than hope. Most personal and corporate dental plans we see treat orthodontics as excluded or cap it very low, because it is classed as elective. Bring the policy to the consultation and we will write a pre-treatment estimate you can submit, which is far easier to get a decision on than a receipt after the fact.

Legitimate ways to pay less

1. Choose metal. Ceramic brackets cost more and do the same work. Across the market the gap is around $1,000 to $1,500. If appearance during treatment matters less to you than the bill, this is the largest saving available and it costs you nothing clinically.
2. Use the CDA while it is open. For a child this is real government money that pays for braces. It closes at the end of the year they turn 12, so an early orthodontic assessment is worth booking rather than deferring.
3. Ask about the subsidised public route. With a referral letter dated before the appointment, a subsidised first consultation at the National Dental Centre is $33 to $78 against $142 to $186 private, and GST is absorbed by the government for subsidised patients. NDCS does not publish orthodontic treatment fees, so we will not quote a figure we cannot source, but it is a conversation worth having with your polyclinic if budget is the deciding factor. Waiting times are longer.
4. Compare totals, on the same GST basis, in writing. Two quotes are only comparable when both include records, both include retainers and both state whether GST is in the number. A written quote that omits retainers is not a cheaper treatment, it is a shorter list.
5. Do not buy braces from the internet. Mail order aligners and the self fitted kits sold online are the one false economy in this market. They move teeth without anyone examining the roots or the bone first, and the damage is expensive to undo. We wrote about the dangers of DIY braces for a reason.

Choosing on price without regretting it

Price is a legitimate deciding factor, and we are not going to pretend otherwise on a page about cost. What is worth checking is that the cheap quote and the expensive quote are for the same thing. Ask all four of these before you commit, at any clinic.

1. Is the figure the total for the whole course, or the first payment?
2. Does it include records, adjustment visits, the removal appointment and the first retainers?
3. Is GST in the number?
4. What happens to the fee if the case takes longer than planned?

Then look at what the treatment is for. Braces are not a cosmetic add on like whitening or veneers: they change how the teeth meet, which is why an assessment looks at the bite and not only at the front six. Whether braces change your face and whether they hurt are the two questions we get most often after cost, and both have honest answers on this site.

If you would rather read the whole thing end to end before booking anything, the braces guidebook covers the treatment itself, and what happens at a first visit covers the appointment.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: Ministry of Health, Guide to Dental Treatment Costs and fee benchmarks; Tsichlaki and colleagues, How long does treatment with fixed orthodontic appliances last? A systematic review, American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 2016; Abbing, Koretsi, Eliades and Papageorgiou, Duration of orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances in adolescents and adults, Progress in Orthodontics, 2020; National Dental Centre Singapore, Consultation Charges; LifeSG, Baby Bonus Child Development Account; Ministry of Social and Family Development, Baby Bonus Approved Institutions; Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, current GST rates. Competitor figures compiled from published clinic price pages on 28 September 2026. Our own fees current as at 6 August 2026. Fees change; confirm before you attend.

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