Dental implants vs dentures: an honest comparison

We place implants for a living, so treat this page accordingly. What follows is built from figures and from the cases where we have advised patients against implants, which happens more often than the marketing in this field would suggest.

Dental implants vs dentures: the three options, not two

Most comparisons set implants against dentures as though there were nothing between them. There are three positions:

A conventional denture, resting on the gum. Around £1,600 for a full arch. Available in six weeks. Comes out.

A denture held by implants, from £5,900 per arch. Two to four implants with attachments that stop it lifting. Still comes out at night, but does not move while it is in.

A fixed bridge on implants, from £12,500 per arch. Screwed in, cleaned underneath, never removed by you.

The middle option is the one most people have not heard of and the one many of them actually want. It solves the complaint — movement — without paying for the complaint they do not have.

Where dentures are genuinely the better answer

Upper dentures often work well. The palate gives suction across a broad area, and a well-made upper denture stays up for most people. If your upper denture is comfortable and stable, replacing it with implants buys you the loss of the palate coverage and better chewing, which is worth something but is not urgent.

When health or age makes elective surgery unwise. A denture requires no healing and no anaesthetic.

When money is genuinely the constraint. £1,600 that you have beats £12,500 that you do not. Stretching to implant treatment that leaves someone without a financial cushion is not a service to them, and we have talked people out of it.

When time is short. A denture in six weeks against a fixed arch in five months matters if there is an event.

Where dentures fail, and why it is not the dentist’s fault

Lower dentures. Almost universally.

There is no palate to grip, the tongue lifts the denture from inside, and the ridge it sits on is the fastest-shrinking bone in the body once the teeth are gone. After fifteen years there may be almost no ridge left. A remake produces a better-fitting denture on a worse foundation, which is why the third and fourth attempts rarely satisfy.

If you have been told that the next lower denture will be better, ask what has changed about the ridge. Usually nothing has.

The bone argument, stated carefully

Dentures do not preserve bone. They sit on the ridge and press on it, and pressure accelerates resorption rather than preventing it. Implants transmit load into the bone in the way roots did, and bone that is loaded is maintained.

This is true and it is often overstated in advertising. The bone loss is slow, it is not painful, and for someone in their late seventies it may not be a decisive consideration. For someone in their fifties facing thirty years of denture wear, it is.

The ten-year arithmetic

Comparing a one-off price with a one-off price is misleading, because one of them is consumed and one is maintained. Taking a lower arch as the example:

A denture at £1,800, plus relines every two or three years at roughly £1,400 across the decade, plus a remake at around year seven at £1,800, plus adhesives and cleaning products at some £700. Around £5,700 over ten years, ending with a denture that fits a ridge which has continued to shrink.

An implant-retained denture at £5,900, plus maintenance and replacement attachment inserts at some £1,400, and negligible product costs. Around £7,400 over ten years, ending with something that still works.

The full table, including the fixed-arch comparison, is on the costs page.

That gap is real but it is not enormous, and it closes further over fifteen years. It does not make implants cheap. What it does is dispose of the idea that dentures are a tenth of the price — over a decade they are closer to three-quarters of it.

The question worth asking yourself

Not “which is better”, which has no general answer, but: what specifically is wrong with what I have?

If a denture moves, implants with attachments fix that for £5,900 and you do not need a fixed arch.

If a denture is uncomfortable because it covers the palate, a fixed upper arch or four implants supporting a horseshoe denture fixes that; two implants will not.

If you have no denture yet and are facing the decision for the first time, the honest advice is to try a denture first in the upper jaw, and to think hard before accepting a lower one — because the lower is the one that will disappoint you, and it is the one implants transform.

A consultation is £95 including a 3D scan, and roughly one in six ends with us recommending the cheaper option.