Home / Botox Cost Per Unit by City
The honest answer is that Botox in the United States commonly runs somewhere around est. $10 to $25 per unit, and where you land in that range depends more on who is injecting and what city they are in than on anything about you.
Every figure here is an est. range drawn from commonly published US provider pricing. It is not a quote, and a clinic can sit outside it for perfectly good reasons. Use it to sense-check something you have been quoted, not as a price list.
Botox is sold two different ways and the two numbers are not comparable.
Per area sounds simpler and is where people get caught. If a clinic charges a flat rate for the forehead and you need a small dose, you have overpaid. If you need a large dose, that clinic either loses money or quietly under-doses you, and under-dosing is the most common reason people say Botox "did not work" on them.
When you compare two quotes, convert both to per unit or the comparison means nothing. Ask how many units the provider expects to use for your treatment, then multiply. A provider who cannot answer that question before treating you is not the provider you want.
Typical unit counts, so the arithmetic is possible: forehead lines est. 10 to 30 units, frown lines between the brows est. 20 to 30, crow's feet est. 12 to 24 for both sides, and masseter (jaw slimming or grinding) est. 40 to 60 total, which is why masseter quotes look alarming next to a forehead quote.
| Metro | Commonly cited per unit (est.) | Typical frown line treatment, 20 to 30 units (est.) |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | est. $15 to $25 | est. $300 to $750 |
| Los Angeles | est. $14 to $23 | est. $280 to $690 |
| San Francisco | est. $15 to $25 | est. $300 to $750 |
| Chicago | est. $12 to $20 | est. $240 to $600 |
| Miami | est. $11 to $18 | est. $220 to $540 |
| Dallas and Houston | est. $11 to $18 | est. $220 to $540 |
| Phoenix and Scottsdale | est. $10 to $17 | est. $200 to $510 |
| Atlanta | est. $11 to $18 | est. $220 to $540 |
| Denver | est. $12 to $19 | est. $240 to $570 |
| Seattle | est. $13 to $21 | est. $260 to $630 |
| Smaller metros and rural | est. $9 to $15 | est. $180 to $450 |
Ranges are estimates drawn from commonly published US provider pricing and vary widely within any single city. Treat them as a way to sense-check a quote, not as a price list.
The spread inside a single city is usually wider than the spread between cities. A dermatology practice and a promotional medspa three blocks apart can differ by more than New York differs from Phoenix. Comparing your quote against your own city's range is more useful than comparing cities.
A board-certified dermatologist or plastic surgeon typically prices above a registered nurse injector, and both usually price above a medspa running promotions. That is not automatically a reason to pay more, but it is the single biggest driver of the spread you see.
Rent shows up in your quote. A clinic on a prime retail street in a major metro is carrying a cost a suburban practice is not, and per-unit pricing reflects it.
This is the one worth being careful about. Prices far below the local range are sometimes a legitimate introductory offer and are sometimes counterfeit or improperly reconstituted product. Ask to see the vial. A real Botox vial has a hologram on the label. Any reputable injector will show you without being offended by the question.
Botox is reconstituted with saline, and how much saline changes what a "unit" delivers in practice. A clinic advertising a very low per-unit price with a heavier dilution is not necessarily cheaper for the same result. This is not something you can easily police as a patient, which is why injector reputation matters more than the headline number.
Allergan runs a rewards programme for Botox Cosmetic, and most clinics run first-visit pricing. Both are legitimate ways to lower a first treatment. Neither is a reason to choose an injector you are not confident in.
Botox is not permanent. Results typically last est. three to four months for most people, sometimes longer once you have been treating consistently for a while. So this is not a one-off purchase, it is a subscription you are choosing whether to start, and the annual figure is the one that should inform the decision rather than the single-visit figure.
People who are satisfied usually went in wanting one specific thing softened and said so. People who are dissatisfied usually asked to "look better" and left the interpretation to someone else. Be specific about the lines that bother you, and be equally specific about the expressions you want to keep.
If a provider agrees to everything you suggest without pushing back on anything, that is worth noticing. Good injectors routinely talk patients out of things.
That last one matters more than the price. Small asymmetries are normal and usually correctable at the two week review. What you want to know is whether the correction is included.
Everything above is what your prospective patient is reading before they call you, and most of them are reading it on somebody else's website.
Three things follow from that, and they are worth more than another round of ads:
The practices that win on these searches are not the cheapest. They are the ones that answered the question a nervous first-time patient actually typed, in plain language, before asking for the booking.
If you want that written for your practice, that is what I do. Medspa marketing is the main page, and you can book a 30 minute call if you would rather just talk it through. There is no contract and everything I build stays yours.
Worth running your own numbers first: the ROI calculator shows what a new patient is worth over the relationship rather than on the first visit, and the missed call calculator is usually the more uncomfortable of the two.
It depends on the area and on your own muscle strength. Common ranges are est. 10 to 30 units for forehead lines, est. 20 to 30 for the frown lines between the brows, est. 12 to 24 for crow's feet across both sides, and est. 40 to 60 for masseter treatment. A good injector assesses this in person and tells you the number before treating, not after.
Usually one of four reasons: a genuine new patient offer, a less experienced injector, higher dilution so a unit delivers less, or in rare cases counterfeit or improperly stored product. The first two are legitimate trade-offs you can decide about. For the last one, ask to see the vial and check for the hologram on the label.
Typically est. three to four months, though it varies with dose, the area treated, your metabolism and how long you have been having treatments. Many people find results last a little longer once they have been treating consistently. If yours wears off in six weeks, the likely explanation is under-dosing rather than anything unusual about you.
Per unit is more transparent, and it means a light treatment genuinely costs less than a heavy one. Per area can be good value if you need a lot of units, and poor value if you need few. The important thing is to convert any quote to a per unit figure before comparing it to another one, otherwise you are not comparing anything.
Not for cosmetic treatment. It sometimes covers therapeutic uses such as chronic migraine, severe underarm sweating, cervical dystonia or muscle spasticity, and those are billed completely differently. If you are being treated for grinding or jaw tension, ask whether any part of it may be billable, because the answer varies by plan and by diagnosis.
They are different brands of botulinum toxin type A and their units are NOT equivalent. Dysport in particular uses a different unit scale, so a per-unit price for Dysport cannot be compared directly against a per-unit price for Botox. Compare the total cost of the treatment instead of the unit price.
For dynamic lines caused by muscle movement, there is no topical product that does what a neurotoxin does, and anything marketed as "Botox in a bottle" is not. What genuinely helps is daily sunscreen and a retinoid, which work on a different problem, surface texture and pigment, and work slowly. Treat them as complementary rather than as a substitute.
Smaller metros and rural areas are consistently lower, commonly est. $9 to $15 per unit against est. $15 to $25 in New York or San Francisco. That said, the variation inside a single city is usually larger than the variation between cities, so shopping your own metro properly will save you more than travelling will.
Rarely. The saving on a typical treatment is often less than the travel cost, and it puts you a long way from your injector if you need a touch up at the two week mark. Treating locally with someone you can go back to is usually the better call.
Thirty minutes. I will show you what your patients are searching before they call, which of those questions your site answers, and which ones your competitors are quietly winning because nobody published a number.