If you have been told you need a crown, the first question is usually the same one: what is this going to cost? It is a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a “from” figure that quietly leaves half the treatment out.
Here is what a dental crown costs at our practice in Dublin 2, what genuinely changes that number, and what to look for when you are comparing one quote against another.
How much does a dental crown cost in Dublin?
At Docklands Dental, a ceramic crown milled here in the practice is €1,050, and a hand-layered feldspathic crown for a front tooth is €1,200. Those are the two figures that cover almost every crown we place, and they are the full cost of the crown itself — the scan, the design, the crown, and fitting it.
We publish both on our price list rather than quoting them only behind a consultation, because a crown is a planned piece of treatment and you should be able to think about it before you are sitting in the chair.
The reason there are two numbers rather than one is not a good crown and a better crown. It is two different ways of making a crown, each of which suits a different tooth.
What actually changes the price of a crown?
Four things move the cost of a crown: how the crown is made, which tooth it is going on, how much of the tooth is left to build on, and whether the tooth needs anything else done first. Everything else is detail.
The first is the biggest. A crown designed and milled digitally in the practice carries no external laboratory fee and no temporary crown, because it is fitted the same day. A crown that is layered by hand, porcelain on porcelain, takes a ceramist several hours of skilled work and is priced accordingly.
The second is about visibility. A back tooth has to survive a heavy bite. A front tooth has to do that and disappear beside the tooth next to it, which is a much harder brief.
The third and fourth are about the tooth itself, and they are where quotes tend to drift apart. We come back to those below.
Is a front-tooth crown more expensive than a back-tooth crown?
Usually, yes — a front tooth is where we most often recommend the €1,200 hand-layered feldspathic crown, against €1,050 for the milled ceramic crown that suits most back teeth. The difference is €150, and it buys optical work rather than strength.
Milled ceramic is genuinely excellent, and we fit it on plenty of front teeth. But a natural front tooth is not one flat shade. It is more translucent at the edge, warmer at the gum, and often carries faint internal markings that catch the light. A ceramist builds that up in layers by hand to match the tooth beside it.
On a molar that nobody will ever see, that work would be spent where it cannot be appreciated. We will tell you which category your tooth falls into. It is not an upgrade we apply by default.
Why is a hand-layered feldspathic crown €1,200?
Because it is made by a person, not a machine, and the €1,200 is mostly the ceramist’s time. Feldspathic porcelain is built up in thin layers and fired repeatedly, which is the same technique we use for our feldspathic veneers — also €1,200 per tooth.
It is worth knowing where the money goes, because “porcelain crown” on a quote can mean anything from a pressed block to genuine hand-layered work, and the two are not comparable.
When a single front tooth has to match its neighbour exactly — which is the hardest thing in cosmetic dentistry, harder than doing six at once — hand layering is usually what gets you there.
What does a crown on a dental implant cost?
A porcelain crown fitted onto an implant is from €1,350, and it is a separate cost from the implant itself. A single implant with the implant, abutment and crown together is from €3,000.
This is the single most common place where crown quotes are misread. An implant crown is not the same job as a crown on a natural tooth — it connects to a fixture in the bone through an abutment, and the shaping of the gum around it is part of the work.
If you are pricing implant treatment rather than a crown on your own tooth, our breakdown of dental implant costs in Dublin sets out the whole sequence.
Are inlays and onlays cheaper than a full crown?
They are the same price — €1,050 — because they are made the same way, in the same milling unit, from the same ceramic. What differs is how much of your own tooth we keep.
An inlay or onlay is a precision-made restoration that replaces only the damaged part of the tooth, rather than covering the whole thing. When there is still a good amount of healthy tooth left, that is usually the better piece of dentistry, even though it costs the same.
We would rather keep tooth structure than remove it to justify a bigger restoration. If an onlay will do the job, we will say so.
What other costs can come with a crown?
The crown fee is not always the whole bill, and the honest answer is that it depends on what the tooth needs before we can crown it. These are the additions we see most often, all published on our price list.
- Examination — €80, plus €30 for a small X-ray. This is where we work out whether a crown is the right call at all.
- Root canal treatment if the nerve is involved — €595 for an incisor, €695 for a premolar. Molars we refer to a specialist rather than attempt ourselves.
- A temporary crown — €350, only if the crown is being made externally. A same-day crown does not need one, which is part of why it costs what it does.
- Re-cementing an existing crown — €250, if a crown you already have has come loose and is otherwise sound.
None of these are surprises we spring at the end. You get the full figure in writing before we start, and if something changes mid-treatment we stop and talk about it first.
How does a crown compare with a bridge on cost?
A conventional bridge is €895 per unit and a Maryland bridge is €1,400, so a three-unit bridge replacing one missing tooth comes in around €2,685. That is roughly the same as a single implant with its crown, from €3,000.
The comparison matters because these are different problems. A crown restores a tooth you still have. A bridge or an implant replaces one you have lost, and the bridge does it by involving the teeth on either side.
Where a tooth is genuinely restorable, crowning it is almost always both the cheaper and the more conservative option. Deciding between a crown and a veneer is a different question again, and we walk through it in crown or veneer: how to know which one you need.
How long should a crown last for what you pay?
A large practice-based study in the Journal of Dentistry that tracked 3,404 crowns found annual failure rates of under 1% — which puts well-made crowns at roughly 92% to 97% still in service after eleven years. A separate multi-centre study of all-ceramic crowns reported around 95% success at up to fifteen years.
Spread across that kind of lifespan, a €1,050 crown is a modest annual cost for something that keeps a tooth working. That is the honest way to think about it — not as a one-off price, but as what it costs to hold on to a tooth you would otherwise lose.
What shortens that lifespan is rarely the ceramic. It is grinding, an untreated bite problem, or decay starting again at the margin. How you look after it matters, and we cover that in our crown aftercare guide.
Ready to talk it through?
If a tooth is broken, heavily filled or aching, the useful first step is an examination so we can tell you what it actually needs — which is sometimes less than you were expecting. You will leave knowing the treatment, the cost, and the alternatives.
Because we are one of the few practices in Ireland working as Key Opinion Leaders and trainers for Dentsply Sirona, the digital scanning and milling side of this is something we teach as well as do. That is the reason we can offer same-day crowns at all, and the reason we are confident in the fit.
You can see how the one-visit route works in our guides to same-day crown costs and same-day CEREC crowns, browse the full crowns, inlays and onlays page, or see how crowns sit alongside other treatment in our guide to cosmetic dentistry costs in Dublin.
Written by Dr. Gregg Barry, BDS (UCC, 2008), Docklands Dental, 1 Forbes Street, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin 2, D02 FN53.
