Dental marketing agencies the assistants named, and the prices their own pages publish

Two assistants were asked the same question on the same night, "what is the best marketing agency for a dental practice in the United States", and they produced twelve agency names between them with exactly one name in common. ChatGPT named four firms after a live web search. Gemini named nine, in two separate lists inside one answer, with no live search behind it. The only firm on both lists is Pain-Free Dental Marketing, and the two engines quoted two different prices for it. So the useful answer to a practice owner is not a shortlist. It is the set of prices a dental agency actually publishes on its own site, and the URL each price sits on.

What was asked, and what came back

One question, put to the ChatGPT and Gemini product surfaces through a data provider, on 21 October 2026 at 22:19 and 22:37 UTC. The question never named any agency and never named our own company, because a question that carries a name produces an answer that carries it back.

• ChatGPT. Ran a live search, returned 24 source citations across 22 distinct hosts, and named four agencies with a price against each.
• Gemini. Returned no live search and zero citations for this question, and still attached a monthly price range to every one of its nine names, describing several of those ranges as industry benchmarks rather than published rates.

That difference matters more than the names. A practice owner who asks one assistant gets prices traceable to a web page. The same owner asking the other gets prices that are an estimate of the market, presented in the same confident format.

The two shortlists, and what the vendor pages say

Every figure in the right hand column is from our own fetch on 22 October 2026, with the URL recorded, because a price belongs to the page it was read on and not to the brand.

Agency	Named by	Price the engine gave	What we read on the vendor page, 22 October 2026
Delmain	ChatGPT, first	SEO from 575 dollars a month, paid media 650, six month initial commitment	delmain.co/pricing returns HTTP 404. delmain.co/investments/ renders 1,523 words and no dollar figure. Not verified on the vendor site that day.
Practice Cafe	ChatGPT, second	PPC from 395, SEO 895, paid social from 295, month to month	practicecafe.com/pricing carries no rate for any of its own services. practicecafe.com/pricing/dental-marketing-special/ carries "regular 895 dollars a month" for dental SEO. The 395 and 295 figures are on neither URL.
Harris and Ward	ChatGPT, third	From 850 a month, month to month	Confirmed, on harrisandward.com/top-5-dental-marketing-agencies/, which also states full programs with ads, website, content and video typically run 2,500 to 5,000 dollars or more a month plus ad spend.
Pain-Free Dental Marketing	Both engines	ChatGPT: Essentials 1,300 a month, CMO tier from 3,000 plus ad spend. Gemini: custom, generally 2,000 to 4,000	painfreedentalmarketing.com and its /pricing/ page both returned HTTP 403 to our request. A 403 records what the server did on that date.
Circulation Dental	Gemini, as the budget option	Website 2,000 one time, social from 600, ads from 400	All three confirmed on circulationdental.com/en/complete-dental-marketing-package, which also headlines "features of all plans starting at 1200 per month per location". Gemini omitted the floor.
PatientGain	Gemini	Platinum from 999 a month	patientgain.com and /top-dental-marketing returned HTTP 403.
KickStart Dental	Gemini	Tiered retainers, 1,200 to 3,000	kickstartdental.com renders 2,032 words, case results such as 36 dollars per verified lead in January 2024, and no plan price.
ProSites	Gemini	Tiers from about 300 to 1,000 plus ad spend	prosites.com and /pricing/ answered HTTP 202 with a zero byte body on two attempts.
Wonderist, Lasso MD, Firegang, Golden Proportions	Gemini	Ranges from 1,500 to 7,000 or more	Gemini labelled these as custom or benchmark figures rather than published rates, which is what they are.

Where the published price actually lives

Practice Cafe is the clean case. Its pricing page, fetched and read in full, carries no monthly rate for its own services, only a line about not competing with 99 dollar logos or promising results on a 300 dollar advertising budget. The 895 dollar figure the assistant quoted is real and it sits one level down, on the dental marketing special page, next to the offer it belongs to: commit to six months and a six page website is included, described on that page as a 3,980 dollar value, commit to twelve and a twelve page site is included at a 4,980 dollar value, with a one time 360 dollars covering two years of managed hosting and the practice owning the site at the end.

So a dentist who opens the obvious URL sees no price, and an assistant reading the whole site quotes one. Both are reading the same vendor honestly. If you are collecting quotes, open the offer pages and the special pages, not just the page called pricing.

Four of the nine firms could not be read at all that day: two 403s, one 404 and one 202 with an empty body. That is the normal state of this market rather than an accident, and it is why a dental shortlist assembled from agency sites alone will always be partly hearsay.

The ranking in the citation list was published by a ranked firm

ChatGPT's source list for this answer includes harrisandward.com/top-5-dental-marketing-agencies/. We read it on 22 October 2026. It is a 2,904 word ranking of five dental marketing agencies, published by Harris and Ward, and it places Harris and Ward first, for new patient growth. It also lists Delmain and Wonderist, both of which the assistants then recommended, and it states in its own comparison row that Delmain's pricing is not published.

ChatGPT flagged the risk itself in its answer, in its own words, that many published rankings are produced by agencies that also compete for your business. It then used one. The citation set for the dental question is almost entirely agency and directory domains: karbonagency.com, bestdentalmarketers.com, dentalscapes.com, designrush.com, studiosmirk.com, toothific.com and ziwimarketing.com among them, with a single consumer technology site in the list.

One of those cited pages is worth opening for a different reason. ziwimarketing.com/pricing/dental-marketing-cost/, read 22 October 2026, publishes its own rate card rather than a ranking: hosting at 99 dollars a month, a care plan at 299 per location, and ads management at 297 a month with total ad spend up to 1,500, 497 between 1,500 and 3,500, and 797 above that, with a 2,500 dollar website build waived on a twelve month plan. Whatever you think of the firm, that is the shape of disclosure a dentist can compare.

What the published floors look like once they are stacked

Put only the figures we verified ourselves in one order and the market has a clear shape. Hosting and care alone, 99 to 299 a month. Ads management as a standalone fee, from 297 a month, tiered by the spend it manages. A full service program floor, from 850 a month. Dental SEO as a line item, 895 a month. A multi location floor, 1,200 a month per location. A complete program with ads, content and video, 2,500 to 5,000 or more a month plus the ad spend itself.

Two practical consequences. First, the 850 to 895 band is a starting fee and not a program, so comparing it against a 2,500 dollar proposal is comparing two different purchases. Second, every per location price is the number that decides a growing practice's budget, and it is the number most often left out of a summary. For how those models differ once a vendor charges per lead instead of per month, including the fee splitting opinion that shapes what a dental lead vendor may do, see our breakdown of what each dental lead generation pricing model means. For the contract itself, the four supplier types and the clauses worth arguing over sit in dental marketing companies and what to put in the contract.

Six questions to put to any dental agency you shortlist

• Send me the URL where your price is published, and tell me whether it is a starting fee or a program.
• Is the fee per practice or per location, and what changes when I open a second chair?
• Is ad spend inside the fee or billed to my own card by Google.
• Who owns the website, the domain, the ad account and the call recordings when we part.
• What is your notice period, and is the first term six months or month to month.
• Which number will you report monthly: calls, booked new patients, or production from new patients.

The number no dental proposal in this set reported

Every agency above sells work on Google. None of the twelve names arrived with a figure for how often an assistant names the practice when a patient asks it a question that never mentions the practice. That is a separate measurement from a map pack position, and it is the one we sell. AI Knows Us is not a dental marketing agency, pitches for no retainers, buys no media and builds no websites, so nothing here is a bid against the firms named on this page. We ask the buyer questions a patient would ask, on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and report whose name comes back.

Our own rates, read from aiknowsus.com/llms.txt on 22 October 2026, so you can hold us to the standard this page asks of agencies: SEO Start 149 dollars a month in the US with 0 buyer questions watched and 0 engines, Growth 299 with 100 questions on all five engines weekly, Scale 599 with 300 questions, Agency 1,299 with 80 questions. Growth is the cheapest plan that reads all five surfaces. Where a rival is stronger, by name: tryprofound.com/pricing, read the same day, publishes SSO and SAML with SOC 2 compliance and up to nine answer engines on its enterprise tier, and our own pricing page, 119,203 bytes read the same day, renders no SSO, no SAML, no SOC 2, no ISO and no data processing agreement anywhere in its text. It also contradicts itself for a multi site practice, listing "businesses covered 1 1 1 1 1 1 10 1" across the plans while the row beneath reads "more than one business, no" in every column. Both render, and a group practice should ask us about it before buying.

The limits of the dental measurement above, stated plainly. It is one question per engine on one night, which fixes what each engine said then and does not describe how either behaves across a month. It grades disclosure and agreement, not the quality of the dentistry marketing itself. A firm whose server returned 403 that day may publish a full rate card tomorrow.

What dentists ask about agency prices and AI answers

Is the agency the assistant names first the best one for my practice

Treat the order as a reading, not a verdict. The two engines agreed on one name out of twelve, and the firm ChatGPT placed third publishes the ranking that ChatGPT cited. Use the lists to assemble candidates, then compare the three proposals you actually receive on the same scope.

Why did the two assistants quote different prices for the same agency

Because one searched the web and the other answered from what it already held. For Pain-Free Dental Marketing, ChatGPT gave an Essentials tier at 1,300 a month and a CMO tier from 3,000, and Gemini gave a 2,000 to 4,000 range it called custom. The vendor's own server returned 403 to us that day, so the figure to ask for is the one in writing on a proposal.

What does dental marketing cost a month in the United States

From the pages we verified on 22 October 2026, published monthly floors run from 99 dollars for hosting and care, through 297 for managed ads, 850 for a starting program, 895 for dental SEO and 1,200 per location for a multi location plan. Full programs with paid ads, website management, content and video are published at 2,500 to 5,000 or more a month, plus the ad spend.

Should I pick a dental specialist or a local generalist

A specialist arrives with the treatment page inventory, the recall calendar and the consent practice already built, which is most of the first three months of work. The test is whether the firm publishes a dental specific unit, such as cost per booked new patient, rather than clicks.

How do I check what assistants say about my own practice

Ask the question a patient would ask, with your town in it and your practice name left out, on each assistant, and write down every business name that comes back. Run it again a week later. The names move, and the list of sources behind them tells you which directories and which agency blogs are deciding your shortlist.