1. Why this page has no prices on it
It has bands instead. There is a reason for that, and it is not evasion.
We have not surveyed Glasgow clinics. We have not collected price lists, verified them, or checked what each price includes. Publishing a figure and calling it the Glasgow price would require doing that work, and we have not done it. What we can do is set out the range that treatments of this kind are advertised in across the UK, explain what drives the spread, and tell you what the ends of the range usually mean.
The method, including its limits, is set out at how we build price bands. Read that before quoting any figure from this page at anybody.
2. What a price is actually made of
Break an injectable appointment into its parts and the spread stops being mysterious.
There is the product, which for toxin is a fraction of the price and for filler is a larger but still minority share. There is clinical time, which varies from eight minutes to fifty. There is the assessment, which either happened properly or did not. There is a prescriber, who either saw you or did not. There are premises, which in a registered clinic cost considerably more than a room. There is indemnity, sterile consumables, record keeping and clinical waste. There is a review appointment, included or not. And there is the capacity to manage a complication at nine on a Sunday evening, which costs money to have available and nothing to leave out.
3. Botulinum toxin
Priced per area almost everywhere, which is a marketing unit rather than a clinical one. Areas contain different numbers of units in different hands, so two identical prices can represent quite different treatments. That problem gets its own page: why per area pricing is not comparable.
Botulinum toxin, one treatment area
Product is a small share of this. Most of the range is prescriber time, assessment depth and whether a review is included.
Multi area packages usually reduce the per area figure, which is why comparing a one area price with a three area price tells you very little.
An indicative editorial band, not a survey, not a quote and not a recommendation. How we build these bands.
4. Dermal filler
Priced per millilitre, which sounds objective and is not. A millilitre is a quantity of material, not a description of what was done with it, and the same volume can be a careful three site structural treatment or a single fast deposit.
Product cost genuinely varies here, several fold between the softest and the firmest gels, which is why the band is wider at the top than toxin's. But the biggest single driver of the difference between a reasonable price and a very low one remains the assessment and what happens afterwards.
Hyaluronic acid filler, one millilitre
Gel costs vary several fold between products, and firmer structural gels sit at the top. Beyond product, the range is assessment, injector experience and whether the clinic holds and can prescribe hyaluronidase.
Per millilitre pricing invites a comparison that does not work, for reasons set out in our page on what a millilitre actually buys.
An indicative editorial band, not a survey, not a quote and not a recommendation. How we build these bands.
5. Skin treatments
Peels and needling sit lower, because the consumables are cheap and the appointments are short. They are also almost universally sold as courses, which means the advertised session price is a fraction of the real commitment.
Superficial chemical peel, single session
Inexpensive, well established agents and a short appointment, so the band is low and reasonably tight.
Almost always sold as a course of four to six. Compare the course, not the session.
An indicative editorial band, not a survey, not a quote and not a recommendation. How we build these bands.
Energy devices are the exception. Devices in that category cost a great deal to buy and have real per treatment costs, so there is a genuine floor. A very low price for radiofrequency microneedling is worth a question about which device, which depth and how many passes, because something has to give.
Radiofrequency microneedling, single session
High device purchase cost and genuine per treatment consumables put a real floor under this one. That floor is the reason cheap offers in this category deserve a question about which device and what settings.
Usually a course of three, so the meaningful figure is roughly three times the session price.
An indicative editorial band, not a survey, not a quote and not a recommendation. How we build these bands.
6. Reading a low price properly
Cheap is not automatically bad, and expensive is not automatically good. What a low price tells you is that something has been economised, and the useful move is to find out what.
If it is an introductory rate to win a long term patient, that is a legitimate commercial decision and you may benefit. If it is a trainee under supervision and you have been told, that is a fair exchange. If it is a smaller dose than the headline implies, you are buying less than you thought. If it is the removal of the prescriber assessment, the review, or the ability to manage a complication, you are buying a different and riskier product at a lower price.
7. And reading a high price properly
A high price buys, at best, a longer assessment, a more experienced practitioner, a registered setting, included review and adjustment, and someone who will manage their own complications. At worst it buys an expensive address and a well photographed waiting room.
The way to tell them apart is not the price. It is the questions in our consultation checklist, asked of both the cheap clinic and the expensive one. Price correlates with quality loosely at best, and anybody who tells you otherwise is usually the expensive one.
8. The costs that are not on the price list
Maintenance. Almost everything in aesthetics is a subscription rather than a purchase, and the annual figure is what you are really deciding about.
Correction. If a result needs adjusting, dissolving or repeating, who pays. Very few clinics publish this and almost every patient assumes an answer that has never been agreed.
Escalation. The pattern in this industry is one treatment leading to another, and a plan that starts at one area and one syringe rarely stays there. Deciding your annual ceiling at the start, before anything feels urgent, is the most useful financial decision available to you.