Botox per unit or per area: which is the honest way to pay?

Two clinics quote the same price for your forehead. One injects 20 units, the other 12. Only one of those prices was honest.

Neurotoxin comes in units. A unit is a fixed amount of product, and the number you need depends on how strong the muscle is. A man's frown lines might take 30 units where a small woman's take 15. That is normal, and it is exactly why pricing by area hides something.

When a clinic charges per area, the price is fixed and the units are not. There is a quiet incentive to use fewer units than you need, because the leftover product goes to the next patient. You leave with a lighter dose, a shorter result, and no way to know it.

When a clinic charges per unit, you are told the number before treatment and the total is arithmetic. If you need 18 units and the price is a certain amount per unit, that is the bill. If you need 24 next time because your muscle is stronger, the bill goes up and you know why.

The objection to per-unit pricing is that the total is harder to predict. It is not. Typical first-treatment ranges are well known: 10 to 20 units for the forehead, 15 to 25 for the frown lines between the brows, 10 to 24 for crow's feet. Our pricing page has a calculator that adds them up.

One more thing worth knowing: units are not interchangeable between brands. Twenty units of one product is not the same dose as twenty of another. A per-unit price only means something next to the product name, and a clinic that will not tell you the product is not telling you the price.