Key takeaways
- In a worked example, a £200 three-area toxin appointment carries £130–£175 of direct costs, leaving as little as £25 before any fixed cost is paid.
- Contribution is the price minus the costs that only exist because the appointment happened; it pays fixed costs first and you last.
- Save Face logged 2,824 complaints about unregistered practitioners in its latest reported year, roughly 69% about dermal fillers, and the cheap end of the market overlaps with that end.
- Botulinum toxin cannot be advertised to the public at all (CAP rule 12.12), and time-pressured injectable discounting risks breaching ASA social-responsibility rules besides destroying margin.
- Raise prices when the diary is booked three weeks ahead and most patients rebook, not when you feel brave.
The commonest pricing method in UK aesthetics is to find out what the clinic down the road charges and knock ten pounds off. It feels prudent. Run the numbers and it is frequently a way of paying for the privilege of treating strangers.
This is the workbook we wish someone had handed us at the start: the full cost of one toxin appointment and one filler appointment, line by line, then the rules for what to do with the answer. Every figure below is a worked example with assumptions stated, not a quote. Your numbers will differ. The method will not.
What one toxin appointment costs
Worked example, assumptions stated: three-area botulinum toxin priced at £200, a rented room at £75 a day shared across three appointments, indemnity of £480 a year spread over 120 appointments, card fees at 1.4%, and one no-show for every ten bookings. Product trade prices vary by brand and account terms.
| Line | Illustrative cost |
|---|---|
| Toxin (product) | £45–£75 |
| Prescriber consultation fee | £25–£40 |
| Room rent share | £25 |
| Consumables (needles, syringes, saline, swabs) | £8 |
| Insurance, amortised per appointment | £4 |
| Card processing at 1.4% | £3 |
| No-show allowance (1 in 10) | £20 |
| Total direct cost | £130–£175 |
| Contribution at £200 | £25–£70 |
Sit with that bottom line for a moment. On the least favourable assumptions you keep £25 of a £200 appointment before a single fixed cost is paid. Now imagine the same stack under a £120 “introductory offer” and you can see why so many first-year practitioners are busy and broke at the same time.
What one filler appointment costs
Worked example, assumptions stated: 1 ml of premium lip filler priced at £250, same room and card assumptions. Fillers are not prescription-only medicines, so there is no per-patient prescription fee, but hyaluronidase for emergencies is one, so a prescriber arrangement and in-date emergency stock still sit behind every appointment. The insurance and prescribing guide covers that machinery.
| Line | Illustrative cost |
|---|---|
| Filler (1 ml, premium brand) | £60–£110 |
| Prescription fee | £0 (see note above) |
| Emergency stock, amortised | £5 |
| Room rent share | £25 |
| Consumables (cannula, needles, dressings) | £12 |
| Insurance, amortised per appointment | £4 |
| Card processing at 1.4% | £4 |
| No-show allowance (1 in 10) | £25 |
| Total direct cost | £135–£185 |
| Contribution at £250 | £65–£115 |
Contribution, in plain English
Contribution is what is left of the price after you subtract the costs that only exist because that appointment happened. It is not profit. It pays your fixed monthly costs first (rent, software, the insurance you would owe anyway), and only what survives after those is yours. The start-up ledger shows how many contributions each operating model needs every month before you earn anything; the short version is between two and ten just to break even.
Once you think in contributions, “busy” stops being the goal. Ten £200 appointments contributing £25 each earn less than three contributing £100, and cost you seven appointments’ worth of evenings. Price per treatment is a vanity number. Contribution per treatment is the business.
Notice, too, which lines in the tables you actually control. Product prices are set by your supplier and prescriber fees by your prescriber, but the no-show allowance is yours to shrink. A modest booking deposit, redeemable against treatment, routinely cuts no-shows hard, and in the toxin table above that single change is worth more per appointment than switching to a cheaper needle ever will be. Work the stack from its biggest movable line, not its most visible one.
What a cheap price says
Patients cannot inspect your sterile field, your product’s supply chain or your hyaluronidase stock before they buy. Price is one of the few quality signals they can see, and in this sector the cheap end of the market overlaps with the dangerous end. Save Face logged 2,824 complaints about unregistered practitioners in its latest reported year, up from 2,436 in 2021, with dermal fillers accounting for roughly 69% of complaints (Save Face annual reports; also covered by The Times, February 2026). We have written the full figures up in complications in numbers.
Racing those operators to the bottom is a race you should be proud to lose, because their price is only achievable by cutting the exact lines in the tables above: product provenance, prescriber involvement, emergency stock, insurance, time. When a patient asks why you charge £250 and someone on Instagram charges £120, the cost stack is your answer, and it is a better one than “quality”.
London and everywhere else
The honest version, since price lists get copied across the country. London headline prices run higher, and so does everything underneath them; room days and rents in central London can be double or more, which eats much of the apparent premium. A practitioner in a regional town importing a Harley Street price list will stall, and a London practitioner assuming the postcode does the marketing will stall too. Price against your own local cost stack and what your market will bear at a contribution you can live on. The method travels. The number does not.
The £99 lips problem
A “£99 Botox” post is unlawful before it is unwise. Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine and cannot be advertised to the public in any form, including brand names and hashtags (CAP rule 12.12, checked July 2026); the ASA has upheld rulings on exactly this kind of wording and has contacted more than 60 training academies to cascade the rules. Fillers may be advertised, but the misleadingness and social-responsibility rules still apply, and time-pressured discounting of an injectable procedure is precisely the kind of pressure those rules exist to catch. The advertising guide covers the detail rule by rule.
Then there is the arithmetic. Run £99 lips through the filler table above: with direct costs of £135–£185, you pay £36–£86 for the privilege of each treatment, to attract the least loyal patients in the market, who leave the moment somebody posts £89. If you feel pressure to compete, compete on what the tables reward: retention, reviews, results and aftercare. Never discount the injectable itself.
When to raise prices
Signals worth acting on: the diary is booked more than three weeks ahead; most patients rebook; you have added a qualification that changes what you offer, such as a Level 7 diploma or complications training; or your input costs have risen, since product, room rates and insurance rarely move downwards. Raise for new patients first, tell existing patients in advance, and expect to lose a few. If a price rise loses nobody at all, it was overdue.
The mistake to avoid is raising prices as an act of self-esteem, unattached to any of those signals. A £20 rise on an empty diary just makes the diary emptier. Fix the booking rate first, then charge for the scarcity you have created.
The pricing review
Quarterly, thirty minutes, in this order:
- Rebuild the cost stack for every treatment with current product and room prices
- Check contribution per treatment against your monthly break-even count
- Check diary lead time (booked three weeks ahead means review upwards)
- Check rebooking and no-show rates against the allowances you assumed
- Read your own advertising the way the ASA would
- Compare your list to the local market, then file the comparison rather than obeying it
Where we fit
Aurelia teaches this arithmetic alongside the injecting, because pricing failure closes more new practices than clinical failure does. Delegates on our foundation course leave with the cost-stack method above, and alumni bring their real numbers to the monthly case-review calls, where the pricing conversations are often as useful as the clinical ones. If you are still working out whether the whole venture stacks up, start with the earnings calculator or the free eligibility review.
This guide is editorial information, not financial advice. All cost stacks are worked examples with stated assumptions. Figures checked 11 July 2026.
Frequently asked questions
In our worked example, a three-area toxin appointment carries £130–£175 of direct costs: product at £45–£75, a prescriber consultation fee of £25–£40, a £25 room share, £8 of consumables, amortised insurance, card fees and a no-show allowance. At a £200 price that leaves £25–£70 of contribution before fixed costs. The figures are illustrative with stated assumptions, but the method applies to any clinic.
Contribution is what remains of a treatment price after subtracting the costs that only exist because that appointment happened, such as product, prescriber fees, room share and consumables. It is not profit; it pays your fixed monthly costs first, and only the remainder is yours. Thinking in contributions rather than headline prices shows why ten cheap appointments can earn less than three properly priced ones.
Because their price is usually only achievable by cutting the cost lines that keep patients safe: product provenance, prescriber involvement, emergency stock, insurance and time. Save Face logged 2,824 complaints about unregistered practitioners in its latest reported year, with dermal fillers around 69% of them (Save Face annual reports). Price is one of the few quality signals patients can see before they buy, and cheap signals corners cut.
Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine and cannot be advertised to the public in any form, including brand names and hashtags, under CAP rule 12.12, so a discounted toxin promotion is unlawful advertising before it is bad pricing. Fillers may be advertised, but misleadingness and social-responsibility rules still apply, and time-pressured discounting of injectable procedures is exactly the pressure those rules exist to catch.
When the diary is booked more than three weeks ahead, when most patients rebook, when you have added a qualification that changes your offer, or when input costs such as product, room rates and insurance have risen. Raise for new patients first, tell existing patients in advance, and expect to lose a few. A price rise that loses nobody at all was overdue.