Licensed health centre
In REGCESS with a live authorisation from its regional health authority.
Public record
Meet Lupe
Not sure what you even need? Swipe.
Swipe what actually bothers you, set a budget in the currency you think in, and Lupe hands you a shortlist with the reasoning attached.
- Two minutes, no account. Nothing is stored and nothing leaves your browser.
- She shows her working. Every suggestion says which of your answers produced it.
- She will tell you no. If the honest answer costs more than you set, it still appears, flagged, with the entry price.
- Nobody pays to appear in it. The order comes from your answers, not from a subscription.
"Right if it is you, left if it is not."
Start with the concern
You do not need to know the name of the treatment
Pick what bothers you. We show the options, the price, and who near you is verified to do it.
Forehead and frown lines
Anti-wrinkle injections, skin boosters, laser resurfacing
Crow's feet
Anti-wrinkle injections, microneedling, fractional laser
Thin or uneven lips
Lip filler, hyaluronic acid, lip hydration
Lost volume and firmness
Dermal fillers, collagen stimulators, mesotherapy
Pigmentation and sun damage
IPL, CO2 laser, chemical peels, microneedling
Double chin and jawline
Laser lipolysis, collagen stimulators, radiofrequency
Excessive sweating
Injectable treatment for hyperhidrosis
Stubborn localised fat
Liposuction, laser lipolysis, fat freezing
Start here
Five things people come to Spain to change
Pick the one you have been thinking about. Every treatment underneath it has a price, a plain explanation of what it actually involves, and the clinics we have checked.
Face
Everything from the neck up, needle or knife
Anti-wrinkle injectionsLip fillerDermal fillersNose job
26 treatments →
Body
Shape, skin and the bits clothes do not hide
Laser hair removalLiposuctionBreast augmentationTummy tuck
15 treatments →
Hair
Transplants and the things people try first
Hair transplantFUE hair transplantPRP for hairBeard transplant
4 treatments →
Smile
Veneers, implants and straightening
Teeth whiteningVeneersDental implantsInvisible aligners
6 treatments →
Weight
Medically supervised, not a diet plan
Medical weight lossGastric balloonIV dripsNutrition consultation
4 treatments →Where you are
Built around where English speakers actually live
Not Spain's biggest cities. The places where you can walk in and be understood, ranked by English-speaking community.
Costa del Sol
Marbella • Mijas • Fuengirola • Estepona • Benalmadena • Malaga
Costa Blanca
Torrevieja • Orihuela Costa • Javea • Denia • Benidorm • Alfaz del Pi • Alicante
Balearic Islands
Palma • Ibiza • Menorca • Santa Ponsa • Alcudia
Canary Islands
Tenerife • Las Palmas • Lanzarote • Fuerteventura
Madrid
Salamanca • Chamberi • Chamartin • Pozuelo • La Moraleja
Barcelona
Eixample • Gracia • Sarria • Sitges • Castelldefels
Valencia
Valencia city • Gandia • Oliva • Castellon
Murcia
Murcia • Mar Menor • Los Alcazares • Cartagena
Residency figures from the Spanish Immigration Observatory, September 2025. Age composition from INE continuous population statistics, 2026.
Money, honestly
What the same treatment costs in Spain, Britain and the States
“Half price abroad” is marketing. Sometimes it is true and sometimes it is not, so here is the whole table rather than the flattering half of it. Sorted by the size of the gap against the UK.
Biggest gap
63%
FUE hair transplant
against the United Kingdom
against the United Kingdom
Rows where Spain wins
15 / 19
The other 4 are level or dearer here. They are in the table too.
Every figure
Sourced
NHS, Nuffield, Bupa and sk:n published lists. The American surgeons’ own 2024 averages.
Nothing estimated
Nothing estimated
Show prices in
| Treatment | Spain | United Kingdom | United States | Against the UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FUE hair transplant† | Save 63% | |||
| Dental implant, with crown† | Save 61% | |||
| Teeth whitening | Save 54% | |||
| CO2 laser resurfacing, per session | Save 54% | |||
| Porcelain veneer, per tooth | Save 43% | |||
| Liposuction, one to three areas* | Save 42% | |||
| Eyelid surgery* | Save 40% | |||
| Tummy tuck* | Save 35% | |||
| Breast reduction* | Save 33% | |||
| Laser hair removal, per session | Save 33% | |||
| Male chest reduction* | Save 24% | |||
| Microneedling, per session | Save 24% | |||
| Chemical peel, per session | Save 15% | |||
| Invisible aligners, full course | Save 14% | |||
| Breast augmentation* | Save 12% | |||
| Dermal filler, 1ml† | About the same | |||
| Rhinoplasty* | About the same | |||
| Facelift* | Dearer in Spain | |||
| Lip filler, 1ml† | Dearer in Spain |
* On surgery the American figure is the surgeon’s fee on its own. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says so in the document itself: it excludes anaesthesia, the theatre and everything around them. British hospitals quote a closed package. So on those rows the real American total is higher than the column shows, and the gap you are looking at is the conservative one.
† The two countries do not sell this one in the same unit. Hover the mark in the table for what differs, and read the treatment page before you compare the numbers.
How it works
Three steps, and none of them cost you anything
Search
By concern, treatment or town. Filter by language, licence and what we verified.
Compare
Every listing shows the same fields in the same order, so you are comparing like with like.
Contact the clinic
Direct. No middleman, no booking fee, no commission on your treatment.
Why we exist
Choosing a clinic in Spain should not feel like a gamble
Instagram grids. A Facebook group where four people name four different clinics. A price list with no surgeon on it. A website that says "certified" without saying by whom.
Spain has one of Europe's tightest frameworks for this work, and all of it is publicly searchable. None of it is in English, and nobody tells patients where to look.
- Every clinic must be licensed. Health centres are authorised by the regional health authority and recorded in a national registry that anyone can search, free, with no login.
- Since July 2026 the law is stricter. Every centre must guarantee that treatment is delivered by professionals with the official qualification for that unit, and keep a record of it.
- Every doctor has a public registration number. Specialty and college membership can be confirmed in the national medical register.
- Nobody was doing the checking for you. Until now.
0
British nationals holding valid Spanish residency
Spanish Immigration Observatory, Sept 2025
0
Aesthetic procedures carried out in Spain in one year
ISAPS Global Survey 2024
0
Of Marbella residents aged 55 to 64 were born abroad
INE continuous population statistics, 2026
0
Doses of botulinum toxin seized in one police operation
Guardia Civil, May 2026
The filter
Eight checks. Six of them come from public government records.
Any directory can write "verified" on a card. Ours links to the proof, with the registry number, so you can repeat the check in two minutes.
Surgery licence (U.47)
Advertises surgery? Then it must hold the U.47 unit. We check that it does.
Public record
Anaesthesia on site (U.35)
General anaesthetic belongs in a unit licensed for it. We record where yours happens.
Public record
Registered doctor
Name, medical college and registration number, confirmed in the national register.
Public record
Board certified surgeon
The official Spanish specialist title. “Aesthetic surgeon” is not one.
Public record
Quality accredited
Voluntary regional quality certification, recorded where a clinic holds it.
Public record
English confirmed
We ring in English, unannounced. Reception, doctor and consent forms scored separately.
Our own check, method published
Aftercare protocol
A named doctor you can reach, a written complications protocol, a revision policy.
Our own check, method published
SECPRE, AECEP, SEME, AEDV, CGCOM. Spanish clinics list acronyms that mean nothing to a British or American patient. Some are state qualifications, some are paid memberships.
See what each one actually means →What the guidance actually says
"Follow-up care is an important part of your treatment. Consider where your check-ups will take place."Royal College of Surgeons of England, patient guidance on having surgery abroad. Read the guidance
Why us
We built the filter we needed ourselves
We both sat in the wrong consulting room, paid for it, and only understood afterwards what we should have asked.
One of us was talked into a treatment plan by somebody who never gave a surname. The other signed a consent form, in Spanish, that nobody offered to explain. Neither of us was reckless. We asked the questions we knew how to ask.
The uncomfortable part came later. Every single thing we needed had been public all along: the licence, the authorised units, the doctor's registration number, the specialty behind the title on the door. Sitting in Spanish government registers, two minutes away, in a language we were not reading.
So we built the filter. We check what can be checked, we say plainly what we could not, and the ranking is not for sale.
Co-founder. Twelve years running patient acquisition for clinics in Spain. Verification and editorial standards.
Co-founder. Digital product and web development for the medical sector. The registry data pipeline and the directory itself.
Our own research
We counted the register, because nobody else had
In September 2026 we queried Spain's national register and counted every private centre authorised for each unit that matters here. Never published in English before. Reproducible: anyone can run the same search and get the same answer, which is the point.
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Private centres in Spain authorised for U.47, the cosmetic surgery unit. Every clinic that may legally lead a cosmetic operation is one of these.
REGCESS, September 2026
0
Private centres authorised for U.48, non-surgical aesthetic medicine. Nearly seven times as many, which tells you where the barrier to entry is lowest.
REGCESS, September 2026
0
Centres holding U.35, anaesthesia and resuscitation. The unit that decides where general anaesthetic can safely be given.
REGCESS, September 2026
Method and query parameters published at how we verify. Journalists and researchers are welcome to reuse these figures with attribution.
Editorial standards
Our rules are published. Our ranking is not for sale.
Medical review
Named reviewer, with registration number
Sources
Official registers, cited on the page
Ranking
No clinic can buy position
Updates
Registry checks every quarter
Corrections
Anyone can flag an error
In force since 1 July 2026
Spain tightened the rules on who may treat you, and almost nobody told the patients
Royal Decree 239/2026 came into force on 1 July. Clinics must now prove that whoever treats you holds the qualification for that unit, and keep a live record of every professional on site.
- It replaced something weaker. A ministerial order in September 2024 tried to restrict cosmetic surgery to recognised surgical specialists. The national court suspended it after an industry appeal, so the government legislated again at a higher rank.
- What it means in practice. Qualification is now checked at the level of the centre's authorisation, not left to the clinic's own discretion, and regions have until 2027 to adapt their registers.
- Why it barely helps on its own. The rule governs the clinic's paperwork. Nothing on a clinic's website is obliged to tell you whether that paperwork exists.
- What we do about it. We read the registry entry, record the unit codes and the authorisation number, and put them on the listing in plain English.
Questions we get asked
The things people actually ask before booking
Search it in REGCESS, the public register of health centres. Free, no login. For surgery, look for unit code U.47. Step by step here.
Spain regulates it more tightly than most places it gets compared with. Safety still depends on the specific clinic and the specific doctor, which is what we check.
At a verified listing, yes. We phone in English, unannounced, and record three things separately: reception, the treating doctor, and the consent documents.
Free for patients, always. Clinics pay for a profile and for tools. None of it buys position. The ranking rules are published.
Spanish law gives you a written complaints route and a regulator that licensed the clinic. The route map is here.
It is a prescription-only medicine, and UK rules ban advertising those to the public. Why that matters.
Usually no, and that is not the comparison worth making. What Spain has is European regulation you can check yourself: the centre appears in the public health registry or it is operating illegally, and the surgeon holds a specialist title you can look up in the medical register. Neither check exists in the same form elsewhere. Spain compared with Turkey.
Against published British lists, a dental implant with the crown runs about 61% less and porcelain veneers about 43% less. Dental is where the gap is widest, wider than on surgery, and the Costa Blanca is where most of the English-speaking practices are. Every dental treatment, priced.
Not on the same trip, for most operations. Surgeons will usually want to see you before you travel, and the flight itself carries a clot risk that rises with how recently you were operated on. Ask for the clinic's own minimum before you book flights, and get it in writing. How long before you can fly.
Purely cosmetic work, no, in Spain or anywhere else. Where it changes is when there is a medical reason on file, and the line between the two is drawn by the doctor, not the insurer's marketing. What is and is not covered.
Yes, and more than people expect. Fresh scars and resurfaced skin pigment permanently if they catch the sun, so the months either side of a procedure matter here in a way they do not in northern Europe. Any clinic worth using raises this before you do. Sun, skin and timing.
Nothing, and there is no catch in the pricing because there is no introduction fee. We are not paid per enquiry and no clinic can buy a position. Clinics pay for a profile and for software; the ranking rules are published and they do not include money. How the ranking works.
Find a clinic that can prove it
Search by treatment, by concern or by town. Every result shows what we verified, where we verified it and when we last checked. Free, with no booking fee and no commission on your treatment.
Run a clinic? See what verification involves before you apply. It is free, and it is pass or fail.
