Clear aligners fitted in a dental office cost $1,500 to $8,000 in Canada. That range comes from three practices publishing figures for aligner systems. Invisalign is one brand of clear aligner and runs $2,000 to $9,000.
The decision most people are actually making is not which brand. It is whether to have aligners supervised in a dental office or ordered through the post. This page answers that first.
Book an assessment and find out whether aligners suit your bite. Phone (905) 821-8632, or use the online booking. Free parking on site at our Britannia Road West office.
What a clear aligner course involves
A scan of your teeth becomes a digital model. A movement plan is drawn on that model tooth by tooth. A laboratory then manufactures the trays that carry it out.
Each tray sits a fraction out of step with where the teeth are. The plastic pushes and the tooth follows. A week or two later the next tray asks for a little more. Twenty to twenty-two hours a day, out for food and for anything other than water.
You come back at the interval your plan sets so someone checks the teeth are tracking. That check is the whole difference between a supervised course and a posted one.
In a dental office or through the post?
Mail-order aligner companies are advertising hard in Canada, and the price gap is real. These services differ from one another, so ask any of them the same four questions before you commit.
Is there an in-person examination? A photo taken on a phone does not find a cracked filling, a failing crown or a tooth that is about to need a root canal.
Are x-rays taken? Teeth move through bone. A radiograph shows how much bone is holding your teeth. It also shows gum disease that needs treating first.
Are attachments used? Without bonded bumps the trays have less grip on rotations and vertical movement, so the plan is limited to what smooth plastic can achieve.
Who reviews progress, and how often? If a tooth stops following the trays in month four, a supervised course picks it up at the next appointment.
We are not going to tell you the price difference, because two vendors publishing figures is not enough to state a range honestly. What we will tell you is that the gap reflects a difference in what is included. It is not a discount on the same service.
If you have already started a mail-order course and something feels wrong, book an examination. We will tell you what we see with no obligation attached.
The attachments, in detail
Smooth plastic has little to grip on a smooth tooth. Rotating a canine, pulling a tooth down into the arch or holding one still as its neighbours move are the movements where grip matters most.
So small tooth-coloured composite shapes get bonded to selected teeth. Rectangles and bevelled wedges, each shape for a different job. The tray has a matching pocket. The pocket presses on the shape and the force arrives where it needs to.
They come off at the end of treatment. Removing composite from enamel is careful work. Cleanup can leave small traces or change the surface texture.
Here is the honest part. A 2026 scoping review of 115 studies of aligner attachments found that in vitro studies predominated at 72.1% and concluded that the evidence is "mostly in vitro-based, leaving its actual clinical effectiveness unclear". Attachments are standard practice for these movements. Which exact shape outperforms which other shape in a real mouth has not been settled in patients.
Two practical consequences for you. Attachments make the trays slightly more visible than the photographs in any advert. And they are part of why treatment needs an office, since bonding and removing them is clinical work.
What clear aligners are good at
Aligners handle a lot, and honestly.
- Crowding, where teeth overlap because there is not enough room along the arch
- Spacing, where gaps sit between teeth
- Mild to moderate bite problems, including an open bite at the front under about 3 mm. Aligners deliver that movement more reliably than most
- Relapse after earlier orthodontic work, where teeth have drifted and the movement needed is small
- Tidying the front teeth before other dental work, so a veneer or a crown sits in a sensible position
If your case is in that list, aligners are a straightforward answer and you keep brushing and flossing normally throughout.
What clear aligners struggle with
- Large rotations of round teeth like canines and premolars, where there is barely any flat surface to push against
- Bodily movement of back teeth, meaning moving the whole tooth rather than tipping its crown
- Big vertical changes, pushing a tooth up into the bone or pulling one down a long way
- Severe skeletal bite discrepancies, where the problem is the position of the jaws and not the teeth
- Closing large extraction gaps, which needs sustained bodily movement of several teeth at once
For those, fixed appliances have more mechanical control. That is mechanics and not a marketing position. Our braces page explains how. Clear braces do the same job with tooth-coloured brackets.
Plenty of plans start with aligners and finish with a short spell of fixed appliances. That is a sensible plan, not a failure.
Not sure which side of that line your own bite falls on? Book an examination and you will get a straight answer.
How much of this has actually been studied?
Very little of it end to end, and you deserve to know.
A 2026 scoping review mapped 103 clinical trials involving clear aligners. The field is young. 73.8% of those trials were published in 2020 or later and 83.5% of them studied adults, so the aligner evidence on teenagers is much thinner than the advertising suggests.
The trials are also small. 44.7% had 40 participants or fewer and 69.9% ran at a single centre. Size and setting both limit how far a result travels.
Then there is how long anyone watched. 53.4% looked only at the first six months of treatment and only 20.4% assessed a full course from start to finish. Compliance, meaning whether people actually wore the trays, was measured in 2.9% of the trials.
Read that as a caution about anybody quoting confident numbers, including us. Where this page gives a figure, the study behind it is named so you can check what it actually measured.
Gum health, measured
This is where the measured difference between aligners and fixed appliances is clearest.
A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 28 studies comparing aligners against fixed appliances. People in aligners recorded:
| Measure | Difference in favour of aligners | p |
|---|---|---|
| Plaque index | -0.437 | under 0.001 |
| Gum inflammation index | -0.233 | under 0.001 |
| Gum pocket depth | -0.332 mm | under 0.001 |
The same review found better quality-of-life scores at one week, one month and end of treatment, all at p under 0.001, and less pain early in treatment.
The authors asked readers to interpret the results carefully. The studies varied a great deal and included observational evidence. Publication bias is possible and the pooled effects were small. We are passing that caution on instead of burying it.
One practical warning. A tray over an unbrushed mouth traps sugar and acid against enamel for hours. Brush before the trays go back in, and drink water only when they are in.
Side effects worth knowing about
A 2026 review pooled 34 studies covering 1,636 people on the adverse effects of removable aligners.
Root resorption. The root tip shortens during tooth movement. Across the pooled data the average loss was -0.33 mm, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.55 to -0.11 mm.
That is a pooled average and not a prediction for one person. It is one reason nobody should stay in aligners longer than the plan needs. Your own risk is assessed from your radiographs.
Pain. Highest in the first 24 hours after a new tray, at around 3 out of 10, settling to about 1.5 by day three.
White spots. White spot lesions are the chalky marks of early enamel demineralisation, and the review reported they may increase where hygiene slips. The certainty of that evidence was rated very low to low and no incidence figure could be pooled. Fixed braces carry the larger risk here, and we cover it fully on the braces page.
Speech. A slight lisp for a few days while the tongue adapts to the plastic edge.
Retainers, and why the treatment is not over when the trays stop
Teeth move for your whole life. After orthodontic treatment they try to go back, hardest in the first year.
Retainers are what holds the result. A 2026 network meta-analysis of 18 randomised trials covering 1,471 people compared fixed and removable retainers and found no statistically significant difference between them on gum health measures.
The networks behind that comparison were sparse and the certainty of the evidence limited. No difference was measured, and that is not the same as proof the two are equal. The right one for you depends on your bite and your habits.
Ask one question at the consultation: are retainers inside the quoted fee, or billed afterwards? The answer changes the real cost of a course more than most advertised offers do.
What clear aligners cost in Mississauga
We do not publish our own fees. Cases differ too much for a single number to mean anything, and your own figure comes in the written estimate you get after an examination.
Published Canadian pricing, from practices that publish figures:
| Treatment | Published range |
|---|---|
| Clear aligners fitted in a dental office | $1,500 to $8,000 |
| Invisalign specifically | $2,000 to $9,000 |
| Ceramic or clear braces | $4,000 to $9,000 |
| Metal braces | $3,000 to $7,000 |
What moves your number within a range: how far the teeth travel and how many tray sets that needs. One arch or two. Whether attachments, refinements and retainers are included. Whether anything has to be treated before movement starts.
Insurance
Where a plan includes an orthodontic benefit, it pays a share up to a maximum set for orthodontics, and that maximum does not reset annually the way a general dental maximum does.
Ask your insurer for a written pre-determination before you commit. Two things to check with them directly: whether the benefit applies to adults, and whether it applies to aligners or only to braces. Plans differ on both.
The Canadian Dental Care Plan
The CDCP is open to all ages for eligible Canadian residents; eligibility requires no access to private dental insurance, the required Canadian tax returns, adjusted family net income under $90,000, and Canadian residency for tax purposes.
Orthodontic treatment is not part of what it pays for. The plan's coverage page says orthodontic services are not available, and there is no published date for that changing. We checked it on 21 September 2026.
Healthy Smiles Ontario
This programme covers children 17 and under in lower-income households, with the household income limit set at $29,065 for one child as of 1 July 2026.
Braces are outside it. The programme lists braces beside teeth whitening as cosmetic dentistry and excludes them. It does not name clear aligners separately. Children enrolled through Ontario Works get the same coverage and the same exclusion.
Get your own number in writing. Book an assessment through the online booking or phone (905) 821-8632.
Dentistry on Britannia is a general dental practice. Our dentists are general dentists, not specialists in any RCDSO-recognised specialty.