How We Review and Rate Dental Insurance Companies

Investopedia is dedicated to helping you find the right dental insurance provider for your needs. We’ve completed in-depth research into 17 companies that offer insurance that you can buy on your own, outside of the Health Insurance Marketplace and any employer-provided plan. We compared them across five key categories to score and weight factors like premiums, availability, plan coverage, and more. This guide explains these categories and each criterion we used to evaluate each dental insurance provider.

Our editors and researchers independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Our advertising partnerships are not a factor in how we evaluate products, though they may affect the order of products you see listed in our articles.

Comprehensive Data Collection and Review Process

To identify which dental insurance companies to review, we analyzed market data and public sentiment. We used business and industry databases to get insights into market share, and user-generated data from Google to understand trends and public interest in stand-alone dental plans. 

We collected data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), a standard-setting and regulatory support organization that maintains a database of customer complaints. We also gathered data directly from companies via websites, media contacts, and existing partnerships. The data collection process took place between Oct. 9, 2023, and Dec. 23, 2023.

We then developed a quantitative model that scores each dental insurance plan based on five major categories and 45 criteria that are crucial in evaluating a plan’s offerings and benefits.

Data Collection and Scoring 

• Data points were scored on a 0.00 - 1.00 scale.
• Binary criteria received a 0 or 1 score.
• Scaled criteria (e.g., 5-point) were scored as such: [0.00, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.00].
• Continuous criteria were scored such that the minimum value in the database was re-scaled to 0.00 and the maximum value was re-scaled to 1.00.

Dental Insurance Evaluation Categories

After determining five key categories with which to evaluate dental insurance plans and providers, we weighted them differently depending on the article and the needs of those readers,

These categories break down into 35 criteria, resulting in 595 data points across 17 companies that make up our scoring rubric.

State Availability

We collected data on how many states each company offers a PPO plan in, as well as Washington, D.C., from company websites, through partnerships, and from media contacts. We scored state availability on a continuous scale, awarding companies a 1 when their PPO plan was available in all states, plus D.C., and less than 1 for those with less than full availability.

State availability was scored a little differently for our articles on implants, braces, no waiting periods, and no annual maximums. We looked at the state availability for each company’s most affordable plan that covered those procedures or offered that benefit, favoring PPOs where those were available.

Customer Satisfaction

We scored customer satisfaction on a continuous scale using NAIC Complaint Index data averaged over three years and results from the 2023 U.S. Dental Plan Satisfaction Study. Scores for both NAIC and J.D. Power data ranged from 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest). The lower the NAIC Complaint Index value, the higher our score (fewer complaints are a good thing). 

For J.D. Power, the more points a company got from J.D. Power, the higher the score we gave it. J.D. Power does not rank all of the companies we researched, so we didn’t score companies not included and we didn’t assign a weight to this criteria. But we did use it to inform our overall view of companies that J.D. Power included.

We began our NAIC data gathering by first identifying the underwriter for each dental insurance company and then searching that underwriter on the NAIC website. Once found, we clicked on the trends page and then collected information about the premium amount underwritten, as well as the Complaint Indexes from 2020 to 2022. Next, we calculated an average of the underwriter’s Complaint Indexes across the three-year range. If a company had multiple underwriters, we created a weighted average in which the companies that underwrite a higher amount of premiums received proportionally more weight. 

Cost-to-Value

To evaluate and score the costs for each company, we collected data on the following criteria:

• Monthly premium
• Deductible
• Annual maximum benefit
• Lifetime orthodontia benefit
• Lifetime implant benefit

We gathered quotes for each company’s lowest-premium PPO plan that covered three levels of coverage (preventative, basic, and major) across two ZIP codes: 90011 (Los Angeles County, California) and 79936 (El Paso County, Texas). If a plan was not offered in one or both of those areas, we used 30369 (Atlanta), 60654 (Chicago), or 19019 (Philadelphia). 

We scored premiums and deductibles separately, scoring each on a continuous scale from 0 to 1, where 1 was awarded to companies with the lowest premium or deductible, and 0 to the ones with the highest. We then calculated the average premium and deductible scores for each company across both ZIP codes. 

We did the same with three coverage criteria—annual maximum benefit, lifetime orthodontia benefit, and lifetime implant benefit. Once this was done, we came up with an overall cost-to-value score, which averages a plan’s premium, deductible, and annual maximum benefit (substituting lifetime orthodontia benefit for our braces article and lifetime implants benefit for our implants article). This score takes into effect the fact that low premiums may go with high premiums and/or low coverage maximums, so it presents a more balanced representation of how much you might end up spending for a plan. 

Coverage

We looked at a total of 23 criteria to score various coverage limits for in- and out-of-network care across a variety of procedures and benefits, from preventative, basic, and major care, to orthodontics, implants, and dentures. The number of weighted criteria varies per article because we aimed to focus on the most important criteria for each article. For example, for our article on the best insurance companies for braces, we focused on orthodontics coverage but not implants coverage. 

Each criterion was scored on a continuous scale of 0 to 1, where companies that offered the most coverage received a 1 and those with less coverage scored lower than 1. 

Customer Service

We looked at whether each dental insurance company offered the following types of customer service:

• Online quote
• Mobile app
• Live chat
• Phone
• Online portal

This data was scored on a binary scale where companies received a score of 1 for each customer service option offered, and 0 for each not offered. 

Articles That Use Our Methodology

We have many articles about the best dental insurance companies to meet your needs. The data collected for this methodology have been used to compile the following list of recommended companies: 

• Best Dental Insurance Companies
• Best Dental Insurance for Braces
• Best Dental Insurance for Implants
• Best Dental Insurance Providers for Older Adults
• Best Dental Insurance Plans With No Annual Maximum
• Best Dental Insurance Plans With No Waiting Period

The order of providers may be based on additional product-specific criteria plus subjective insights from our editors and industry experts.

Meet the Team

Shanker Narayan

Research Analyst, Financial Product Reviews

As a Research Analyst for Investopedia's financial product reviews team, Shanker formulates evaluation criteria for various financial product categories, with a focus on consumer and small business insurance products. His responsibilities include overseeing the data collection, verification, and analysis processes that fuel our financial product reviews.Shanker's background in Applied Statistics has equipped him with both the tools and logical framework necessary to develop, refine, and execute research methodologies. Combined with his passion for reading and writing in his personal life, Shanker believes that the best, most meaningful content is generated when using both quantitative and qualitative techniques in research and delivery.

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Yasmin Ghahremani

Associate Editorial Director, Financial Products and Services

Yasmin Ghahremani is an Associate Editorial Director at Investopedia, where she oversees educational content about consumer financial products, ranging from checking accounts to life insurance. She joined the team in January 2023, after working for nearly four years in a similar role at The Balance. She has more than a decade of experience educating consumers about personal finance, which also includes stints as a managing editor at CreditCards.com and Wise Bread, and a contract editor at LendingTree.

Yasmin has also had an extensive international career covering business, technology, and the environment for broadcast and print outlets, including CNN, CNBC, and Asiaweek magazine. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University.

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