Dentrix vs Open Dental

PickMyPMS Editorial · Last reviewed Sep 28, 2026

Quick verdict

Open Dental suits a practice that wants to see real prices before it calls a sales rep, keep its data in an open database, and avoid a long-term contract after the first year. Dentrix suits a practice that is already comfortable working through a Henry Schein rep and quote process and wants imaging built in at no extra fee.

Both are Windows systems that normally run on a server in your office, and neither runs on a Mac. Open Dental also has a hosted Cloud option, currently in limited release. What separates them is how much of the price you can see before you sign anything.

Same setup, different pricing model

Dentrix and Open Dental are both installed on a Windows server in your office, with workstations also running Windows. Henry Schein One does not publish a Dentrix price list; you get a figure only after a sales conversation. Open Dental posts its support fees on its own site and updates the page when they change.

That gap in transparency shapes almost everything else on this page: contract length, what counts as “included,” and how easy it is to compare five-year costs before you commit to either one.

What each costs

Henry Schein One publishes no price for Dentrix. Third-party estimates, cited without their own sources, put a one-time license at $5,000 to $10,000, plus $100 to $300 a month for the Connected Care Essentials support plan that covers updates, imaging and in-product chat. A separate third-party listing gives a $500-a-month starting estimate and says support without any plan is billed at $179.95 per incident; that figure comes from a different source and does not reconcile with the $100-to-$300 range. Electronic claims are a separate eService, billed at a $15-a-month minimum with the per-claim rate set on your order form.

Open Dental’s published support fee is $199 a month per location for your first 12 months, covering up to three dentists, then drops to $149 monthly after that. Each additional dentist beyond three costs $20 monthly.

An eServices bundle for patient communication runs $165 a month per location as an add-on; texting on top of that is $5 monthly for an assigned number or $20 monthly to text from your landline, plus 4 cents per message. Open Dental also offers a hosted Cloud version that skips the office server. It is in limited release, and it costs $430 a month per location for one provider and $150 monthly for each additional provider, plus a one-time $400 migration fee.

For a solo practice, Open Dental’s published numbers are easy to plug into a spreadsheet. Dentrix’s are estimates from sites that don’t say where their figures come from. Run both through our cost calculator once you have a written Dentrix quote, so you’re comparing real five-year totals instead of a published number against a guess.

Contracts and cancelling

Open Dental starts with a 12-month initial term, then moves to month-to-month, and it backs its support fees with a 90-day money-back guarantee.

Dentrix eServices, including eClaims and online booking, run on 12-month terms that renew automatically at whatever fees are then in effect. Written notice of non-renewal is due at least 60 days before the term ends, and leaving early can mean paying for the rest of the term with no refund. We found no published notice or renewal terms for the separate Connected Care Essentials plan itself, only that it bills annually in monthly installments.

Open Dental’s terms are the easier ones to plan around: after year one, you can leave with normal notice instead of tracking a renewal date.

Getting your data out

Open Dental’s data lives in an open MySQL database that the practice controls, so exporting it doesn’t depend on Open Dental’s cooperation.

We could not find a published data export policy for desktop Dentrix. The database sits on your own server, so you hold the files, but using them in another system still requires a conversion, and Henry Schein One does not publish what that costs.

Switching to Open Dental

Open Dental publishes a flat conversion fee: $1,450 per database, plus $900 for x-rays and $850 for documents, and $400 for each additional clinic. The page does not list which source systems that price assumes, so confirm in writing that it covers a Dentrix conversion before you budget around it.

Before you sign, get these in writing:

• Whether the $1,450 conversion rate applies to your specific Dentrix version and database size.
• Which records convert: patient history, ledger, insurance plans, clinical notes and images.
• How long your remaining Dentrix eServices terms run, so you’re not paying for both systems.
• Training included for the front desk and clinical team, since Open Dental reviewers describe a learning curve.

Imaging and features

Dentrix Imaging handles 2D, 3D CAD/CAM and 3D CBCT in one application, works with more than 150 devices, and Henry Schein One says it carries no added fee. We could not find published imaging details for Open Dental in our data; Open Dental sells patient communication features like texting through its separate eServices bundle rather than bundling them into the base support fee.

On Capterra, Dentrix holds 4.3 out of 5 from 378 reviews and Open Dental holds 4.6 out of 5 from 89. Dentrix reviewers cite easy navigation and broad office management tools, and complain about slow, inconsistent support and updates that introduce bugs. Open Dental reviewers cite published pricing and no long-term contract after year one as strengths, and describe a learning curve, a dated interface, and paying for live support as drawbacks.

Who should pick which

Pick Open Dental if you:

• Want to see real prices before you talk to a salesperson.
• Want your data in an open database you control, not a proprietary format.
• Can live with a dated interface and a learning curve in exchange for published, predictable pricing.

Stay on or choose Dentrix if you:

• Already work with a Henry Schein rep and trust the relationship.
• Want imaging built in with no separately priced imaging module, once you confirm the actual quote.
• Prefer to negotiate a quote rather than work from a fixed published rate.

If you’re not sure which fits, the Find my PMS quiz scores both products, and other options, against your specialty, size and budget.