On this page
A professional dental cleaning for a dog or cat usually costs somewhere between $300 and $800, and extractions can push the bill well past $1,000. Dental disease is one of the most common conditions vets see, which makes the natural next question: does pet insurance cover any of this? The answer is mixed, and it depends entirely on which kind of dental care you mean.
Routine dental cleanings: usually not covered
A standard accident and illness policy does not cover routine dental care. Annual cleanings, like annual exams and vaccines, sit in the wellness category, and base policies exclude wellness care across the board. Our exclusions guide covers the full list.
Wellness add-ons are the exception. Several insurers sell a preventive care add-on that returns cash for routine visits, and dental cleanings are commonly on the list. ASPCA’s wellness coverage, for example, includes dental cleanings alongside vaccines and spay or neuter. Spot, Pets Best, Lemonade, MetLife, and Figo all sell wellness add-ons. Healthy Paws and Trupanion do not offer one at all, so if routine dental coverage matters to you, those two are off the table.
The wellness math deserves a hard look. A wellness add-on might cost $20 to $30 a month, or $240 to $360 a year, and reimburse a fixed amount per cleaning, often $100 to $150. If the cleaning costs $500 and the add-on returns $150, you paid $300 to get $150 back. Run the specific numbers for your insurer before adding it. Wellness add-ons are budgeting tools, not insurance, and they only make sense if you will actually use every benefit.
Dental illness: sometimes covered
Here is where it gets more interesting. Dental disease that requires treatment, not just cleaning, can fall under illness coverage on some policies. A tooth that needs extraction because of advanced periodontal disease, or treatment for stomatitis in a cat, may be covered the way any other illness is, subject to your deductible and reimbursement rate.
But the details vary enormously by insurer. Some policies cover dental illness fully. Some cover it only up to a sub-limit. Some exclude it unless you can show the pet had a dental exam or cleaning within the past year, a requirement that effectively ties illness coverage to routine care. Lemonade sells dental illness as an add-on rather than including it in the base plan. Read the dental section of any policy you are considering, because this is one of the least standardized parts of pet insurance.
Dental accidents: usually covered
A broken tooth from chewing a rock or a jaw injury from a fall is an accident, and accident coverage applies the way it does for any other injury. Accident-only plans, the cheapest tier at around $16 a month for dogs and $9 for cats nationally, cover dental injuries too. This is the one dental category with broad, consistent coverage.
Why dental timing matters
Dental disease is progressive. A cleaning at $400 today can prevent extractions at $1,500 in two years, and most vets will tell you that the majority of adult pets have some degree of periodontal disease. Delay is expensive in a way that compounds: each skipped cleaning raises the odds of the next visit involving extractions, X-rays, and longer anesthesia.
There is also a pre-existing angle. If your vet has already noted dental disease in the records before you enroll, treatment for that condition will likely be excluded as pre-existing. Enrolling while the dental record is clean, and keeping up with the cleanings the policy requires, is how you keep dental illness coverage actually usable.
The practical setup
For most owners, the sensible dental setup is a base accident and illness policy from an insurer with decent dental illness terms, plus a personal budget for the annual cleaning. The cleaning is a predictable $300 to $800 expense you can plan for. The $2,000 extraction surgery is the unpredictable one, and that is what the insurance is for. If you want the cleaning covered too, price the wellness add-on honestly against the reimbursement caps before you buy it.
For the broader coverage picture, see how much pet insurance costs in 2026 and how claims and reimbursement work.
