Voluntary, self-reported contributions
Contributors report country, general location, role, specialty when applicable, whole years of experience, practice setting, employment arrangement, compensation model, annual compensation, weekly hours, and benefits. No account is required.
Human moderation before publication
Submissions remain private while moderators review completeness, plausibility, consistency, abuse signals, and privacy risk. Submission does not guarantee publication.
Generalization and rounding
Published records omit direct identifiers and employer details. Annual compensation is rounded to the nearest $1,000. The public record uses a broad city or regional label and relative submission age rather than an exact date.
Country and currency separation
United States and Canadian records are never pooled into one benchmark. Native U.S. records use USD and Canadian records use CAD. Optional display conversion uses a recent Bank of Canada exchange rate or a clearly labeled fallback rate.
Benchmark calculations
When at least five records match the active role, country, specialty, experience, region, and other filters, annual compensation values are sorted to calculate the median and 25th and 75th percentiles. Generalized individual records may remain visible below that threshold, together with the matching record count.
Publication status
The explorer and homepage use approved, reviewed records from the production dataset. When coverage is not broad enough for a benchmark, the interface reports that more data is needed.
Limitations
DentComp is not a probability sample, compensation is self-reported, benefits are not assigned a dollar value, and small samples may not represent a market. Results should be treated as context—not a promise, offer valuation, or substitute for professional advice.
Corrections and deletion
Contributors receive a private deletion code after submission. While DentComp still holds the submission as personal information, that code can be used to request deletion as described in the Privacy Policy. For questions or corrections, use the contact details at the bottom of the Privacy Policy.
Use the narrowest useful comparison
Start with role and country, then add filters only when enough records remain to make the result useful. Always read the sample count and the record details behind a benchmark.
Explore the data