Method
How the numbers get here, and how much to trust them.
Where prices come from
Every price is something a clinic posted on its own website. We quote the line, link to the page and note the date we saw it. If we can't link to it, we don't list it. Later, prices will also come from bills owners choose to share, with names and contact details stripped out. Those are marked "bill".
Why posted prices skew low
Clinics that publish prices tend to be the ones competing on price: nonprofits, vaccine clinics, low-cost practices. Full-service and specialty hospitals mostly don't post. So the numbers lean low. A bill above the posted range isn't automatically a rip-off. It's a reason to ask what's included.
Verdicts
A bill item gets a verdict only when at least five clinics in the city you pick have posted a price for that service. If the city has fewer, we compare with national numbers instead and label them national. Above the highest posted price is "above posted range". Below the lowest is "below". Anything else is "in range". With fewer than five clinics, we say there isn't enough local data yet.
Finding clinics
We find clinic websites from public lists, including OpenStreetMap, then read each clinic's own pages, starting with the ones that look like price lists. Prices always come from the clinic's own site, never from the list. A clinic is listed only after we confirm it on its own website. Some clinic names and addresses come from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
Second check
Every price that passes our word-for-word checks is read again by a separate, stronger AI model, which sees the quote and the text around it. It must agree the price is the clinic's normal price for that exact service: not a specialist visit filed as an exam, not a combo test filed as a single test, not one of two competing prices. If it disagrees or isn't sure, the price is held back. Prices far outside a plausible range are held back too.
Prices change
A price is true on the date shown and maybe not after. Call the clinic to confirm before you go.
Reporting an error
Every price on a service page has a "report an error" link. Tell us what's wrong; an email is optional if you want to hear back. We check the source and fix or remove the price.