MSPA is an independent index of medical spa pricing and provider credentials in the United States. This page explains exactly how we gather what we publish, how we are paid, and what we refuse to do. If any of it looks wrong to you, we want to hear about it.
What MSPA is not. We are not a clinic and give no medical advice. We are not a trade association and hold no members. We do not certify, accredit, license, endorse or approve any provider, and no clinic can buy a rating from us. Anyone claiming MSPA accreditation is misrepresenting us.
What we publish
Three things, each held to a different standard of evidence.
| Section | What it contains | Evidence standard |
|---|---|---|
| Price Index | Observed price ranges by treatment and metro area | Published clinic menus and verified patient receipts only. Never estimates. |
| Provider Index | Clinic listings with licence and supervision details | Verified against the relevant state licensing board at the date shown. |
| Treatment Library | Explainers on procedures, risks and recovery | FDA labelling, peer-reviewed literature and specialty society guidance. Reviewed by a licensed clinician. |
How we collect price data
Aesthetic pricing is deliberately opaque. Most clinics publish nothing, and most articles that claim to know prices are guessing or repeating each other. Our approach is narrow on purpose: we would rather publish a small amount of real data than a large amount of invented data.
What counts as a price observation
- A published menu price from a clinic website, captured with the date and a link to the source.
- A patient-submitted receipt or itemised quote, with clinic name, date, treatment, units where applicable, and total paid. Personal details are removed before anything is recorded.
What we exclude
- Introductory, first-visit and new-patient promotional rates, which are marketing rather than price.
- Membership or package pricing, unless the equivalent single-session price is also published.
- Any figure we cannot trace to a dated source.
- Prices from a clinic that pays us for anything. Advertisers are excluded from their own market data.
How we report it
Prices are published as observed ranges with the sample size and collection window stated on the page. A range built from four observations says so, and you should weigh it accordingly. Every price page carries the date it was last refreshed. We re-collect quarterly and do not carry stale figures forward silently.
Current status, September 2026. Price collection is underway and no price data has been published yet. When the first metro index goes live it will state its sample size and collection dates on the page. We will not publish a price range before we have the observations to support it.
How we verify providers
A listing in the Provider Index means we checked specific, checkable facts on a specific date. It is not a recommendation.
- Licence status of the named medical director and of injecting clinicians, confirmed against the issuing state board.
- Scope and supervision — whether the injector type is permitted to inject in that state, and under what delegation or collaboration arrangement.
- Good faith examination — whether the clinic states that a qualified clinician evaluates each patient before treatment. This is a legal requirement in most states and one of the clearest dividing lines between a careful practice and a careless one.
- Disciplinary history that appears in the public board record.
We remove a listing when a licence lapses, when a board action appears, or when we cannot re-verify at the next review. We publish the date of every verification, because a credential check is only true on the day it was made.
How we make money
Stating this plainly is part of the product.
- Nothing, at present. As of September 2026 the site carries no advertising, no affiliate links and no paid placements.
- Planned: qualified consultation referrals. Clinics will be able to pay to receive consultation enquiries from readers. Any such clinic will be labelled on the page where it appears.
- Planned: product affiliate links, individually disclosed at the point of the link.
- Planned: aggregate pricing data licensed back to the industry.
Paid relationships will never affect a clinic's presence in the Provider Index, the order of results, or the content of any review. Advertisers are excluded from the price dataset entirely so that paying us cannot move the benchmark.
Things we will not do
- Sell a rating, a ranking position, a badge, or a certification.
- Publish a price we cannot source to a dated document.
- Take payment to remove a negative fact from a listing.
- Present editorial content as though it were medical advice, or advice as though it were editorial.
- Recommend a specific provider to a specific reader. We publish what is checkable and leave the choice to you.
Corrections
If a price, a credential or a legal detail on this site is wrong, tell us and we will check it. Substantive corrections are noted on the page with the date and what changed. We do not quietly edit and move on.
Corrections and clinic data disputes: contact us.
Published 15 September 2026. This methodology will be versioned as it changes, with a summary of what changed and when.