About Hospital Price Lookup
Hospital Price Lookup is an independent data project that turns hospitals' federally-required price-transparency files into a fast, free reference for what common procedures cost by metro. Every number traces to a specific hospital's own published file, the method is documented, and nothing is sponsored or pay-to-rank. It exists because U.S. medical prices are famously opaque — the same procedure can cost wildly different amounts at hospitals a few miles apart.
What it is
Hospital Price Lookup turns hospitals' federally-required price-transparency files into a plain, free reference for what common medical procedures cost by metro. For each procedure it shows the typical insurer-negotiated price across area hospitals, the genuine self-pay cash price where a hospital publishes one, the chargemaster "list" price that almost no one pays, and a hospital-by-hospital breakdown.
Why it exists
U.S. medical prices are famously opaque. The same procedure can cost wildly different amounts at hospitals a few miles apart, and the one number patients often see — the chargemaster list price — is the one almost nobody actually pays. Since 2021 every hospital has had to publish its real prices in a machine-readable file, but those files are enormous, inconsistently formatted, and effectively unreadable by a patient. This site reads them so you don't have to.
How it's made
Every figure is read directly from a hospital's own machine-readable Standard Charges file — nothing is estimated, modeled, or bought from a data vendor. Prices are aggregated to be outlier-robust (a typical price plus an honest range), and where a hospital reports no price for a service, nothing is shown rather than a guess. The full method is documented on the how prices work page.
Independent and unsponsored
This is an independent data project, not affiliated with any hospital, insurer, or health system. No hospital pays to appear or to rank, and nothing on the site is sponsored. It carries no advertising today; if privacy-respecting ads are ever added, they will never change which prices are shown or their order.
How to use it — and its limits
Use these prices to compare hospitals, sanity-check a bill or a quote, and ask informed questions before care. They are references, not a bill: your actual out-of-pocket cost depends on your insurance, the exact service, and the hospital. Always confirm price and coverage with the hospital and your insurer. Nothing here is medical or financial advice.