How to Find the Best Dentist in Frisco, TX

Choosing a Dentist

7 min read  •  By Dr. Kevin Baharvand, DMD, MS  •  Updated August 2026

Search “best dentist near me” in Frisco and you get about forty results. Most of the ones at the top paid to be there. The websites all say the same things: gentle, family friendly, state of the art. You cannot tell them apart, and that is the actual problem.

I am an orthodontist. My wife and I own an orthodontic practice and a general dental practice here in Frisco, so I have spent a lot of time on both sides of this question. The patients who end up happy with their dentist usually did about twenty minutes of homework first. Not more than that. Just the right twenty minutes.

Here is what I would check.

A referral is a starting point, not an answer

Your neighbor loves her dentist. Ask her why and you will usually hear that the office runs on time, or that the hygienist is nice. Both are good things. Neither one tells you whether they can handle your kid’s first cavity or the crown you have been putting off since 2023.

So take the name, then do two quick things.

Look the license up. The Texas State Board of Dental Examiners runs a free public search that confirms a license is active and shows any disciplinary history. It takes a minute and almost nobody does it.

Then find out how long that dentist has been at that address. Turnover matters more in dentistry than people realize. If a practice has run through four dentists in three years, nobody there knows your mouth, and a lot of what makes dental care work over time is somebody remembering what your mouth looked like two years ago.

Read the three star reviews

Everybody reads the five star ones. They are the least useful thing on the page. A five star review usually says great staff, no pain. That describes most functioning dental offices in Texas.

Go to the three star reviews instead. That is where you find out what happens when something goes wrong, which it eventually will. Did the crown fail, and did they fix it without an argument? Was the estimate off, and who ate the difference?

Then read the replies. A defensive paragraph about office policy is a preview of the conversation you are going to have at the front desk.

Volume matters too, but in context. Two hundred reviews from one location over five years tells you more than two thousand spread across eleven offices under the same brand name.

Ask who owns the practice

This is the question almost nobody asks, and it changes more than any piece of equipment in the building.

A lot of dental practices in North Texas are owned by dental service organizations now. The group buys the practice, keeps the name and the sign, and the dentist you meet is an employee working against production targets set by people who will never look at your x-rays. That does not automatically mean bad care. There are good dentists working in those offices. But the person recommending four crowns has a number to hit, and you should know that before you say yes.

Just ask at the front desk. Who owns this practice? An independent office answers in about two seconds and will probably walk the owner over to say hello. If the answer takes three sentences and includes the phrase management company, you learned something useful.

A few states have started regulating this directly. Colorado’s dental board passed a rule that takes effect January 1, 2027 and bars dental service organizations from owning practices, employing the clinicians, or holding the leases and the equipment. The industry trade group sued over it last month. This breakdown of the Colorado rule lays out how those arrangements are actually structured, which is worth reading even if you live in Texas. Texas has not gone that far. That is part of why the question is worth asking here.

I went into this in more detail on the orthodontic side. Same logic applies to general dentistry.

Can one office actually see everybody

If you have kids, this changes the math. Driving a four year old to a pediatric office and then yourself to a different office costs you a morning twice a year, every year, for about fifteen years.

What you want to know is whether an office genuinely sees every age well, and what they do in house versus refer out. Children, teens, and adults, plus the things that show up later like root canals, crowns, implants, and wisdom teeth. Referring out is not a failure. Some cases should go to a specialist and a dentist who says so is being honest with you. But find out before the day you need it.

And ask what happens at 4:30 on a Friday when a tooth cracks. On the day that happens, you will not care about anything else on this list, only whether somebody answers the phone and has an emergency slot.

Ask for the estimate in writing

Before treatment, every time. Not a number somebody says out loud while you are reclined with a mirror in your mouth. A written estimate with the procedure codes, what insurance is expected to pay, and what you owe.

If that request strikes the office as unusual, that tells you something. We do it by default because it prevents the exact argument nobody wants to have later.

If you do not have dental insurance, ask what they offer instead. A lot of independent practices, ours included, run an in house savings plan. Flat annual fee, cleanings and exams included, everything else discounted. For a family paying cash that usually beats a low tier policy once you do the math. If insurance is the sticking point, I have written separately about what Delta Dental actually covers and which Frisco offices take United Healthcare.

The technology that actually matters

Every dental website in Frisco lists the same equipment. Most of it does not change anything for you. Three things do.

Digital x-rays, which use less radiation than film and put the image on a screen where you can see what the dentist is pointing at. An intraoral camera, so you see the cracked filling yourself instead of taking somebody’s word for it. And digital impressions, which replaced the tray of putty that made half our patients gag.

That is the list. The rest is website decoration.

So the better question is not whether they have a scanner. It is whether they will turn the screen toward you and show you what they are looking at.

What a good first visit looks like

You will know inside twenty minutes, and it will not be because of the lobby coffee.

A good first visit includes a full exam, an oral cancer screening, current images, and somebody walking you through what they found, what is urgent, and what can wait. That last part is the tell. Most mouths have a mix of both. If everything is urgent, and you need to decide today, and there happens to be an opening this afternoon, that is a sales process.

The American Dental Association makes roughly the same point in its guidance on choosing a dentist. You are looking for somebody whose explanations you understand and whose office you will actually keep going back to.

Four questions to ask before you book

Keep this open on your phone when you call. The answers sort most offices pretty quickly.

Tap and drag the table sideways to see every column.

Common questions

How do I check that a dentist in Frisco is licensed?

The Texas State Board of Dental Examiners publishes a free public license search. It confirms the license is active and shows any disciplinary history. It takes about a minute, and it is the fastest useful thing you can do before booking.

How many dentists should I compare?

Two or three. After that you are comparing lobbies. Narrow by location and hours first, then use the ownership question and the written estimate question to separate them.

Does it really matter if a corporation owns the practice?

It matters because incentives matter. A dentist working against production targets set by an outside owner is under pressure an independent owner is not. Plenty of corporate offices deliver good care. You just want to know which kind of office you are sitting in before you agree to a treatment plan.

What if I have not been to a dentist in years?

Say so when you book. It changes nothing about how you should be treated, and any office worth choosing has seen it many times. Expect a longer first visit, a full set of images, and a plan spread over several appointments instead of all at once.

How do I find out if a dentist takes my insurance?

Call the office, not the insurer directory, which is often out of date. And ask about your specific plan, not just the carrier. Delta Dental PPO and Delta Dental Premier pay very differently at the same office.

Can one dentist really handle my whole family?

If the practice is set up for it, yes. What you are checking is whether they see young kids comfortably, handle teens including sports guards and wisdom teeth evaluations, and do adult restorative work in house. Ask directly. The answer is usually specific.

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