How Many Dentists Are in the US? (2026 Data)

1. How Many Dentists Are Practicing Right Now?

The American Dental Association's 2024 Distribution of Dentists report puts the total US dentist count at 202,304 as of January 2024, the most recent year for which a complete state-level census is available. That number has grown about 1.3% per year since 2010, faster than the US population, which is why the dentists-per-capita ratio keeps creeping up.

Quick context:

• 202,304 practicing dentists nationwide
• ~60.9 dentists per 100,000 people, up from 60.0 in 2019
• Roughly 178,000 dental practice businesses operate in the US (one practice typically employs more than one dentist)
• The federal Health Resources and Services Administration projects demand will outpace supply in 9,200+ designated shortage areas

If you're building an addressable market for a product aimed at dentists, the right denominator depends on what you're selling. Practice-management software targets the practice (~178k). Loupes, CE courses, or scrubs target the individual dentist (~202k). Anything sold per-chair lives somewhere in between.

2. Dentists per Capita by State

Massachusetts has the highest dentist concentration in the country, with about 91 dentists per 100,000 residents. Alabama and Arkansas sit at the bottom, each below 45. California has the largest absolute count by a wide margin, with more than 31,000 practicing dentists.

Source: ADA Health Policy Institute, Distribution of Dentists in the US by State (2024). Top 15 states by absolute count shown. The lowest per-capita states are Alabama (44.0), Arkansas (44.2), and Mississippi (45.1).

3. Workforce by Specialty

The vast majority of US dentists practice general dentistry. Only about 1 in 5 is a specialist. Orthodontics is the largest specialty, but the fastest-growing in absolute terms is oral and maxillofacial surgery. For B2B sellers targeting a specific specialty, see our pediatric dentists email list for the children's dentistry segment.

Source: ADA HPI, 2024. Specialty counts include only ADA-recognized specialties. General dentists may also offer cosmetic, implant, or sedation services without holding a specialty credential.

4. Demographics: Age, Gender, Diversity

The US dentist workforce is getting younger, more female, and more diverse every year. The pipeline coming out of dental schools looks dramatically different from the practicing population.

Gender

37.6% of practicing US dentists are women, up from 24.5% in 2010. Among dentists under 35, women are already the majority. The ADA projects that gender parity in the overall workforce will be reached around 2040.

Age

The average age of a practicing US dentist is 49.5. About 16.4% are 65 or older, which has fueled projections that more than 1 in 4 currently practicing dentists will retire by 2035. Meanwhile, US dental schools produced 6,700+ graduates in 2024, the highest annual cohort on record.

Race and Ethnicity

About 67% of practicing dentists are white, 19.4% are Asian, 6.0% are Hispanic or Latino, and 4.0% are Black or African-American, per ADA HPI data. The non-white share has grown by about 6 percentage points over the past decade.

5. Where Dentists Work: Solo, Group, DSO

The classic image of a dentist as a solo practice owner is fading. According to the ADA, here is how the workforce splits today:

• 50.2% work in a solo practice (down from 67% in 2005)
• 35.6% work in a small group practice (2 to 9 dentists)
• 13.6% are affiliated with a Dental Service Organization (DSO)
• 0.6% work in federal, military, or public health settings

The DSO share looks small until you look at the pipeline. Among recent graduates, 58% of the class of 2024 joined a DSO out of school, up from 22% in 2018. Most projections expect DSO-affiliated dentists to cross 25% of the total workforce by 2030.

Read our full breakdown in The Rise of DSOs: What Dental Service Organizations Mean for B2B Sales.

6. Projections Through 2035

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 5% growth in dentist employment between 2023 and 2033, faster than the overall labor market. Combined with HRSA's demand models, here is the picture for the next decade:

• Net workforce is expected to reach about 222,000 dentists by 2035
• The female share of the workforce should pass 45% by 2035
• DSO-affiliated dentists should pass 30% of the workforce by the early 2030s
• Retirement waves of Baby Boomer dentists will accelerate practice consolidation, with DSOs and group practices the primary buyers

7. How to Reach US Dentists

202,000 dentists across 178,000 practices is your top-line TAM if you sell to the industry. Reaching them is a separate problem. The two main paths:

• Practice-level outreach works for anything sold to the business (PMS software, supplies, insurance, marketing services). The practice email and phone are the right entry point.
• Dentist-level outreach works for anything sold to the person (CE, recruitment, financial services, clinical products). NPI directories and CE registries are stronger here than practice contact data.

For practice-level outreach, you can browse our dentist email list by state, or read how to reach dental practices for B2B sales and marketing. If you want the big-picture numbers for the practices themselves rather than dentists, see how many dental practices are in the US.