How we verify the clinic directory

Every clinic in the GraftCost directory is confirmed by at least two independent sources before it is listed, and neither the clinic's own website nor a commission-based booking site counts as one of them. Surgeons are checked in the issuing body's own directory where possible, every listing gets a tier, and no clinic can pay for placement.

The directory today

Clinics listed	291
Countries	53
Tier 1 · Tier 2 · Tier 3	145 · 119 · 27
Independent sources per clinic	at least 2 (median 3)
Named surgeons	411 (236 verified)
Hair-mill flags	25 clinics
Composite scores with high confidence	51 clinics
Price confirmed on the clinic's own site	28 clinics
Dataset build	2026-10-03

Computed from the directory data each time the site is built. The same data drives every clinic page.

The two-independent-source rule

A clinic is listed only when two sources that are independent of each other, and of the clinic, confirm that it exists and works as described. These count: search results on Google, Bing and Yandex, Google Maps and Business Profile listings, patient forums and Reddit threads, review platforms such as Trustpilot, press coverage, and the member directories of credential bodies such as the ISHRS, IAHRS and ABHRS.

These never count: the clinic's own website and social accounts, which only repeat what the clinic says about itself (a website and its own Instagram are still one voice), and commission-based booking sites and lead brokers, whose listings are paid for. They can still supply details such as an address or a surgeon's CV, which is why they can appear in a clinic's source list, but they never make up the two.

Today 78 clinics sit exactly on the minimum of 2 and the median is 3. When a re-check in August 2026 found clinics below two, each was searched again in the local language, and those without a genuine second source were removed.

Tiers

Each listing carries one of three tiers, and the tier is printed on the listing itself:

• Tier 1, authority-verified surgeon (145 clinics). A named surgeon, confirmed as currently working there, whose credential we found in the issuing body's own directory (usually the ISHRS, IAHRS or ABHRS), plus an accreditation and multi-source detail.
• Tier 2, verified clinic (119). At least two independent sources and real contact details, but short of Tier 1, usually because no surgeon could be confirmed at the source or because the independent record is thin.
• Tier 3, listed with thinner proof (27). Confirmed by at least two independent sources, but the rest of the record is thin, and the listing says so.

Tiers are set in a review pass whose default is to doubt, so a clinic with a verified surgeon can still sit in Tier 2 when the rest of its record is thin (42 do). A tier measures how much we could verify, not how good the surgery is.

Surgeons: named, current, checked at the source

Doctors move, retire and leave, and clinics keep trading on famous names. Each named surgeon is checked as currently working at the clinic, and where possible the credential is checked in the issuing body's own directory instead of being copied from the clinic's website. The directory names 411 surgeons, 236 of them marked verified. When a surgeon has left, the listing says "no longer here" rather than quietly keeping the name (5 clinics show this today).

ISHRS membership on its own is a weak signal: it is open and fee-based, with no exam and no case log. What each credential actually proves is compared in our guide to verifying a hair transplant surgeon.

Hair-mill flags

A hair mill is a high-volume clinic where technicians, not the named surgeon, do most of the surgery. Every listing shows one of three readings, researched from Reddit and patient forums, documented case reports, reviews and the clinic's own explicit statements:

• Low (138). A named surgeon is documented doing the key steps, with a low daily patient count.
• Flagged (25). Sources describe technician-run surgery, little or no doctor involvement, high daily volume, or a pattern of complaints.
• Not enough data (128). Nothing reliable is published, so we do not guess. A wrong "the doctor does the surgery" is more dangerous than a blank.

Flagged clinics stay in the directory with the flag visible, because dropping them would hide exactly what a reader needs to know. They are never featured on the homepage, and no clinic can pay to have a flag removed. More on how to spot a hair mill.

Ratings and the composite score

Ratings are collected per platform (Google, Trustpilot, RealSelf, patient forums and others) and shown separately, each with its review count and a link to where it was collected. The one blended figure is the composite score: the review-count-weighted average of those platform ratings. It is labelled high confidence only when at least two different platforms each carry five or more reviews (51 clinics); otherwise it is labelled low confidence (226), and 14 clinics have no rating at all. Because every rating was collected on another site, none of them is marked up as a GraftCost rating in search-engine structured data.

Where each price comes from

Every clinic price carries its provenance, and the listing says which kind it is:

• Published by the clinic (28). Found on the clinic's own site, in 1 case also corroborated by an independent listing.
• Not confirmed (51). Found only on a third-party listing or in a source we cannot stand behind. It is marked "not confirmed on the clinic's own site".
• Market-level estimate (211). We found no price published by the clinic, so the listing shows the sourced range for its country, with a dashed outline and a label so it cannot be read as a quote.

1 clinic has no price at all. How the country ranges themselves are sourced is on the sources page.

What keeps a clinic out

A clinic is not listed, or is removed, when it has fewer than two independent sources after a second search, when the only evidence for it comes from commission-based booking sites, or when it no longer exists or names no local doctor and nothing independent confirms it. The August 2026 re-check removed 11 clinics on these grounds, including one whose operating company had been wound up after bankruptcy.

Clinics that ask not to be listed. A clinic that does not want to be listed is removed, its page is taken down, and it is recorded in a permanent exclusions ledger. The ledger goes into the exclude list of every later research pass, so the clinic cannot be added back by accident. Coming back would take a written request and a full re-verification, and the decision is the editor's. Removal on request is an editorial decision, not a finding about the clinic.

Re-checks and freshness

There is no fixed re-check calendar yet. Records are re-checked in passes, and each pass is logged:

When	What changed
June 2026	The first research passes were merged into the directory, and four clinics were individually re-verified on 20 June.
July 2026	Re-check batches revisited the first research batches and enriched 91 records; new batches took the directory to 244 clinics.
August 2026	56 clinics added in Turkey, India, the US and the UK. A Trustpilot pass over every clinic, and composite scores recomputed under one rule. Every clinic below two independent sources searched again: 16 re-checked, 5 kept at Tier 3, 11 removed. Two entries our own research had marked for exclusion removed, and one clinic removed at its operator's request.
October 2026	Four clinic submissions verified and added. One clinic's ISHRS line corrected. Third-party ratings removed from structured data, and one listing moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2 because its surgeon could not be confirmed in the ISHRS directory.

Each clinic page states the dataset build it was compiled into (currently 2026-10-03) and shows a separate re-verification date only where the record actually holds one (4 clinics today). We do not print a "last verified" date we do not have. Corrections are welcome through the contact page; they are checked against the sources before the record changes.

What we never do

• Take payment to list a clinic, rank it, change its tier or score, or remove a flag.
• Invent a price, a surgeon's name or a verification date.
• Present a market estimate or a third-party listing as the clinic's own price.
• Count the clinic's own website, or a commission-based booking site, as independent evidence.

Who maintains this

Melih Koray, the site's founder and editor, built this method and collects and audits the directory data (more about him). He is not a clinician: clinical statements on GraftCost rely on the sources cited with them, and the site does not yet have a named medical reviewer. GraftCost earns nothing from clinics or anyone else, and how it is funded is set out on the about page.