Sources & method
We attribute our cost and clinical claims and label how solid each one is. Where a figure is well-sourced we say so; where it is a working estimate, we say that too.
How we tier every figure
Each number on the site carries one of three confidence tiers:
- high Three or more independent sources agree.
- medium Two sources, or one strong source with partial corroboration.
- estimate A single source or an informed inference. Treat with care.
Our consumer-protection, clinical, per-graft and per-country price figures are sourced and high-confidence, triangulated across multiple independent references per figure (2024–2026). Prices remain ranges, not quotes, because real pricing varies by clinic and case.
Primary sources
| Source | What we use it for | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS) | Buyer-beware guidance on medical tourism, the patient question checklist, black-market clinics, and the 2015 Practice Census procedure-volume figures. | high |
| American Hair Loss Association | The finite lifetime donor supply (~6,000–8,000 grafts) and guidance against "maximum graft" marketing. | high |
| CBS News (2024) | Independent reporting on the "black market" of non-doctor hair transplant surgery in Turkey. | high |
| Turkish Ministry of Health | The 2023 Hair Transplant Units Regulation requiring that only doctors make incisions, and 2024 clinic closures. | high |
| Wimpole Clinic (UK) | Documented graft-count inflation: Turkish clinics quoting ~2,822 grafts vs 1,610 in the UK for the same patient. | medium |
| GraftCost verified clinic directory (72 clinics) | Our own multi-source-verified roster of clinic-PUBLISHED prices is now the primary source for the estimator’s per-country per-graft figures (re-sourced 2026-07). Commission aggregators are deliberately NOT used as price authorities. | high |
| Clinic own price pages + ISHRS practice census | Per-country per-graft and all-in ranges cross-checked against named clinics’ published price lists and FX at time of writing. | high |
| Google Flights / airline published fares | Representative round-trip economy airfares by origin, powering the estimator’s origin-aware travel cost. | medium |
| CareCredit & Prosper Healthcare Lending | Medical-loan APR ranges (about 9–36%) and financing terms. | medium |
| Grand View Research & Precedence Research | Global hair-restoration market size (about $7.4B, 2024) and growth (~16–21% CAGR). | high |
What we do not do
We do not republish clinic marketing as fact, we do not present a single price as if it were universal, and we do not accept payment to feature or rank any clinic. The price figures behind the estimator are triangulated across the sources above, and we update them as the market moves.
Independent · not affiliated with any clinic. All figures are market estimates, not quotes. Informational only, not medical advice.