How much does a hip replacement cost?

A private hip replacement in the UK costs roughly £12,800 to £18,900, all in. The cheapest we could verify was £11,460. The dearest was £19,603. That is a gap of around six thousand pounds for the same operation.

The last column of the table below says, in each hospital's own words, what its price covers — because they are not all the same. We checked each one, and comparing a price that includes the surgeon against one that does not is how people end up thousands of pounds out.

The cheapest prices are not where you would expect

Look at the top of that table. Two of the three cheapest hip replacements in it are NHS hospitals.

Private Health UHD in Poole and the Kingston Wing at Yeovil are private patient units, run by NHS trusts, using NHS operating theatres and NHS surgeons, selling capacity to people paying for themselves. UHD publishes £12,800 all in. Yeovil publishes £13,995. Both are below every price published by the large private groups.

They are easy to miss. Most NHS trusts with a private unit do not publish a price at all, so they never appear in a search, and the ones that do publish are not advertising. But if you are paying for a hip replacement and there is a private patient unit within reach of you, it is worth a phone call before you book anywhere else.

Two of these are hospital fees rather than the cost of the operation. St John and St Elizabeth in London and the Cromwell both say the surgeon's and anaesthetist's fees are charged separately, so those numbers are lower than what you would actually pay. A few others do not say what is included at all. That is why the last column exists, and why the question to ask any hospital is not what it costs but what is in the price.

We could not confirm prices for Circle at all. Their site blocks automated access, so their figures are absent here rather than excluded on their merits.

Why every quote says "from"

Private hospitals publish guide prices, not fixed prices. Yours will move for reasons that have nothing to do with the operation itself.

Which consultant you pick. Groups quote a minimum based on a standard consultant fee. A more senior or more sought-after surgeon costs more, and you are usually free to choose.

Which implant, and how it goes in. Standard prostheses are included. Robotic-assisted hip replacement is offered at several of the hospitals in the table at a premium of around a thousand pounds over the standard price. Whether that is worth paying for is a conversation to have with your surgeon, not a pricing question.

Whether anything is complicated. Revision surgery, significant deformity, or a second joint at the same time all change the price. So does needing a longer stay than planned.

What is not in the price

The first consultation. You will normally pay for this before any quote exists. Across the private consultants we sampled, a first orthopaedic consultation runs £200 to £500. London and Leeds reach the top of that range. Manchester tops out lower.

Imaging. A hip replacement assessment usually needs a weight-bearing hip/pelvis X-ray rather than an MRI. Private imaging pricing is less consistently published than surgery pricing, and we have not sourced it to the same standard as the surgery figures above, so treat any number you see for it, including ours, as indicative rather than confirmed.

Physiotherapy afterwards. Some packages include a small number of sessions. Many do not, and a full rehabilitation course after a hip replacement is not a trivial cost.

Anything that goes wrong. Ask what happens if you need to go back to theatre, and whether that is covered.

Ask for the quote in writing, itemised. Specifically ask for the surgeon's fee, the anaesthetist's fee and the hospital or facility charge as separate lines. The published packages bundle these, so a bundled quote is normal, but a hospital that will not break it down when asked is telling you something.

What it costs on the NHS

Nothing. A hip replacement on the NHS is free at the point of use, and it is the same operation, frequently performed by the same surgeons in the same week they operate privately.

What you pay instead is time.

Waiting time data in England is published by treatment specialty rather than by individual operation, so there is no official hip replacement waiting time. What exists is the wait for Trauma & Orthopaedics, which covers hips, knees, shoulders and the rest. Most people are treated within 49 weeks from referral, and the longest waits run past 58 weeks, as at July 2026. A hip replacement is major surgery, so it sits at the longer end of that range rather than the middle.

That national figure hides something more useful. The gap between the fastest and slowest hospitals in England is several months wide. Same operation, same free NHS, and the only difference is where you happen to live.

You are entitled to choose which hospital treats you when you are referred, and most people are never told this.

The option almost nobody mentions

There is a path between paying £12,800 and waiting the better part of a year, and it works because the NHS wait is not one queue. It is a series of them.

Before anyone replaces your hip, you need to see a consultant, and you usually need imaging. Those steps carry their own waits, and on a long orthopaedic pathway they can account for a substantial part of the total.

You can pay for those steps privately and then continue on the NHS for the surgery itself. You keep your NHS entitlement. Department of Health guidance on private care is explicit that a patient's position on an NHS waiting list should not be affected by choosing to pay for a private consultation.

For a hip replacement that means roughly £300 to £700 for the consultation and the scan, rather than £12,800 or more for the whole thing. Whether it saves you meaningful time depends entirely on where the queue is longest in your area, which is not something a national article can tell you.

It is not a trick and it is not a loophole. It is how the rules already work, and it is the option most people never hear about because nobody has an obvious commercial reason to explain it.

What to do before you pay anything

1. Get your own waiting time, not the national one. The 49 week figure is an average of hospitals months apart. Yours is a specific number.
2. Check whether a faster NHS hospital is within reach. Switching costs nothing.
3. Ask where your bottleneck actually is. If your wait is mostly for the operation itself, paying for the consultation privately will not help much. If it is mostly to be seen, it might help a lot.
4. If you do go private, get three quotes and make sure all three are all in. Ask explicitly whether the surgeon and the anaesthetist are included, because not every published price includes them.
5. Ask what is not included, in writing, before you pay a deposit.

Sources and dates

Private surgery prices come from Spire Healthcare's per-hospital pricing pages. Each hospital and its sample date is shown in the table above. Ramsay, Nuffield and Circle figures were reviewed and excluded, for the reasons given above.

Consultation fees come from PHIN, the Private Healthcare Information Network, sampled across London, Leeds and Manchester.

NHS waiting times come from NHS England Referral to Treatment data for Trauma & Orthopaedics, acute hospitals only, and update each month as new data is published.

Private prices are guide prices and they change. They are re-checked periodically rather than automatically, so the sample date against the table is the date they were true.

Wait or Pay is independent and is not affiliated with the NHS. No hospital or clinic pays us to be listed or recommended.

Want the wait instead of the price? See hip replacement NHS waiting times →

Can I go private for hip replacement, then have it done on the NHS? →