How much does a knee replacement cost?

A private knee replacement in the UK costs roughly £12,000 to £20,100, all in, depending almost entirely on which hospital you walk into.

The table below shows what individual hospitals published when we last checked. The cheapest was Spencer Private Hospitals in Kent at £11,808. The most expensive was Nuffield Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge at £20,120. Same operation, same country, and neither of them is in London.

The last column of the table above says what each hospital's price covers, in its own words, because they are not all the same.

Nuffield's Oxford page is worth a look if you are comparing. It says the surgeon and anaesthetist are not included in the hospital fee, then says a few lines later that you will be given a fixed all-inclusive price after your consultation. Both cannot be true. Their other hospitals do not carry that line at all. Ramsay publishes a figure without saying what is in it.

Practice Plus Group is a different case again. They publish one national fixed price, the same at every site, with the consultation charged separately. It is not in the table because it is not a hospital price, but it is unusually easy to compare against for exactly that reason.

The lesson in all of this is the same. A headline price is only useful if you know what it covers. The first question to ask any hospital is not what it costs, it is what is included, and specifically whether the surgeon's fee and the anaesthetist's fee are inside the number they just gave you.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure here was taken from the private hospital groups' own published prices, on their own websites, on the date shown against the table. No estimates and no averages borrowed from elsewhere.

One thing to watch when you do this yourself. Groups publish two different kinds of number and they are easy to confuse. A national "from" price is a marketing floor: it tells you the least anyone has ever paid, not what you will pay. Circle advertises a national figure for knee replacement that no Circle hospital in our sample actually charges, and their real per-hospital prices run both below and well above it. The per-hospital page is the real number. Always find it.

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 hospital. Two hospitals in the same group, in the table above, are thousands of pounds apart for the same procedure. Same brand, same operation, different town.

Which implant. Standard prostheses are included. Custom or specialist implants are not always.

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

This is where people get surprised, and it is worth asking about explicitly before you commit.

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 knee replacement assessment usually needs a weight-bearing knee 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 knee 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 knee 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 knee replacement waiting time. What exists is the wait for Trauma & Orthopaedics, which covers knees, hips, shoulders and the rest. Most people are treated within 50 weeks from referral, and the longest waits run past 58 weeks, as at June 2026. A knee 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 £12,000 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 operates on your knee, 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 knee replacement that means roughly £300 to £700 for the consultation and the scan, rather than £12,000 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 50 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 the per-hospital pricing pages of Circle Health Group, Spire Healthcare, Ramsay Health Care and Nuffield Health, plus the Practice Plus Group national price list. Each hospital and its sample date is shown in the table 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.

Check the wait at your own hospital

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