Head Lice Removal Cost & Time Required

Lice checks are $45 in clinic.
In-clinic treatments are $189 for short hair under 3 inches and $209 for hair longer than that.
Checks and treatments do not stack. If you get a treatment, you do not pay for the check for the person.
We are the only service with a 60 day guarantee covering treatment failure and reinfestation.
- If lice is going around, there is a good chance you may get it back again the same way you caught it the first time.
- There is no 100% accurate way to tell the difference between a treatment failure and reinfestation, so we cover both, and you should ask any lice service provider with a guarantee how they tell the difference before booking.
You can pay for lice treatment with your HSA or FSA.
Call for in-home prices as they vary based on travel time/distance.

Lice clinics will get you lice free and non-contagious in a single appointment.
Expect to pay between $189-260 per treatment at a lice clinic.
Most lice clinic charge flat-fees with surcharges for extra time spent with difficult hair or behavior.
Treatments usually take between 30-90 minutes.
Guarantee Loopholes: Many clinics offer guarantees, but the fine print can be strict. If you don’t follow their precise aftercare instructions, or if a sibling wasn’t checked by their staff and brings lice back into the home, the guarantee is often voided.

Lice treatment times and costs may vary depending on the thickness of your child’s hair and severity of head lice infestation.
Most charge by the hour, usually $99-150/hr, and require you to be nit free and come back for a second appointment.
This is a problem because it creates an incentive for the person doing the treating to pad the time, which isn’t the case for flat-fee heat treatment.
Treatment times vary wildly, so it is hard to predict a total cost. We have heard horror stories of $1000 for a single treatment, but that is rare.

Prescriptions require two or more treatments. Usually with a week between them.
Prescriptions will not get you lice free and non-contagious imediately because they cannot kill all the bugs and nits in a single treatment, so nits hatch and can spread through head to head contact between the treatments.
Prescriptions have a high likelihood to leave viable eggs, which means you still have lice – it will just take time before you notice it.
Cost ranges from $76-171 per person, not including the doctor appointment.

Prices vary but expect to pay between $15-45 per person for multiple rounds of treatment.
Because of pesticide resistance, many products simply cannot kill all the bugs and it only takes one or two missed bugs to keep the infestation going.
No product has been proven to realiably kill all the eggs, so they hatch and you are still infested.
Most cannot be used more than twice because of residual pesticide buildup.
If you are going to treat on your own, use a dimethicone-based product. Expect it to take at least 2 treatments for everyone in the household and a minimum of 10-14 days. Caution: you will still be contagious as the nits hatch and lice grow between treatments.
Do not bother with sprays or other products for the home. They are unnecessary and useless.

Costs vary depending on what you try, but the true cost is the time you spend, the risk of spreading it to others, and the stress and uncertainty of success.
Many of our clients try home remedies before calling us and the story usually goes :”We treated it, but it kept coming back!” In reality, it was never completely treated, time passed and the infestation recovered and spread until it was easily noticeable again.
You can treat it yourself, but it takes time and skill.

Consider your treatment options carefully and keep the hidden costs in mind:

Paying Twice: Because of “super lice” many DIY treatments fail. Families often buy kit after kit, trying different brands, only to eventually give up and pay for a clinic anyway. You end up paying for both.
The Time Tax: DIY is incredibly labor-intensive. It requires meticulous, section-by-section nit-combing under good lighting. If you miss a couple of viable eggs, the infestation will restart in a week or two.
Parent-Child Friction: Spending hours pulling a fine-tooth metal comb through a squirming child’s tangled hair is stressful. It often leads to tears, frustration, and a highly strained dynamic right when everyone is already exhausted.
Extended Contagion & Missed Life: Because DIY treatments (even effective dimethicone ones) usually require two treatments spaced 10–14 days apart to catch newly hatched eggs, your child remains potentially contagious during that window. This can mean more missed school days, more missed work for parents, and having to skip social events.
The Laundry Panic: While lice don’t live long off the head, the anxiety of a lingering DIY treatment often drives parents to needlessly bag up all their belongings and do mountains of hot-water laundry every day for weeks.

References

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