Dentists in Akron, OH: Local Guide

Quick answer: Akron, OH has 133 dental practices in the Dental.me directory. 65 are rated on Google, averaging 4.27★ across 8,164 reviews. Top by independent Dental.me Score: JOHN C. KURZAWA, DDS, LLC, Joseph Mellion, Cristian Chirla. Compare them below and shortlist two or three near you to call.

Akron is the rare dental market where picking wrong actually costs you. Across the 133 practices Dental.me tracks in the city, the 65 with enough Google reviews average just 4.27 stars — not because Akron lacks excellent dentists, but because it has an unusually deep bottom tier pulling the number down. Sort those 65 offices by rating and you don’t get a smooth curve. You get a barbell: 34 practices at 4.8 or higher sitting at one end, and 16 practices stuck below 4.0 at the other. Nearly one in four rated offices in Akron is a genuine cautionary tale. Most cities we cover hide their weak practices in a soft middle. Akron doesn’t. That makes this a city where a few minutes of vetting separates a great outcome from a bad one — and where the reward for getting it right is real, because the top of the market here is excellent.

This guide reads Akron’s numbers honestly and walks you through choosing well in a split market. Everything below comes from the Akron dental directory, where all 133 practices are ranked by Dental.me Score.

What the numbers actually say about Akron

Start with scale. Akron supports 133 dental practices, and the 65 with a meaningful review history have together earned 8,164 Google reviews — a large review sample for a city this size. But two figures deserve a hard look before you book anything.

First, coverage: only 56 of 133 practices list a website. That’s about 42% — low. For the other 77 the directory holds a Google listing and a phone number, which is exactly why a directory that carries the offices without a site is useful here. Second, that bottom tail. Sixteen of the 65 rated practices sit below 4.0 — roughly a quarter of the rated field, and what pulls Akron’s 4.27 average down.

The barbell: why Akron rewards vetting

Here’s the distribution that should shape how you search. Of the 65 rated practices:

• 34 sit at 4.8 stars or higher — the elite tier, more than half of all rated offices.
• 8 land in the 4.5–4.79 range — still very good.
• 7 fall in the 4.0–4.49 band — acceptable but worth reading the reviews.
• 16 rate below 4.0 — the tier to approach with real caution.

Read it as a shape and the story is obvious: Akron is hollowed out in the middle. There isn’t a big cushion of “fine, average” dentists. You’re mostly choosing between clearly excellent and clearly troubled. The practical upshot is liberating — because the good tier is so large (34 offices), you have plenty of top-rated choices, and the flag on a weak practice tends to be loud rather than subtle. Hold to a 4.5-and-up line as you read the Akron directory and the field is 42 practices, with every one of the 16 problem offices left behind.

What tends to sink a practice into that bottom band? In our reading of Akron reviews, it’s rarely clinical skill — it’s the operational stuff: long waits, surprise billing, hard-to-reach front desks, and rushed appointments. That matters for how you read a star rating here. A 3.6-star office isn’t necessarily giving bad dentistry; it may be giving good dentistry badly wrapped. But in a city with 34 offices at 4.8+, you don’t have to accept that trade. When the top tier is this deep, there’s no reason to gamble on a practice whose own patients keep flagging the same friction. Use the low ratings as a filter, not a research project — Akron gives you the luxury of simply skipping the offices with a pattern of complaints.

The proven names at the top of Akron

When 8,164 reviews are on the table, the practices that have earned both a near-perfect score and a large review count are the ones whose score rests on a large number of separate ratings — not on a handful. These are Akron’s most-reviewed top-rated offices, each with a full profile on Dental.me:

• John C. Kurzawa, DDS, LLC — a perfect 5.0 across 744 reviews, the most-reviewed practice on this list. A flawless score at that volume is rare anywhere.
• Kyle S. Eberhardt DDS & Bronlynn A. Eberhardt DDS LLC — 4.9 stars over 564 reviews, a husband-and-wife practice with deep local roots.
• Joseph Mellion — a clean 5.0 across 315 reviews.
• Cristian Chirla — 5.0 stars, 265 reviews.
• Kieo Pung — 4.9 stars over 204 reviews.
• Robert Lowery — a perfect 5.0 across 197 reviews.

Notice the pattern: Akron’s best offices skew toward solo and small-group practitioners rather than large chains. Several of the names above are individual dentists rather than branded groups, and their scores sit near-perfect on hundreds of reviews apiece. In a split market, that consistency at volume is the single most reassuring signal you can find — it means the practice has held its standard across hundreds of reviews, not just a good quarter. If you value seeing the same dentist each visit and building a relationship over time, that’s very good news here.

Which specialties are easy to find — and which aren’t

A general checkup is one thing; specialty care is another, and Akron’s depth varies a lot by discipline. Of the 133 practices, 23 handle dental implants and 16 are periodontists — unusually strong for a mid-size city, which means gum and tooth-replacement work is well covered. Cosmetic and whitening are plentiful too. But some categories are thin: only 9 emergency dentists and 8 oral surgeons serve the whole city, so if you crack a tooth on a weekend, the field of qualified options narrows fast — line up an emergency-capable practice before you need one.

You can jump straight to any of these categories: implant dentists in Akron, periodontists, cosmetic dentists, emergency dentists, orthodontists, or pediatric dentists.

How to choose in a split market: a 4-step filter

Because Akron’s downside is real, a little process goes a long way. This is the sequence we’d use ourselves, and it takes about ten minutes.

Step one is the big one in Akron: setting a 4.5-star floor eliminates all 16 problem practices at once. From there, weight review count — a 5.0 built on 744 reviews (like Kurzawa) is a stronger signal than a 5.0 on a dozen. Then match the specialty depth above to what you actually need, and finally call to confirm your insurance is accepted, since only 42% of offices publish that online. For a sense of what different procedures should cost before you book, our national dental cost guide gives fair-price ranges you can hold any Akron quote against.

Looking just outside Akron

Akron sits at the center of a dense Summit County cluster, so if the right practice or specialist is a few minutes over the city line, that’s a normal trade-off here — especially for the thinner categories like oral surgery. Neighboring directories worth a look: Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Barberton, Copley, Norton, and New Franklin.

Ready to shortlist? Open the full Akron dentist directory, set your rating floor, and you’ll be choosing from the strong end of a market that genuinely rewards choosing carefully.

Dental.me organizes dental directory data so patients can compare offices with confidence. Use each practice profile and its available website, map, and phone details for current appointment, payment, and care decisions.