Dentists in Upland, CA: Local Guide

Quick answer: Upland, CA has 147 dental practices in the Dental.me directory. 88 are rated on Google, averaging 4.6★ across 11,691 reviews. Top by independent Dental.me Score: John Holton, Young Dental Health Center Upland, DNTL Studio. Compare them below and shortlist two or three near you to call.

Upland is one of those Inland Empire foothill towns where the dental market is deep but uneven — and that combination changes how you should shop for a dentist. Sitting at the base of the San Gabriel foothills, the city supports 147 dental practices, of which our team has ratings for 88. Together those offices carry 11,691 Google reviews, one of the heaviest review footprints of any mid-sized city in the region. But the average rating across rated Upland practices is 4.6 stars — noticeably lower than the 4.7-plus you see in neighboring pockets like Alta Loma or Claremont. That gap is the single most important fact about finding a dentist here: Upland gives you plenty of choice, but the quality spread is real, and a careless pick is more likely to land on a middling office than it would be one town over.

This guide reads Upland the way a local would — by the numbers, not by whoever bought the biggest sign on Foothill Boulevard. Everything below is drawn from the live data on the Upland dentist directory.

The market at a glance

Before you narrow anything down, it helps to see the shape of the whole field. Here is what 147 practices actually looks like in Upland.

Two numbers in that snapshot deserve a second look. First, only 67 of the 147 practices maintain a working website — under half. In a market this size that is unusually low, and it tells you Upland still has a large tail of older, walk-in-oriented offices that never built much of an online presence. Those aren’t necessarily bad dentists, but you’ll have a much harder time vetting them before you sit in the chair. Second, the review volume is enormous relative to the number of rated offices, which means a handful of Upland practices have accumulated massive review counts — and their averages are correspondingly better evidenced than the rest.

Where the ratings actually land

Averages hide the story. When you break Upland’s 88 rated practices into rating bands, you can see exactly why choosing carefully matters more here than in its polished neighbors.

Read it this way: 54 practices (61%) clear the 4.8 bar, which is a healthy top tier. But 21 practices — almost a quarter of the rated field — sit at 4.49 or below, and 8 of those are under 4.0 outright. Compare that to a place like the tighter foothill markets nearby where the sub-4.5 group is a sliver. In Upland, the difference between a great and a mediocre dentist is a live risk you have to actively steer around. The good news is that the top tier is large enough that you never have to settle.

The names that anchor the top tier

Upland’s most-reviewed practices didn’t get there by accident — a review count at this scale takes a long time to accumulate. These six sit at the top on the combination of rating and volume:

• Karim Barsoum — 4.9 stars across a remarkable 1,783 reviews, far and away the deepest review record in the city. When one office has that many patients behind a 4.9, it’s the safest default starting point in Upland.
• Eric Grammatikas — 4.9 stars over 1,010 reviews, a second high-volume anchor.
• Thomas Spinosa — 4.9 stars, 947 reviews.
• John Holton — a perfect 5.0 across 687 reviews, the highest rating among the high-volume group.
• Young Dental Health Center Upland — 5.0 stars, 614 reviews.
• DNTL Studio — 5.0 stars, 369 reviews, the newest-feeling of the top group.

Notice the pattern: the perfect-5.0 offices (Holton, Young, DNTL Studio) tend to run smaller review counts, while the 4.9 offices (Barsoum, Grammatikas, Spinosa) carry the volume. Neither is automatically better — a 5.0 over 600+ reviews is exceptional, but a 4.9 over 1,000+ reviews may have simply weathered more edge cases. Match the profile to your tolerance for risk.

It’s worth pausing on what those review counts represent in a working-class-to-affluent town like Upland. Karim Barsoum holds 1,783 reviews, roughly three-quarters again as many as the next office on the list, and a 4.9 averaged over that many is a number very little can shift. That is the whole of what a large count buys you — a steadier figure, not a promise about the appointment. Weigh it alongside specialty fit and location rather than ahead of them.

Specialty coverage: unusually complete

One place Upland genuinely outshines smaller foothill towns is the breadth of specialty care available without leaving the city. Most notably, Upland is one of the few markets its size with a dedicated prosthodontist presence — the reconstructive specialists who handle full-mouth rehabilitation and complex crown-and-bridge work.

The standout is dental implants, offered by 38 practices — the single most available specialty in town, which makes Upland a strong place to shop competitively for implant work rather than accepting the first quote. Close behind, 36 cosmetic dentists and 36 whitening providers mean elective smile work is well covered. For gum health, there are 26 periodontists, and for complex reconstruction the rare 8 prosthodontists give the city depth most towns its size lack. If you crack a tooth after hours, 16 emergency dentists are listed locally — start calling down that list rather than assuming one is open.

How to actually choose — an Upland-specific method

Because this market has a wider quality spread than its neighbors, a generic “read some reviews” approach leaves too much to chance. Use this four-step filter instead.

Step 1 — set a floor. With 54 practices at 4.8 or above, you can afford to ignore everything below that line entirely. That one move eliminates the entire bottom quartile of Upland’s market in a single stroke. Step 2 — weight by volume. A 4.9 over 1,783 reviews (Barsoum) is a fundamentally different bet than a 4.9 over 40; the larger the review base, the more trustworthy the score. Step 3 — match the specialty. If you need implants or reconstruction, start from the specialty list, not the general one. Step 4 — confirm a website. Since fewer than half of Upland practices have one, a real, current site is itself a quiet signal that the office invests in its patients. For a broader breakdown of what dental work should cost before you commit, see our national dental cost guide.

If Upland doesn’t have your match

Upland sits in a dense cluster of Inland Empire and foothill communities, so widening your search by a few miles opens up dozens more options. The closest markets worth checking are Ontario and Montclair to the south, Claremont and Alta Loma to the immediate east and north, and the larger fields of Rancho Cucamonga and Pomona. Because these towns share the same practices along the Foothill and Central corridors, many Upland dentists are an easy drive from all of them.

When you’re ready to compare offices side by side — rating, review count, specialty, and website all in one view — the full Upland dentist directory is the fastest way to work the four-filter method end to end.

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.