Dentists in Waltham, MA: Local Guide

Quick answer: Waltham, MA has 63 dental practices in the Dental.me directory. 33 are rated on Google, averaging 4.65★ across 4,406 reviews. Top by independent Dental.me Score: Greater Boston Orthodontics, Failla & Defrancesco Family Dentistry, LLC, AK Dental. Compare them below and shortlist two or three near you to call.

Waltham runs 63 dental practices along the Charles, but the number that actually tells you anything is smaller than that. Only 33 of them have earned a public star rating, and just 32 keep a working website. Strip away the offices with no reviews and no digital front door and you are left with a rated core carrying 4,406 Google reviews and a collective average of 4.65 stars. That is the real Waltham dental market: dense, specialist-heavy, and concentrated in a minority of practices that patients have clearly voted for.

The first surprise when you sort the city by review volume is that the busiest door in town is not a family dentist. It is an orthodontist. Greater Boston Orthodontics has logged 694 five-star reviews, more than any general office in the city, which tells you something about how Waltham families actually use their dentists. This is a town that plans treatment, sends kids for braces, and shows up for the specialist. Read the numbers with that lens and the whole market makes more sense.

It is also worth naming what the 63-practice headline hides. Thirty of those offices carry no public rating at all. Nothing in the public record explains why any one of those thirty carries no rating. For a patient, that is not a knock against them so much as an absence of evidence. When you cannot see how an office treats people, the safer move in a market this deep is to start with the practices that have a track record you can read.

The signal lives in a rated minority

Here is the distribution most city guides gloss over. Of the 33 Waltham practices with a rating, 22 sit at 4.8 stars or higher, a highly rated tier. Four more land in the strong 4.5 to 4.79 band, four are middling at 4.0 to 4.49, and three fall below 4.0. In other words, two-thirds of the offices patients have bothered to rate are excellent, and the disappointments are a small, identifiable group of three.

That shape matters for how you search. In a city where the rated field skews this positive, a 4.6-star office is not “good,” it is below the Waltham median. The bar here is high, so use it. Do not settle for the first practice with a decent star count; there are 22 offices clearing 4.8, and you can afford to be picky about the one closest to you or best matched to what you need.

A market built for specialists, not just cleanings

For a mid-size suburb, Waltham carries an unusual depth of specialty care. Across the 63 practices there are 17 offering dental implants, 15 doing cosmetic dentistry, 16 offering teeth whitening, and 12 each in periodontics and pediatric care. Orthodontics and Invisalign each appear in 11 offices, and there are 9 emergency dentists and 9 endodontists for when a tooth cannot wait.

The practical takeaway: in Waltham you rarely have to leave the city to get complex work done. An implant case, a root canal, a full smile makeover, the providers exist inside the 02451, 02452, and 02453 ZIPs. The thinner category is oral surgery at 6 offices, the one area where you might genuinely be referred to Newton or Boston for a specialist chair.

That depth changes how a family should think about a “home” dentist. In a thin market you pick a generalist and hope they refer well when something goes wrong. In Waltham you can reasonably expect your general dentist to have an implant surgeon, an endodontist, and a periodontist within a few blocks, all of whom they have worked with before. The twelve pediatric providers matter for the same reason: a household with young kids does not have to split its care across two towns. If there is a strategic reason to care about which Waltham dentist you register with, it is less about the cleaning and more about the network they can pull you into when a molar cracks on a Friday night.

Who the review volume points to

Beyond the orthodontic leader, a handful of general and family offices carry the bulk of Waltham’s review volume. Failla & Defrancesco Family Dentistry holds a perfect 5.0 across 528 reviews, the deepest well of goodwill of any full-service general practice in the city. AK Dental at 4.9 stars over 385 reviews and Mikhail Shulkin DDS PC at 4.9 over 304 reviews sit just behind it, with the second- and third-largest general-practice review counts in the city. Rounding out the leaders, Chris M. Karavolas, DDS and Advanced Waltham Dental both hold 4.9 stars, with 200 and 177 reviews respectively.

Notice the pattern: every one of the city’s most-reviewed offices sits at 4.9 or 5.0. In Waltham, high volume and high rating travel together. The busy offices got busy by being good, not by discounting. When you compare these on the Waltham directory, you are choosing between proven quantities, not gambling.

There is a concentration story in those numbers, too. These six named offices alone account for well over half of the city’s 4,406 reviews, which means most of Waltham’s documented patient experience runs through a short list of practices. For a new resident that is genuinely useful: instead of wading through 63 unknowns, you can start with the handful of offices the town has already rated thousands of times, then widen the search only if none of them fit your insurance, location, or specialty need.

How to actually choose in a town this good

When the top of the market is this crowded, the tiebreakers shift. Star rating will not separate the leaders, they are all clustered at 4.9-plus, so decide on the things that vary:

• Match the specialty to the visit. If you need braces or aligners, start with the orthodontic leader rather than a general office that also “does” Invisalign. If it is an implant, filter to the 17 implant providers first.
• Weigh review depth, not just the star. A 5.0 across 528 reviews is a stronger signal than a 5.0 across 20. Waltham gives you offices with hundreds of reviews, so lean on them.
• Confirm the digital basics. Only 32 of 63 practices keep a website. A working site with online booking and clear hours is a reasonable proxy for an office that runs itself well.
• Use location as the final cut. With 22 excellent offices to choose from, pick the one you will actually drive to twice a year. Proximity is what makes you keep appointments.

If cost is the deciding factor rather than convenience, read our national guide to what dental work should cost before you commit. It will tell you whether a Waltham quote is fair for the procedure.

Just outside Waltham

Waltham sits in one of the densest dental corridors in Greater Boston, so if your best-matched office happens to be a town over, that is normal. Worth checking next door: West Newton, Auburndale, and Newtonville to the south, plus Weston to the west and Belmont and Watertown to the east. Any of them is a short drive, and several share the same specialist networks Waltham practices refer into.

Ready to compare the full field yourself? The Waltham dentist directory lists all 63 practices with live ratings, specialties, and contact details, sorted so the 22 top-tier offices surface first.

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.