HomeEssix RetainersEssix retainer
Essix retainer
The clear tray that holds your teeth where the braces left them. Order a replacement without booking a visit, and add a tooth to it if there is a gap to fill.
One flat price: $139 — appliance, impression kit, shipping both ways and 30 days of adjustments included.
Order an Essix retainerSee the retainer collection
- Pontic option
- Postage paid both ways
- 60 day warranty
- Mold kept two years
Why teeth drift the moment you stop
Teeth are held by fibres, and fibres have memory. For months after braces come off they are still pulling towards where they used to be, and a tooth only needs a fraction of a millimetre a week to undo a year of work. That is the entire reason retainers exist.
An Essix is a single sheet of clear plastic pressed over a model of your arch. It grips every tooth at once, which is what makes it good at holding and useless at moving. Worn at night it keeps the result you paid for.
Lost yours on a napkin at lunch, and you are in the group we built this for. The old route was a call, a wait, a visit for a mold and another wait. This one is a box on your doorstep.
The version with a tooth on it
A pontic is a tooth-coloured insert set into the clear plastic, sitting exactly where the gap is. Same tray, same thin profile, with the hole filled.
While an implant heals
Months of waiting between the surgery and the crown. The pontic covers the site and lifts out for cleaning.
$239 an archStraight after an extraction
Once the socket has closed and your dentist agrees, it fills the space without pressing on anything.
$239 an archPlain, holding only
No gap to cover. The clear tray on its own, upper or lower.
$139 an archUp to three missing teeth can be carried this way. More than that and the plastic has too little left to grip, which is where a partial takes over.
What you are paying, plainly
An orthodontic office bills a replacement retainer as a product plus the appointments around it, and the mold visit usually costs as much as the tray. You do not get a total until you are in the chair.
Our number covers the tray, the $49.99 impression kit, postage in both directions and thirty days of adjustments. Both arches plain come to $209 instead of $298. Both arches with a pontic on each is $409.
Every mold we receive is kept for two years. A second tray later comes off the model on file, so you never mold twice for the same mouth.
Ordering takes three moves
- Kit arrivesTwo to three business days from the order, with trays, putty and a prepaid return label in the box.
- You mold at homeAbout twenty minutes. Photograph the trays, send them, wait for the technician to say the detail is there.
- Tray pressed and shippedSix to ten business days at the bench, then two to three back to you with a storage case.
Already hold a recent scan or stone model. Send it, it becomes your model on file, and you skip the molding entirely.
Retainer prices at a glance
| What you order | Upper | Lower | Both arches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear retainer, no pontic | $139 | $139 | $209 |
| With one pontic | $239 | $239 | $309 |
| Pontic on both arches | On request | On request | $409 |
| Spare impression kit | $40 | $40 | $40 |
Things worth knowing first
How many hours a night
Your orthodontist sets that, and the usual answer after the first year is every night while you sleep. Skipping weeks is what people notice later, because the tray stops seating and the reason is that the teeth already moved.
If the old retainer no longer goes in
Do not force it. A tray that has to be pushed is telling you the arch has shifted, and forcing it strains the teeth it grips. Take a fresh mold and have a new one pressed to the mouth you have today.
Whether it straightens anything
It does not. An Essix holds a position, it does not create one. Moving teeth is orthodontic treatment and it belongs with a clinician who is watching the roots.
Cleaning without clouding it
Cool water and the foam from your box. Never toothpaste, never hot water, never the dishwasher. Heat warps the sheet in seconds and there is no repairing that.
How long one tray lasts
Worn nightly and kept in its case, roughly a year to eighteen months before it goes soft or cloudy. Many people keep a spare pressed from the same mold so a loss never becomes a gap in wear.
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Prices checked in September 2026.