Short version: a Dysport unit and a Botox unit are not the same amount of anything. It takes roughly 2.5 to 3 Dysport units per 1 Botox unit, so a lower price per Dysport unit usually does not mean a lower bill. At the local median of $10 per Botox unit, a 20-unit frown-line treatment runs about $200, and Dysport only undercuts that below roughly $3.50 a unit. Locally, 133 of 142 injectables providers offer Botox and 57 offer Dysport, and all 57 offer both.
Every price in here comes from Boulder-area providers' own published pages, collected in July 2026, not from a national average. I keep writing that because per-unit pricing is where this comparison goes wrong for almost everyone, including people who are being careful.
The unit problem
Botox and Dysport are both measured in "units," and that shared word is doing a lot of damage. The two scales were established separately, and a unit of one is not a unit of the other. It's closer to comparing a price per gallon with a price per litre and concluding that one is a bargain.
The working conversion most injectors use is about two and a half to three Dysport units for every one Botox unit. So the honest comparison isn't $4 against $12. It's what the whole area costs when you finish the arithmetic.
What the same result costs, converted
The standard frown-line treatment between the brows is 20 units of Botox, which is the FDA-labelled dose. Here's what the equivalent Dysport treatment costs at various per-unit prices, using 50 to 60 Dysport units for the same 20 Botox units.
| Advertised Dysport price | Units needed | Total for the area | Compared with Botox at the local $10 median ($200) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3 per unit | 50 to 60 | $150 to $180 | Genuinely cheaper |
| $4 per unit | 50 to 60 | $200 to $240 | About the same, or slightly more |
| $5 per unit | 50 to 60 | $250 to $300 | More expensive |
| $6 per unit | 50 to 60 | $300 to $360 | Considerably more expensive |
Botox comparison figure is the median per-unit price published by 16 Boulder-area providers, July 2026 (range $7 to $20). The Dysport column is arithmetic from the 2.5x to 3x conversion, not a scraped local median, because almost no local provider publishes a Dysport unit price at all.
So the cutoff is somewhere near $3.50 a Dysport unit. Above that, at our local Botox median, you're paying the same or more for the same result. That's the entire "Dysport is cheaper" claim, and it survives only at the bottom of the price range.
What each one actually is
Both are botulinum toxin type A, and both work the same way: they block the signal from nerve to muscle, the muscle stops contracting as hard, and the skin over it creases less. The differences are in formulation.
| Botox | Dysport | |
|---|---|---|
| Generic name | onabotulinumtoxinA | abobotulinumtoxinA |
| Toxin type | Botulinum toxin type A | Botulinum toxin type A |
| Unit scale | 1 | About 2.5 to 3 |
| Typical onset | 3 to 5 days | 2 to 3 days |
| Full effect | About 2 weeks | About 2 weeks |
| Typical duration | 3 to 4 months | 3 to 4 months |
| Spread from the injection point | Somewhat tighter | Somewhat wider |
| Offered locally | 133 of 142 | 57 of 142 |
Neither product is stronger than the other. The unit scales differ, so an equivalent dose produces an equivalent result. Anyone telling you Dysport is "weaker" because the number per unit is smaller has the arithmetic backwards.
Onset, duration, and how much of that you should care about
Dysport tends to start working a day or two sooner. If you have something on the calendar, that's a real if minor advantage. Both reach full effect around two weeks, which is also when a good injector wants to see you for a look, and both usually last three to four months.
The variation between two people using the same product is larger than the average difference between the products. Muscle mass, metabolism, dose, and how many times you've been treated before all move duration more than the brand does. If your last treatment faded in two months, the useful question is what dose you actually received, not whether you should switch brands.
Spread, and why it's an injector question
Dysport diffuses a bit further from each injection point. Across a wide forehead, some injectors like that, because it gives a smoother result from fewer entry points. Near the brow, that same property needs more care, since toxin migrating into the wrong muscle is how you end up with a brow that feels heavy for three months.
This is not a reason to avoid Dysport. It's a reason to care about who's holding the syringe, which is the same conclusion this site keeps arriving at from different directions.
What you can actually get within an hour of Boulder
From the 142 local providers offering injectables, counting what each one names on its own site:
| Product | Local providers offering it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Botox | 133 | 94 percent |
| Dysport | 57 | 40 percent |
| Jeuveau | 21 | 15 percent |
| Daxxify | 17 | 12 percent |
Worth knowing: every one of the 57 providers that offers Dysport also offers Botox. Not one local provider offers Dysport alone. So availability never forces the decision, and if a clinic is steering you hard toward one product, that's a preference or a promotion, not a constraint.
Two things that make a low unit price meaningless
Reading through the reviews we've collected for local providers, the complaints about injectables almost never come from people who compared unit prices badly. They come from two other places.
The unit count moves
A low per-unit price is easy to advertise and easy to recover on volume. The pattern in the reviews is a patient who has used 38 units at the same practice for years being told that the number should really be closer to 68, sometimes with a suggestion that their old injector was cutting corners. Some of those recommendations are clinically sound, because doses do change and under-treatment is real. But the price you should compare is dose times rate, and you can only do that if you get the recommended dose in writing before anyone opens a vial.
Dilution
Botulinum toxin arrives as a powder and has to be reconstituted with saline before it's injected. How much saline is a clinical judgment with legitimate range. It's also the quietest possible way to make a cheap unit price work, and several reviewers describe results that faded inside two months, or never arrived, at practices competing on price. You can't audit this from the waiting room. What you can do is ask how the product is reconstituted and where, and treat a practice that mixes out of your sight while dodging the question as having answered it.
These are patterns across our review corpus, described rather than quoted. Of 269 collected reviews that name a toxin brand, 253 are five stars and 13 are one star, which tells you Google reviews are a weak instrument for finding out what goes wrong. The one-star reviews carry no reliable date in the source data, so under our quote rules they aren't reproduced here.
Switching between them
Switching is routine and there's no washout period beyond your normal interval. True antibody resistance to botulinum toxin exists but is uncommon at cosmetic doses. If you're switching because the last round disappointed you, bring the specifics: which product, how many units, which areas, and how long it lasted. A converted dose is not a copied dose, and an injector who doesn't ask for those numbers is guessing.
What to ask before you book
- What's the total cost to treat my areas, all in, whichever product we use?
- How many units are you recommending, and why that number?
- If we use Dysport, what dose is that in Dysport units, and what does that total?
- Who's injecting me, and what's their license?
- Is a two-week check included if it needs adjusting?
Question one is the whole article. If a practice will quote a per-unit price but not a total, you've learned something useful for free.
So which one should you get
For most people treating frown lines, forehead lines, or crow's feet for the first time, the product matters less than almost anything else in the decision. Pick the injector, get the total price in writing, and let them choose the product they place most confidently. If you're price-shopping, do the conversion first, because roughly six out of ten local providers don't offer Dysport at all and the ones that do are rarely cheaper once you finish the arithmetic.
A word about what this is
I'm a medical technologist, not a physician, and none of this is medical advice. Botulinum toxin is a prescription drug with real contraindications, and it isn't appropriate for everyone. Whether it's right for you, and at what dose, is a conversation with a licensed clinician who can examine you. What I can tell you is what it costs around here, who legally gets to inject it, and how to compare two prices that are quoted in different currencies.
If you want the fuller picture on pricing and Colorado's delegation rules, that's in the Botox guide. If you're deciding between a med spa and a dermatology practice, that's its own question.