Botox vs Dysport: Onset, Longevity and Real Cost

The short answer

Longevity is effectively a tie: both Botox and Dysport hold for about three to four months in most patients. Dysport tends to start working a day or two sooner and spreads a little wider, which favours broad forehead lines. Botox stays closer to the injection point, which favours precision work.

Botox vs Dysport at a glance

How they actually differ

Both products are botulinum toxin type A and both work the same way at the nerve terminal: they cleave SNAP-25, a protein the nerve needs to release acetylcholine, so the signal telling the muscle to contract never arrives. The muscle relaxes, the skin over it stops creasing, and the line softens. Nothing is being filled — that is a different category of product entirely. Because the mechanism is identical, the honest headline is that these two are far more similar than any marketing comparison suggests.

Where they genuinely differ is the protein complex wrapped around the active toxin. Botox carries a larger accessory protein complex; Dysport's is smaller and its formulation behaves as a lighter molecule in tissue. That translates into a wider field of effect per injection point for Dysport. In a broad forehead this is a feature — fewer injection points cover the same area, and the result can look smoother across the span. In the corner of an eye, or around the mouth where a millimetre of unintended spread reads as a lopsided smile, it is a liability. This is also why the two products cannot share a dosing scale, and why per-unit price comparisons between them are meaningless without knowing the unit count.

Onset differs modestly and consistently. Dysport patients often report movement changing on day two, where Botox more commonly shows at day three to five. Both reach full effect inside two weeks. Duration is where patients expect a difference and mostly do not get one: published ranges and clinical practice both land around three to four months for each, with individual variation driven far more by metabolism, dose and muscle strength than by brand. Heavy exercisers and people with strong glabellar muscles metabolise both faster.

What each one costs

Across the med spas in our directory with published neurotoxin pricing, the median is $11 per unit, drawn from a sample of 5 providers, with individual quotes clustering between $10 and $12 per unit. That is a small sample and a per-unit figure only — it is not what a treatment costs.

The number that matters is the total for your treatment area, because unit counts vary widely by muscle and by patient. A strong glabellar complex needs more product than a light one. More importantly, a Dysport per-unit price cannot be compared to a Botox per-unit price at face value: since clinicians typically convert at roughly two and a half to three Dysport units for every Botox unit, a lower Dysport unit price does not mean a cheaper appointment. Ask any injector for the all-in price for your specific area, in writing, before you agree to anything. Any clinic that will only quote per unit without estimating your unit count is making the comparison harder than it needs to be.

One more cost variable is worth naming: how often you come back. A patient who returns every twelve weeks pays for four treatments a year; one who stretches to sixteen weeks pays for three. Injectors sometimes advise a slightly higher initial dose precisely because an underdosed treatment wears off early and turns into two appointments instead of one. Ask whether the quote you are given reflects a full corrective dose or a conservative starter dose, because those two plans have very different annual totals even at an identical per-unit rate.

Who should choose which

Choose Dysport if you are treating a wide forehead or a broad glabellar area, if you have an event inside two weeks and want the earliest possible onset, or if you have plateaued on Botox results and your injector wants to try a different formulation. Some patients who respond poorly to one neurotoxin over time do better on another, and switching is a reasonable clinical step rather than a gimmick.

Choose Botox if the target is small and precise — crow's feet, a lip flip, downturned mouth corners, masseter slimming — or if you have had clean results from it before and simply want repeatability. First-timers who are nervous about looking frozen also do slightly better starting with the tighter-spreading product and a conservative dose, because the failure mode of over-diffusion is a heavy brow, and that takes months to wear off. In both cases the injector matters more than the vial: placement, dose and anatomy knowledge decide your outcome far more than which of these two brands is in the syringe.