Moles, skin tags, and warts get searched separately and priced identically. All three are small skin lesions removed in an office in under twenty minutes, all three are billed under the same handful of procedure codes, and all three carry the same two hidden add-ons: a pathology fee if tissue goes to a lab, and the office visit that generated the procedure in the first place.
This guide is about the price of the procedure. If what you actually want to know is what walking into a dermatology office costs before anyone touches anything, that is a different number and it lives in our dermatologist cost guide, which covers the visit, the full-body skin check, and photo-based online dermatology. This page picks up where that one leaves off: what the removal itself costs, per lesion, in 2026.
What Does Mole, Skin Tag, and Wart Removal Cost Without Insurance?
Prices below are current as of August 2026. Medicare rates come from the June 2026 release of the CMS Physician Fee Schedule relative value file (RVU26C), calculated nationally with a 2026 conversion factor of $33.4009. National cash averages come from CareCredit’s 2026 cost data.
| Service | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mole removal, surgical shaving | $116 | $151 | $288 |
| Mole removal, surgical excision | $251 | $325 | $583 |
| Mole removal, cryotherapy | $161 | $209 | $392 |
| Mole removal, laser | $411 | $531 | $1,033 |
| Skin tag removal, per method average | $71 (fibroblast plasma) | $98 to $153 | $187 (excision) |
| Skin tag removal, posted flat price (up to 15 tags) | $150 | $150 | $150 plus add-ons |
| Wart removal, cryotherapy per session | $175 | $226 | $443 |
| Destruction of 1 to 14 benign lesions, self-pay (24 NH facilities) | $211 | about $500 | $1,184 |
| Pathology, per specimen (CPT 88305) | $70.14 (Medicare) | varies | $185.12 (average charge) |
| Medicare benchmark, benign excision (CPT 11400 to 11442) | $127.93 | $155 to $175 | $194.06 |
The Medicare row is the floor worth memorizing. Under the 2026 fee schedule, removing 1 to 15 skin tags (CPT 11200) pays $92.19 with each additional group of 10 at $18.37. Destroying 1 to 14 benign lesions by freezing or burning (CPT 17110) pays $111.22, and 15 or more (17111) pays $129.93. A shave removal of a lesion 0.5 cm or smaller pays $96.53 to $111.56 depending on the body site. Excising a benign lesion with margins runs $127.93 for the smallest trunk or limb lesion up to $194.06 for a 1.1 to 2.0 cm lesion on the face. Nothing in that list is a $1,000 procedure at Medicare rates.
The New Hampshire row is the most concrete real-world data available, because NH HealthCost is a state insurance department site that publishes each facility’s charge, its uninsured discount, and the resulting self-pay price for CPT 17110. Across roughly two dozen facilities, the statewide average charge is $702 and what an uninsured patient actually pays runs from $211 at Monadnock Community Hospital to $1,184 at a Dartmouth Health clinic in Manchester. The data reflects patient experiences from April 2024 through June 2025.
What Drives the Price
The method, not the mole
The single biggest price lever is how the lesion comes off. Freezing is fast and cheap. Shaving is fast and cheap. Cutting with margins and closing with stitches costs more because it takes longer and involves a repair. Laser costs the most and is almost always elective. CareCredit’s national averages line up neatly with that: $151 for shaving, $209 for cryotherapy, $325 for excision, and $531 for laser. One Spokane clinic that posts its dermatology prices charges $70 flat for liquid nitrogen and $600 for a benign excision on the body, which is the same ordering at a different scale.
Cosmetic or medically indicated
This distinction changes both the price and the shape of the bill. A removal done for appearance is not covered by insurance, so practices price it like retail and post it publicly. North Carolina Dermatology Associates sells cosmetic skin tag removal through an online store at $150 covering up to and including 15 tags. A removal a clinician documents as medically indicated goes through the standard billing pipeline instead: a procedure code, a pathology code, and an office visit code, arriving as separate charges from separate entities. Which category a specific lesion falls into is a clinical judgment, not something a price guide can answer.
Per-lesion pricing and multi-lesion discounts
The codes themselves are built around volume, which is why removing several lesions at one appointment is dramatically cheaper per lesion than several appointments. CPT 11200 covers 1 to 15 skin tags for a single $92.19 Medicare payment, with 11201 adding only $18.37 per additional 10. CPT 17110 covers 1 to 14 benign lesions for one $111.22 payment, and 17111 covers 15 or more for $129.93. Cosmetic menus mirror this: the Raleigh practice’s $150 covers up to 15 tags, not one. If you have several lesions you want gone, ask for them in one sitting and ask for the multi-lesion price explicitly.
The site on the body
Face, ears, eyelids, nose, and lips get their own higher-paying code family. Medicare pays $141.95 to excise a benign facial lesion 0.5 cm or smaller (11440) versus $127.93 for the same size on the trunk or a limb (11400). The Spokane clinic’s posted prices show the same pattern more sharply: $600 for a benign excision on the body and $800 on the face.
Pathology is a separate business
Dermatologists routinely send removed tissue to a pathologist, and that examination is billed on its own code by whoever performs it. Medicare’s 2026 national rate for CPT 88305 is $70.14 per specimen (split evenly between a $35.07 technical component and a $35.07 professional component). In CMS’s most recent claims data, labs submitted an average charge of $185.12 per specimen in the office setting and Medicare allowed $57.93. Each specimen bills separately, so a three-lesion appointment can produce three pathology line items from a company you have never heard of.
The office visit stacks on top
The procedure code and the visit code are different charges. Medicare’s 2026 rate for a new-patient office visit at the common moderate level (CPT 99203) is $117.57, and an established-patient visit (99213) is $95.19. Practices charging cash typically post considerably more than that, which is exactly why the visit price deserves its own research. Our dermatologist cost guide has the cash visit ranges in detail.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
For a cosmetic removal there is no insurance question at all: it is a retail purchase, and the practices that treat it that way tend to publish real numbers you can compare before you book. That is genuinely good news for self-pay patients, because dermatology cosmetic menus are among the most transparent prices in medicine.
For anything billed as medically indicated, the calculus is the familiar one. Under a high-deductible plan you pay the negotiated rate out of pocket anyway, and the negotiated rate for these codes is not far from Medicare’s. CMS claims data shows Medicare allowing an average of $103.64 for CPT 17110 and $65.72 for CPT 11200 in the office setting, against average submitted charges of $243.18 and $201.59. If a practice will take a self-pay rate near the allowed amounts, paying cash is often better than running a small procedure through a deductible.
Setting matters more than most people realize. In the New Hampshire data, independent dermatology practices charge $368 to $786 for CPT 17110 with a 0% uninsured discount, meaning the sticker is the price. Hospital-affiliated locations charge $1,021 or more but apply discounts of 33% to 69%, landing some of them below the independents and some of them well above. The lesson is not that one setting is always cheaper; it is that you have to ask for the post-discount number, not the charge.
How to Pay Less
- Get everything removed in one appointment. The codes are volume-based by design. One visit covering up to 15 skin tags or up to 14 lesions costs a fraction of the same work spread across three appointments, each with its own visit fee.
- Ask the three-part question before you sit down. What does the removal cost, what does pathology cost per specimen, and is the office visit billed separately? Those are three numbers, and a quote that answers only the first one is not a quote. Our fair price checker is a fast way to sanity-check the total against the Medicare benchmarks above.
- Compare an independent dermatology practice against a hospital-affiliated one, on post-discount price. The New Hampshire data shows the identical code at $211 and at $1,184 within one small state. Two phone calls is a realistic path to a several-hundred-dollar difference.
- Look for practices that publish a cosmetic price list. A posted flat price like $150 for up to 15 skin tags is a fixed, knowable number with no pathology or facility surprise attached. Ask whether the practice has a self-pay or cosmetic menu before assuming it does not.
- If the removal happens at a hospital outpatient department, pull the price file. Hospitals are required to publish a discounted cash price for every code. Our guide to hospital price transparency files covers how to find the line for CPT 17110 or 11402 at a specific facility rather than relying on a phone estimate.
- Use a sliding-scale clinic when you need the visit anyway. Federally funded community health centers charge on income and handle basic lesion removal, which folds the visit and the procedure into one income-adjusted price. Our guide to free clinics and sliding-scale care explains how to find one.
- Dispute the pathology bill if it arrives at multiples of the benchmark. Medicare pays $70.14 for CPT 88305 and labs submit an average of $185.12. A bill several times that, from a lab you did not choose, is a reasonable candidate for our medical bill negotiation guide.
Bottom Line
Per lesion, mole removal runs $116 to $1,033 without insurance, clustering around $151 for a shave and $325 for an excision. Skin tags are cheaper, with method averages between $71 and $187 and posted flat prices around $150 for a batch of up to 15. Wart cryotherapy averages $226 a session and often takes more than one session. Underneath all of it, Medicare’s 2026 rates for the same codes run $92.19 to $194.06, which is the number to anchor on when a quote seems high.
The two charges that turn a $200 procedure into a $600 bill are the pathology fee, at roughly $70 to $185 per specimen, and the office visit, which is billed separately from the procedure every time. Ask for all three numbers up front, get several lesions done in one sitting, and compare the post-discount price at an independent practice against the hospital-affiliated one down the road.