Channel 01 · Dentist · labs.llc/dentist/

Dentist: a volunteer map, made searchable

We put the labs.llc dental register on screen at desktop and phone width, weighed the files it downloads, and set it beside the NHS, the ADA and Zocdoc.

Tested 2026-09-27Build 537, local copyDesktop capture 20:13:23ZPhone capture 20:13:28ZPublisher LABS, which also makes this tool

Capture of the labs.llc Dentist page at 1280 by 800 pixels: a search box, country, state and city pickers, three icon buttons, region tabs with Latin America selected, a grid of specialty counts and a row of summary figures. — Callouts · desktop capture, 1280 × 800
Callout 1: The search box; its placeholder shows the kinds of question it takes — a specialty in a city, a postcode, a name.
Callout 2: Near me, open now and — judging by its telephone icon — a has-phone filter.
Callout 3: The scope note: “Search downloads only the countries of this region” — printed where you choose one.
Callout 4: Specialty tiles counted for the region: 13,318 general practices and 948 orthodontists in Latin America.
Callout 5: Two city totals for one scope in the same frame: 2,184 in the summary line, 2,256 on the tile beneath it.

Segment 1 · On screen

What it is, and who it is for

Dentist is a register of dental practices, clinics and specialists drawn from OpenStreetMap: 109,030 of them in 69 countries and 21,077 cities across Europe and the Americas. You search it by city, postcode, specialty or name, in Spanish, Portuguese or English.

It is for anyone who needs a dentist in a city they do not know, and for practice owners who want to see, and correct, what the map says about them. It is not a booking service and does not act like one.

Segment 2 · Behind the picture

How it works

Almost all of the work happens on your device. The client engine, dentist.js (107,621 bytes), first loads data/meta.json — counts, city aliases and fourteen specialties — then fetches only the country files for the region you pick, indexes them in memory and searches there (lines 218–226). The country files are an extract of every OpenStreetMap object tagged amenity=dentist or healthcare=dentist, built on 4 September 2026. Crawlable country and city pages come from place.php, which counts every figure at request time (lines 12–16).

The effort shows in the search code. A Damerau–Levenshtein check (dl1, line 253) forgives a one-letter slip, “ortod” finds Ortodoncia, and city aliases for eleven countries let CDMX reach Mexico City. Open now uses each practice’s own mapped hours (lines 640 and 699); a practice with no hours is never guessed open.

What it reads
OpenStreetMap (ODbL) extract built 2026-09-04: data/meta.json plus per-country shards, 21 MB on disk
Your browser’s own location, for near me — used on the device only

Segment 3 · The test

What we measured, and when

At 20:13:18 UTC on 27 September we asked the local copy of build 537 for the page and its register. The page weighed 32,281 bytes; meta.json 417,660; the Mexico shard 747,173; the United States shard 4,891,172. It agreed with the headline figures and added the numbers a patient cares about: 45,895 practices with a postcode, 37,766 with a phone, 27,660 with opening hours.

One test failed on our side: the place pages need an Apache rewrite our local server does not apply, so they answered 404 and 301, and we have not reviewed them. The desktop capture shows something a reader will notice (callout 5): two city totals for Latin America on one screen. The frame does not say which definition each uses.

Capture of the Dentist page at 390 by 844 pixels: the header with language and theme buttons, the headline, the search box, pickers, region buttons and the download note. — Callouts · phone capture, 390 × 844
Callout 1: The near-me, open-now and phone buttons stay one tap each at phone width.
Callout 2: The download note survives at 390 pixels, directly under the region buttons.

Segment 4 · Other channels

Beside NHS Find a dentist, ADA Find-a-Dentist and Zocdoc

Each comparator was checked on the date shown. We say what each does better before we say where Dentist goes further.

NHS Find a dentist (England)

Checked 2026-09-27 20:17 UTC

What it is: The NHS search for dental practices by town, city or postcode in England, or by your location.
What it does better: It says which practices accept new NHS patients or offer urgent care — a fact OpenStreetMap does not hold — and it is the health service’s own record.
Where Dentist goes further: Dentist covers 69 countries rather than England alone, and searches in three languages with typo tolerance and city aliases.

ADA Find-a-Dentist

Checked 2026-09-27 20:17 UTC · the site refused our fetch, so we read the ADA’s own article on its redesign and its pages via search

What it is: The American Dental Association’s directory of member dentists, searched by address or ZIP code.
What it does better: Filters for insurance accepted and languages spoken, and profiles the dentists maintain themselves.
Where Dentist goes further: Only ADA members who opt in appear there; Dentist lists whatever has been mapped, and computes open-now from each practice’s own hours.

Zocdoc (dentists)

Checked 2026-09-27 20:18 UTC · refused our fetch; verified from its pages via search

What it is: A US booking marketplace: dentists by location and insurance, with open appointment slots.
What it does better: Real availability, online booking, an insurance filter and reviews from patients who booked through it.
Where Dentist goes further: Nobody pays to be listed or ranked on Dentist (index.html line 475), and every record links to OpenStreetMap so anyone can view or correct it.

Segment 5 · Dropouts

Where it falls short

Coverage is only what volunteers have mapped, and the page says so. Contact details are thin: 35% of practices carry a phone number and 25% carry opening hours.
It is a snapshot. The extract was 23 days old on test day; a correction made in OpenStreetMap appears only in the next edition.
A search in the United States downloads the whole 4.9 MB US file first — a heavy first search on a phone connection.
No booking, no insurance filter, no patient reviews, and no check that a practice is still trading.

Segment 6 · End card

The verdict

Dentist is a wide, candid dental register: 109,030 practices in 69 countries, searched on your own device, with its gaps counted rather than filled. Use it to learn who practises in an unfamiliar city; use the NHS or a booking service to learn who will see you.

Open Dentist on labs.llc How we tested