ORE or LDS: the two GDC routes for an overseas-qualified dentist, compared on published fees, attempts, time limits and access

If your primary dental qualification is not on the GDC’s recognised list, the General Dental Council names two ways to get to a registration application. Its own words on the ORE page:

“Most applicants whose primary qualification as a dentist was not gained in the UK or EEA will need to pass the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE) before applying for registration.”

and, under the heading Alternatives to the ORE:

“You can use the Licence in Dental Surgery to apply for registration.”

That is the whole choice, and both ends arrive at the same place: an application to the GDC with a £102.83 initial application fee, followed by a registration fee that “depends on the date at which you are registered”.

This page compares the two routes on what each body publishes: money, attempts, time limits, entry documents and access to a seat. It contains no exam content and no preparation advice, deliberately.

First: check whether you need either

The GDC recognises a small, closed set of overseas qualifications, and every entry carries a date condition. The list covers Bachelor-level dental degrees from named universities in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa, each with wording of the form “Qualification must have been granted before 1 January 2001” — with narrower windows for two entries (University of Malaya and MEDUNSA, between 1 January 1997 and 31 December 2000; University of Western Cape, before 31 December 1997).

The GDC’s rule for everyone else is one sentence: “If your qualification is not listed you will need to pass the overseas registration exam before you can register.”

The two routes side by side

	ORE	LDS
Run by	General Dental Council	RCS England (“RCS England exclusively hosts this exam”)
Parts	Two	Three
Delivery	Part 1 written papers; Part 2 in person	Part 1 online, remote-invigilated; Part 2 in person over two days in London; Part 3 in person over one day
Attempts allowed	“A candidate may have a maximum of 4 attempts at each Part of the ORE”	Part 1: “up to a maximum of four attempts overall”. Part 2 and Part 3: “up to a maximum of three attempts overall” each
Time limit	“Part 2 must be passed within 5 years of first attempting Part 1”	Part 2 requires an LDS Part 1 pass “within the past five years”; Part 3 requires Part 1 and Part 2 passes “within the past 5 years”
Order	“A candidate must pass Part 1 at a sitting before proceeding to sit Part 2”	Sequential: Part 1, then Part 2, then Part 3
Application processing fee	£115	None published separately; fees are per sitting
Published examination fees	Part 1 £485; Part 2 £6,967	Part 1 £900, rising to £1,025 from September 2026; Part 2 £1,575, rising to £1,793; Part 3 £1,525, rising to £1,736
Result turnaround published	Not stated on the pages we read	Part 1 “around six weeks”; Parts 2 and 3 “around four weeks”

The money, added up

At the fees each body published on 3 September 2026, for a candidate who passes every part first time:

ORE. £115 application processing fee + £485 Part 1 + £6,967 Part 2 = £7,567 in examination costs.

LDS at the post-September-2026 fees. £1,025 Part 1 + £1,793 Part 2 + £1,736 Part 3 = £4,554. (At the earlier 2026 fees — £900, £1,575, £1,525 — the same three parts came to £4,000. RCS England states: “The LDS is undergoing a pricing restructure which is reflected in increased fees for examinations taking place from September 2026 onwards.”)

Then, on either route, the GDC’s £102.83 initial application fee, plus the registration fee, plus the cost of the documents each route requires.

The single largest number in the whole comparison is the ORE Part 2 fee of £6,967, which is more than the three LDS parts put together. It is also the fee most exposed to a resit: the ORE permits four attempts at each part, and each attempt is paid for. One published concession exists — candidates who pass everything in ORE Part 2 except the medical emergencies examination “may re-sit that examination, on only one occasion”, at a prescribed fee of £686, and that resit “shall not be counted as an attempt at Part 2”.

The constraint that is not money

The GDC says this about ORE places, on its own page, unprompted:

“Demand for places is currently extremely high. It takes around 60 working days to process an application. We also have a significant number of candidates who want to book a place, which means you may have difficulty securing a place over the next 12 months or more.”

“All places have been taken up within 30 minutes of a booking window opening this year.”

“It can take several years to pass the ORE if you are not able to secure a place immediately or you do not pass on your first attempt.”

That last sentence sits uneasily beside the five-year limit on passing Part 2, and the GDC operates a priority system in response: “We provide priority places for those who are approaching the five-year time limit to ensure they get an opportunity to complete the ORE Part 2, and we also provide priority places for dental professionals with refugee status.”

RCS England publishes named LDS sittings with booking windows and fees against each — for example, an LDS Part 2 sitting on 17 to 21 November 2026 with applications opening 3 August 2026 — and states “Places are limited and the booking window may close early once full.” It does not publish a statement comparable to the GDC’s about a twelve-month backlog. That is an absence of a published statement, not evidence of available capacity, and we are not going to convert it into one.

What each route asks you to produce, and when

The document sets overlap, but the timing differs, and the timing is what catches people.

ORE, at application. Everything up front, before you are on the candidate list: a character reference on the GDC’s form (from the head of your dental school if you are within twelve months of graduation, otherwise from a doctor, dentist or lawyer who has known you for over twelve months, never a family member); one or more clinical references evidencing “at least 1,600 hours of clinical experience that involve treating patients in the dental chair”, on forms “not more than three months old at the time of application”; a passport-based online identity check; certified copies of documents, certified by a notary public, Commissioner of Oaths, Justice of the Peace, lawyer, solicitor or an authorised embassy or consulate official; a Certificate of Good Standing or Certificate of Current Professional Status; a certified copy of your qualification certificate; and a UK ENIC Statement of Comparability.

The GDC also verifies your referees directly and will time you out: it emails them, chases after five days, tells you after fifteen, and “If there is still no response from your referee, your application may be rejected.” A rejected application means updating references and, if you cannot resubmit within 28 days, paying the £115 processing fee again.

LDS, staged across the parts. At Part 1, RCS England asks non-EEA graduates for “proof of your dental qualification and a NARIC certificate”, plus “certificates showing that your studies meet the standards in the Safe Practitioner Framework (General Dental Council, 2023)”, and a passport — with documents due “within one week after you book”. The heavier evidence lands at Part 2: the same qualification evidence, the LDS Clinical Reference Form showing “at least 1,600 hours of clinical experience where you personally treated patients in a dental chair”, a Letter or Certificate of Good Standing, a character reference on RCS England’s form, and explicit English language evidence — “Academic International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)”, with exemptions for EEA nationals, holders of indefinite leave to remain, and those who “completed your dental degree (undergraduate or postgraduate) at a UK institution”.

Two practical consequences. First, the ORE front-loads everything: you assemble the full file, pay £115, and wait up to 60 working days before you are even allowed to try to book. Second, the LDS lets you sit Part 1 on a thinner document set — but the clinical-hours evidence is still required before Part 2, and RCS England specifies that the experience “must be from the period just before you take Part 2 of the exam.”

The GDC’s own English language requirement applies at registration on either route. Its key-facts page lists acceptable evidence including “a pass score of at least 7 in the academic International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam, with a score of at least 6.5 in each category”, a recent primary dental qualification taught and examined in English with a structured university reference, a recent pass in a language test for registration with a regulator in a country where the first language is English, or a structured reference and employment contract showing recent practice in such a country.

Things that are not a route

The GDC states one exclusion in terms, on the ORE page:

“There are no exemptions for candidates who have a Membership of the Faculty of Dental Surgery (MFDS) or any other membership diplomas or non-membership examinations.”

There is one further option the GDC itself names alongside the LDS, and it is a degree rather than an examination: “You may also be able to join the Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) (international Route) offered by the University of Lancashire (UCLAN) which is designed for overseas qualified dentists and allows entry to the UCLAN BDS programme after the third year. It will provide you with a UK qualification and allow registration as a UK qualified dentist.” The university describes it as an 18-month programme entered after Year 3 and states it holds “full programme approval from the General Dental Council”. It is a different kind of thing from either examination and carries university tuition rather than examination fees; that comparison belongs on its own page.

The regulatory background, briefly

The current ORE rules are The General Dental Council (Dentists) (International Registration) Rules 2023, made 8 December 2023 and in force 9 March 2024. They set the two-part structure, the standard (“The standard of knowledge and skill required to be shown by candidates to pass the ORE shall be at the level required to pass a UK diploma in dentistry”), the attempt limits, and the five-year rule — including a pandemic carve-out: “In calculating the 5-year period… no account is to be taken of the period beginning on 2 April 2020 and ending on the 8 March 2023.”

The GDC also has a wider reform programme running. Its own summary: the 2023 Order “increase[s] the flexibility we have to set rules and to amend routes to registration for dental professionals with overseas qualifications”, and “Developing this framework will take some time, during which we need to continue to enable access to the registers for appropriately qualified professionals. In the short term, this means continuing with current arrangements, the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE) for dentists”. We report that as published and predict nothing about what replaces it or when.

What we could not verify

Current ORE sitting dates and booking windows. The GDC publishes them behind an account and its booking-dates page was not readable to us as a public document. We publish no ORE dates.

The GDC registration fee payable on acceptance. The GDC states the amount “depends on the date at which you are registered” and directs applicants to its registration fees section. We publish only the £102.83 initial application fee, which the GDC states directly.

Any comparison of outcomes between the routes. Neither body publishes anything we read that would support one, and we would not publish one if they did. The examination result is decided by the examiners; nothing on this site predicts it.

Whether LDS capacity is materially better than ORE capacity. RCS England publishes sittings and warns that booking windows “may close early once full”. It does not publish a backlog statement. We are reporting the difference in what is published, not a difference in reality.

What to do

1. Check the recognised-qualifications list first, including its date condition. If your qualification and its award date both fall inside an entry, neither examination applies to you.
2. Cost the whole route, not the first fee. ORE examination costs come to £7,567 at current published fees; the three LDS parts come to £4,554 at the September 2026 fees. Add £102.83 plus the registration fee on either.
3. Count the attempts against the clock. Four attempts per ORE part with Part 2 inside five years; four at LDS Part 1 and three each at LDS Parts 2 and 3, with the five-year currency of earlier passes.
4. Assemble the clinical-hours evidence before you commit to either. Both routes require 1,600 hours of chairside patient treatment, evidenced on the body’s own form, and the LDS additionally requires it to be recent.
5. Get the UK ENIC or NARIC statement early. Both routes require it, and it is not instant.
6. Take the seat problem seriously. The GDC has published, in its own words, that securing an ORE place may be difficult “over the next 12 months or more” and that “it can take several years” to complete. That is a planning fact, not a rumour.

We are not the GDC and not RCS England. We do not assess qualifications, run examinations or decide registrations. What this page does is put the two bodies’ own published fees, limits and conditions in one place so that the choice is made against facts rather than against advertising.