Budget decision tool

Calculator: from what year does surgery cost less than your contact lenses?

An optical correction is an expense that repeats itself, refractive surgery a one-off expense. There is therefore a year in which the two curves cross. It does not depend on a national average, but on the way you correct your sight today. Enter your situation and the curve is plotted.

How you correct your sight today

Glasses are counted in the first two profiles: Dr Tourabaly advises every contact lens wearer to have a pair of glasses as well. Wide ranges, taken from public prices in September 2026; your real spending takes precedence.

Your real annual spending, if you know it

Add up contact lenses, care solutions and the renewal of your glasses, brought back to one year. This amount replaces the estimate.

The technique being considered

Practice packages. The technique suited to your eye is determined by the pre-operative assessment, never by its price.

Your complementary health insurance allowance

Look for the “refractive surgery” line in your schedule of benefits. It is the term that weighs most in the calculation, and the one most often overlooked.

4.0 years before surgery becomes the less costly option

Beyond that point, every year spent without contact lenses is a year of saving. Before it, optical correction remains the cheaper choice.

3,000euros of net cost, once the insurance allowance has been deducted

8,902euros of cumulative gap after 20 years, in favour of surgery

Optical correction, cumulative spending Surgery, one-off spending

Reading the chart: the gold curve accumulates your optical correction spending, discounted at 3 % a year; the green line is the cost of the procedure, which does not move again. They cross at 4.0 years. After 20 years, the gap reaches 8,902 euros in favour of surgery.

The break-even point is close. With this annual spending, the procedure pays for itself in less than six years, and everything that follows is a gap that keeps widening.

This says nothing about your eligibility: that is decided at the pre-operative assessment, on the thickness and the regularity of your cornea, the stability of your correction and the state of your ocular surface.

The break-even point is in the medium term. Between six and twelve years, the operation remains an investment that is recovered, but the financial argument is no longer decisive on its own. Look also at day-to-day comfort and at how well you tolerate contact lenses.

A complementary health insurance allowance, if your contract has one, can bring that horizon distinctly closer.

The break-even point is distant. Beyond a dozen years or so, the budget argument is not enough to justify a procedure.

If you are considering surgery all the same, it will be for other reasons: sport, a job, an intolerance to contact lenses. Those are perfectly acceptable reasons. The budget, however, does not lean that way.

There is no break-even point in this case. The spending you avoid is too small to catch up with the cost of the procedure, even over a very long horizon. Put simply: here, the operation is not a money decision.

That does not rule it out. It only moves the question onto the ground of comfort and of medical indication, which is the right one.

Future spending is discounted at 3 % a year: a euro spent ten years from now weighs less than a euro spent today. That is what explains why the curve flattens over time instead of rising in a straight line. This rate is used as a convention, for want of an official reference applicable to a household budget.

Where these figures come from

No public source gives the annual budget of a contact lens wearer in France. The national health accounts give a total expenditure, not an expenditure per person. Rather than take up an unverifiable estimate, we recorded the public prices displayed, online and at opticians, on 1 September 2026.

Reference recorded	Displayed price	Annual cost, both eyes
1-Day ACUVUE Moist, box of 90 (lentillesmoinscheres.com)	€56.50	≈ €460
1-Day ACUVUE Moist, box of 90 (Krys)	€61.90	≈ €500
DAILIES TOTAL 1, box of 90 (Optic 2000)	€77.50	≈ €630
DAILIES TOTAL 1, box of 90 (lentillesmoinscheres.com)	€79.90	≈ €650
Monthly lenses, box of 6 (SofLens 59 to Ultra)	€14.90 to €33.90	€60 to €140 + care solutions

Daily wear, both eyes, that is 730 lenses a year for daily disposables and 24 lenses a year for monthlies. Public prices recorded on 1 September 2026; they change.

Two lessons from this survey, both of which run against received ideas. First, the gap between a discount online seller and an optician is small, sometimes nil: on the same reference, Optic 2000 shows €77.50 where the discount site asks €79.90. What makes the bill vary is the brand of the lens, not the purchasing channel. Second, the gap between entry level and top of the range is considerable: twice as much for the same wearing time.

Glasses come on top of contact lenses. Dr Tourabaly advises every contact lens wearer to have glasses as well: for the evening, in case of a red or irritated eye, and because a contact lens must not be worn continuously. A complete pair replaced every two to three years represents, spread over the year, something in the order of one hundred to two hundred and fifty euros. That is why the first two profiles in the calculator count contact lenses and glasses, and not contact lenses alone.

At national level, this spending is very largely left outside collective funding: on the whole of medical optical spending, glasses and contact lenses taken together, the national health insurance covers only 4%, against 68% for complementary health insurers and 28% paid directly by households (DREES, Les dépenses de santé en 2024). Refractive surgery, for its part, is not covered at all (ameli.fr).

How this calculation is made

The principle comes down to a single division. Call C the net cost of the procedure, that is the practice package minus what your complementary health insurance pays, and D the annual spending you will no longer have to make. The break-even point T*, expressed in years, is the moment when the accumulation of D catches up with C:

T* = C / D

The calculator adds a correction that this simple formula ignores: discounting. An expense of €800 planned in fifteen years’ time does not represent the same effort as an expense of €800 today. By discounting future spending at 3% a year, the accumulation does not rise in a straight line, it bends, and the break-even point moves back slightly. The result displayed is therefore a little more cautious than that of the raw division, which is the direction in which it is better to be wrong.

This discounting has a consequence worth knowing: the sum of the spending avoided does not grow indefinitely, it converges towards D divided by the rate. For €100 a year at 3%, that ceiling is €3,333. If the net cost of the procedure exceeds that ceiling, there is no year in which the operation becomes the cheaper one, and the calculator says so plainly rather than displaying a distant but reassuring figure.

The packages offered in the menu are those of the practice, for both eyes: €2,500 for PRK, €3,000 for LASIK, €3,300 for SMILE, €3,500 for PresbyLASIK. They cover the procedure, the operating theatre, the check-ups of the first month and a possible medically justified touch-up during the first six months. The item-by-item breakdown appears on the refractive surgery prices page.

What this calculation does not say

A figure looks like an answer. This one is not, and four caveats deserve to be set out before it is used.

Eligibility comes before budget. A cornea that is too thin, early keratoconus, a correction that is still unstable or marked dry eye rule the procedure out, whatever the figure displayed here. It is the pre-operative assessment that decides, and it alone.
Surgery does not remove all optical spending for life. It corrects myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism, not the ageing of the crystalline lens. Presbyopia sets in around the age of forty and can bring reading glasses back, whether or not you have had surgery.
Your future spending is an assumption, not a piece of data. The price of contact lenses, the content of your policy, how well you tolerate wearing them: all of it moves over twenty years. Someone who would have stopped wearing lenses in three years anyway is not saving twenty years of lenses.
Both options have a risk profile, of different shapes. That of the procedure is one-off and concentrated over a few weeks; that of contact lens wear is low but renewed every day. Neither of the two is neutral, and that comparison belongs in consultation.

Frequently asked questions

Why do you count glasses along with contact lenses?

Because a contact lens wearer has to have glasses. No contact lens should be worn continuously, and you need to be able to take yours out in the evening, in case of a red eye, of conjunctivitis or of tiredness. Counting the contact lenses alone would therefore understate the spending actually avoided by a procedure, and would artificially push the break-even point back.

Is refractive surgery reimbursed?

Not by the national health insurance, which does not cover it whatever the refractive error being corrected. Many complementary health insurance policies, on the other hand, provide a dedicated allowance, from a few hundred euros to more than a thousand euros per eye. It is that amount you should enter in the calculator: it comes straight off the cost and brings the break-even point closer.

Are your price ranges reliable?

They are records of public prices, made on 1 September 2026 at one online seller and at two opticians, and deliberately given as wide ranges. No institutional source publishes the annual budget of a contact lens wearer in France. If you know your real spending, enter it: it replaces our estimate and the calculation becomes yours.

Why discount spending at 3% a year?

Because a euro spent ten years from now does not represent the same effort as a euro spent today. Without that correction, the calculation would overstate the real weight of distant spending and would make the operation look more advantageous than it is. The rate of 3% is used as a convention: no official reference applies to a household budget.

Can the calculator tell me whether I am a candidate for surgery?

No, and it does not set out to. It answers a budget question, not a medical one. Eligibility depends on the thickness and the regularity of the cornea, on the stability of the correction and on the state of the ocular surface, measurements that are made at the pre-operative assessment, on dedicated equipment.

Are these prices the practice’s own, or a market average?

They are the practice’s packages, shown as they are, for both eyes. They cover the procedure, the operating theatre, the check-ups of the first month and a possible justified touch-up during the first six months. The quote handed over after the pre-operative assessment is what counts.

Sources

Assurance maladie. Correction de la myopie et suivi de l’enfant myope — « La chirurgie réfractive n’est pas prise en charge par l’Assurance Maladie. » (Refractive surgery is not covered by the French national health insurance.) ameli.fr.
Assurance maladie. Lunettes et lentilles : remboursement — annual allowance of €39.48 per fitted eye, reimbursed at 60%, subject to eligible indications. ameli.fr.
DREES. L’optique médicale, in Les dépenses de santé en 2024, 2025 edition, sheet 16. drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr.
Record of public prices on 1 September 2026 at lentillesmoinscheres.com, Krys and Optic 2000. These links are given as a source of prices; they constitute neither a recommendation nor a partnership.