For patients researching laser vision correction in Orange County, the cost comparison between SMILE Pro and LASIK often comes as a surprise. The procedure that requires only one laser and a smaller incision is consistently priced higher than LASIK at most Orange County and Los Angeles practices, sometimes significantly higher. The reasons have less to do with the cost of delivering each procedure and more to do with how practices position SMILE Pro in the market.
This article walks through what SMILE Pro actually costs at Orange County and Los Angeles refractive practices, what LASIK costs at Feinerman Vision, and how to think about the price difference in the context of long-term value, enhancement coverage, and visual outcomes.
The Short Answer
SMILE Pro pricing across Orange County and Los Angeles refractive practices typically clusters in the $6,000 to $7,000 range for both eyes, with some practices charging up to $8,000. Lower-priced options exist at certain practices but typically come with reduced services or older diagnostic technology.
WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision is $5,100 for both eyes, all-inclusive. Wavefront-Optimized LASIK at Feinerman Vision is $4,100 for both eyes.
In other words, the most advanced LASIK platform in the United States, performed by the first surgeon in Orange County and greater Los Angeles to offer it, is priced at or below the typical SMILE Pro market range. For most patients, this is the opposite of what the marketing around SMILE Pro suggests.
Here is why.
What SMILE Pro Costs in Orange County and Los Angeles
Based on published pricing across Southern California refractive practices in April 2026:
- Typical range: $3,000 to $3,500 per eye, or $6,000 to $7,000 for both eyes, at most boutique and mid-tier practices
- Higher end: approximately $4,000 per eye, or $8,000 for both eyes, at premium-positioned practices
- Lower-priced options: approximately $2,500 per eye, or $5,000 for both eyes, exist at certain practices but commonly involve older diagnostic equipment, reduced surgeon involvement, or limited postoperative care
Pricing varies based on the practice, the specific platform used, included diagnostics, and any enhancement coverage offered. Practices advertising low headline prices sometimes exclude pre-operative testing, post-operative care, or enhancement coverage, with the actual delivered cost coming in meaningfully higher.
What LASIK Costs at Feinerman Vision
Feinerman Vision offers two LASIK platforms with transparent, all-inclusive pricing:
Wavefront-Optimized LASIK: $4,100 for both eyes
This is our standard high-quality LASIK option. It uses the WaveLight EX500 excimer laser with wavefront-optimized treatment profiles and has produced excellent outcomes for thousands of Feinerman Vision patients over the years.
WaveLight® Plus LASIK: $5,100 for both eyes
This is the most advanced laser eye surgery available in the United States. It uses INNOVEYES SightMap™ ray-tracing to analyze the full optical system of each eye and deliver personalized correction that addresses sphere, cylinder, and higher-order aberrations simultaneously. Dr. Feinerman was the first surgeon in Orange County and greater Los Angeles to offer WaveLight® Plus LASIK following its FDA approval in 2025.
Both prices include:
- Comprehensive preoperative diagnostic workup
- Surgery on both eyes
- All postoperative follow-up visits with Dr. Feinerman personally
- Lifetime enhancement coverage for as long as you remain under our care
The Two Lasers vs. One Laser Reality
WaveLight® Plus LASIK requires two specialized lasers: the Ziemer Z8® femtosecond laser to create the corneal flap, and the WaveLight EX500 excimer laser for the personalized ray-tracing ablation. SMILE Pro requires a single femtosecond laser, the Zeiss VisuMax 800.
The procedure that requires only one specialized laser is consistently priced at the same level or higher than the procedure that requires two specialized lasers in Orange County. This reflects market positioning around SMILE Pro’s status as a newer technology, not the underlying cost of delivering each procedure.
For patients, this matters because it reframes the value question. SMILE Pro is sometimes positioned as worth a premium because it requires fewer instruments and a smaller incision. In practice, the higher price reflects how practices position SMILE Pro in the market, not procedure complexity, equipment cost, or clinical outcomes.
Side-by-Side Pricing Comparison
| Procedure | Where | Cost (Both Eyes) |
|---|---|---|
| Wavefront-Optimized LASIK | Feinerman Vision (all-inclusive) | $4,100 |
| WaveLight® Plus LASIK | Feinerman Vision (all-inclusive) | $5,100 |
| SMILE Pro (lower-priced options) | OC/LA market | ~$5,000 |
| SMILE Pro (typical) | OC/LA market | $6,000 to $7,000 |
| SMILE Pro (higher end) | OC/LA market | ~$8,000 |
WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision sits below the typical SMILE Pro pricing range in Orange County, despite being the more advanced platform on the metrics that matter most: visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and higher-order aberration correction.
The Generation Gap
A useful reference point: WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision is also priced at the same level or lower than the previous-generation platform, Contoura® Vision LASIK, at most Newport Beach practices.
Feinerman Vision used Contoura® Vision LASIK from 2016 (shortly after its FDA approval in 2015) through 2025, when we transitioned to WaveLight® Plus LASIK following its FDA approval. During that nearly 10-year period, Contoura was the most advanced LASIK platform we offered, and it was priced at the high end of the LASIK market.
Today, Contoura® Vision LASIK is still offered at most Newport Beach refractive practices and is typically priced between $5,000 and $6,000 for both eyes. WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision is $5,100 for both eyes.
In other words, patients can have the most advanced LASIK platform available in the United States, performed by the first surgeon in Orange County and greater Los Angeles to offer it, for the same price or less than the previous-generation platform at competing Newport Beach practices.
What You Are Actually Paying For
Refractive surgery pricing reflects more than the procedure itself. The total value depends on:
Technology platform. Older LASIK platforms, current-generation LASIK, and ray-tracing personalized LASIK are not equivalent. WaveLight® Plus LASIK uses the same ray-tracing personalization documented in the Kanellopoulos randomized contralateral eye trial presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology in October 2025, where 98% of WaveLight® Plus eyes achieved 20/12.5 or better compared to 82% for SMILE Pro at three months postoperative, with each patient serving as their own control.
Surgeon experience. A surgeon who personally performs every procedure, evaluates every patient, and follows up at every visit is delivering a different service than a high-volume model where patients rotate between staff.
Diagnostic depth. Comprehensive preoperative imaging (corneal topography, Scheimpflug tomography, pachymetry mapping, epithelial thickness mapping, Hartmann-Shack wavefront analysis, ray-tracing for WaveLight® Plus candidates) is part of what determines the right procedure for your eyes. Practices that abbreviate this workup typically offer lower headline prices.
Enhancement coverage. This is one of the largest differentiators in real-world value. At Feinerman Vision, all primary LASIK procedures include lifetime enhancement coverage. If your eyes change over time and you need a touch-up years or decades after your original procedure, the enhancement is provided at no additional cost as long as you have remained under our care.
The Co-Management Fee Question
Another reason Feinerman Vision pricing is lower than at many competing Orange County and Los Angeles refractive practices is structural, not promotional: we do not pay co-management fees to optometrists.
Co-management is a referral arrangement that operates as follows. An optometrist sends a patient to a surgeon for LASIK or SMILE Pro. The surgeon performs the procedure. The patient is then sent back to the original optometrist for all postoperative follow-up care. The surgeon pays the optometrist a co-management fee for co-managing the patient.
For the patient, this raises a real clinical question: who would you rather see after surgery, the optometrist who referred you, or the surgeon who actually performed your procedure? If something surgical needs to be addressed in the early postoperative period, only the surgeon can address it. In a co-management model, the optometrist must contact the surgeon, the surgeon must travel to evaluate the patient, and treatment is delayed.
At Feinerman Vision, every postoperative visit is conducted personally by Dr. Feinerman. There is no co-management model and no co-management fee built into our pricing. The cost savings from not paying referral fees is one of the reasons we can offer WaveLight® Plus LASIK at $5,100 for both eyes when comparable platforms at co-management practices are priced higher.
This is also why we invest in direct-to-patient education and outreach rather than building a referral network of co-managing optometrists. The economics favor either lower prices for patients or higher referral fees for optometrists. We have chosen the former.
Why Lifetime Enhancement Coverage Changes the Math
Enhancement coverage policies vary widely across Orange County refractive practices. Some include lifetime coverage. Others include coverage for one year. Others charge for any post-original enhancement at full procedure cost. The same upfront price can mean very different things depending on how enhancements are handled.
Lifetime enhancement coverage at Feinerman Vision is meaningful for two reasons:
First, your eyes can change over time. Mild myopic shift in your forties or fifties is common. Without enhancement coverage, a touch-up procedure could cost $1,500 to $3,000 or more.
Second, enhancement coverage is meaningful only if the enhancement procedure itself is straightforward. With LASIK, lifetime coverage means lifetime peace of mind: a flap-lift enhancement is a standard, predictable procedure using the same technology as the original. With SMILE Pro, the enhancement pathway is structurally more complex and the FDA-cleared CIRCLE software is not available to US surgeons. Even when SMILE Pro practices offer lifetime coverage, the underlying enhancement is more complicated. (For a deep dive on this, see SMILE Pro Enhancement: Why Touch-Ups Are More Complicated Than LASIK.)
What About FSA, HSA, and Financing?
Both LASIK and SMILE Pro are eligible for Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and Health Savings Account (HSA) reimbursement. Depending on your tax bracket, this can effectively reduce your out-of-pocket cost by 20 to 30 percent.
For patients who prefer to spread the cost over time, Feinerman Vision offers financing through CareCredit, which provides flexible payment plans including options with no interest if paid within a specified promotional period. CareCredit is widely accepted at refractive surgery practices and can be applied for online before your consultation.
Patients should compare the total delivered cost, not just monthly payment numbers. A lower monthly payment with a longer term often costs more over time than a higher payment with a shorter term.
When the Price Difference Is Worth It
Paying $6,000 to $8,000 for SMILE Pro at another practice, against $5,100 for WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision, comes down to what that premium actually buys. In my judgment, very little.
The profile most often cited to justify it is the patient with real eye-trauma exposure: active-duty military, MMA fighters, and other combat and contact-sport athletes, for whom a flapless procedure carries a genuine structural advantage. That advantage is real, but SMILE Pro is not the only flapless option, and it is not the one I recommend. PRK creates no flap and no cap interface at all, and it costs less than SMILE Pro rather than more.
The other profile is the patient who simply prefers the idea of a procedure without a flap. That is a legitimate personal preference. It is worth knowing that EVO ICL™ removes no corneal tissue whatsoever, is reversible, and preserves your lens options later in life. It is $9,450 all-inclusive at Feinerman Vision.
When the Price Difference Is Not Worth It
For most refractive candidates in Orange County, the math does not favor paying a SMILE Pro premium:
- Patients who want the sharpest possible vision (WaveLight® Plus LASIK consistently outperforms SMILE Pro on visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and higher-order aberration correction in head-to-head data)
- Patients with moderate to high prescriptions, significant astigmatism, or preoperative higher-order aberrations
- Patients who want the simplest, most predictable enhancement pathway should they ever need a touch-up
- Patients with thin corneas, who are often told SMILE Pro is the answer when LASIK is ruled out. It is not. SMILE Pro and LASIK both remove corneal tissue, so a cornea too thin for LASIK is also too thin for SMILE Pro
For this larger group of patients, WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision delivers the better procedure at a lower price.
The broader point on candidacy: a patient who is not a LASIK candidate is generally not a SMILE Pro candidate either. When LASIK is off the table, the better options are EVO ICL or PRK, and which one fits depends on your corneal thickness, your prescription, and your tear film. That is a conversation for an examination.
The Bottom Line on SMILE Pro Cost in Orange County
SMILE Pro pricing in Orange County typically runs higher than WaveLight® Plus LASIK pricing at Feinerman Vision, despite SMILE Pro requiring only one laser instead of two and despite the head-to-head clinical data favoring WaveLight® Plus on visual outcomes.
For most patients, the question is not whether SMILE Pro is worth the premium over LASIK. It is whether SMILE Pro is worth the premium over a more advanced LASIK platform delivered by the first surgeon in the region to offer it, with lifetime enhancement coverage, comprehensive diagnostics, and personal surgeon-delivered care from consultation through follow-up.
For most refractive candidates, the answer is no. For the narrow set of patients for whom a flapless procedure genuinely matters, PRK and EVO ICL™ cover that ground without the SMILE Pro premium or its enhancement limitations. The right answer depends on your specific eyes, your lifestyle, and your visual goals.
The only way to know which procedure is right for you is a comprehensive consultation. At Feinerman Vision, consultations are always conducted personally by Dr. Feinerman, are free, and include a full candidacy assessment for the procedures performed here.
To schedule your free consultation, call (949) 631-4780 or visit FeinermanVision.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does WaveLight® Plus LASIK cost at Feinerman Vision?
WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision is $5,100 for both eyes, all-inclusive. The price covers comprehensive preoperative diagnostics, surgery on both eyes, all postoperative follow-up visits with Dr. Feinerman personally, and lifetime enhancement coverage.
How much does Wavefront-Optimized LASIK cost at Feinerman Vision?
Wavefront-Optimized LASIK at Feinerman Vision is $4,100 for both eyes, all-inclusive. This is our standard high-quality LASIK option, also with lifetime enhancement coverage.
How much does SMILE Pro cost in Orange County?
SMILE Pro pricing in Orange County and Los Angeles typically ranges from $5,000 to $8,000 for both eyes. The typical range across boutique and mid-tier practices is $6,000 to $7,000. Pricing varies based on the practice, the diagnostics included, and the enhancement coverage offered.
Does Feinerman Vision offer financing?
Yes. Feinerman Vision offers financing through CareCredit, which provides flexible payment plans including options with no interest if paid within a specified promotional period. CareCredit can be applied for online before your consultation.
Are LASIK and SMILE Pro eligible for FSA or HSA reimbursement?
Yes. Both procedures qualify for FSA (Flexible Spending Account) and HSA (Health Savings Account) reimbursement. Depending on your tax bracket, this typically reduces your effective out-of-pocket cost by 20 to 30 percent.
What is included in the LASIK price at Feinerman Vision?
The LASIK price at Feinerman Vision is all-inclusive: comprehensive preoperative diagnostic workup, surgery on both eyes, all postoperative follow-up visits, and lifetime enhancement coverage for as long as you remain under our care.
What is lifetime enhancement coverage?
Lifetime enhancement coverage means that if your eyes change over time and you need a touch-up procedure years or decades after your original LASIK, the enhancement is provided at no additional cost as long as you have remained under our care. This applies to both Wavefront-Optimized LASIK and WaveLight® Plus LASIK at Feinerman Vision.
Is the consultation free?
Yes. Consultations at Feinerman Vision are free and are conducted personally by Dr. Feinerman. The consultation includes a comprehensive eye exam, diagnostic imaging, candidacy assessment for the procedures performed here, and a personalized recommendation based on your individual measurements, lifestyle, and visual goals.
If I’m not a LASIK candidate, am I a SMILE Pro candidate?
Usually not. SMILE Pro and LASIK both remove corneal tissue. When LASIK is ruled out because the cornea is too thin, SMILE Pro is generally ruled out for the same reason. Two options are worth evaluating instead. EVO ICL removes no corneal tissue at all, which often makes it the better choice for thin corneas, higher prescriptions, and meaningful dry eye risk. PRK is a surface treatment that creates no flap. Which one fits depends on your corneal thickness and topography, your prescription, and your tear film, all of which are measured at your consultation.
Related Reading
- SMILE Pro vs. WaveLight® Plus LASIK: Which Is Right for You?
- WaveLight® Plus LASIK Cost in Orange County
- WaveLight® Plus LASIK Overview
- Is SMILE Pro Safer Than LASIK? What the Evidence Actually Shows
- SMILE Pro Recovery vs. LASIK Recovery: A Day-by-Day Comparison
- SMILE Pro Enhancement: Why Touch-Ups Are More Complicated Than LASIK