LASIK vs Glasses Long-Term Cost Calculator

LASIK (Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis) is a refractive eye surgery that permanently reshapes the cornea to correct myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. The upfront cost is significant, but it eliminates decades of ongoing vision correction expenses.

Average LASIK costs (United States, 2024):

What affects LASIK candidacy:

• Age: typically 18+ (prescription must be stable for 1–2 years)
• Minimum corneal thickness (screening required)
• No significant dry eye disease
• Prescription within treatable range (typically -12D to +6D)
• Not pregnant or nursing

Annual glasses/contacts cost (typical ranges):

The break-even calculation:

Break-Even Years = LASIK Total Cost ÷ Annual Vision Correction Savings

Example:

• LASIK: $4,500 total
• Current annual cost: $600 (contacts + glasses)
• Break-even: 4,500 ÷ 600 = 7.5 years

After 7.5 years, every further year is money you would otherwise have spent. For a 30-year-old that break-even lands at 37, comfortably before presbyopia arrives, which is why LASIK pays off best for people who get it young.

The thing most LASIK cost calculators leave out: presbyopia.

LASIK reshapes the cornea to fix distance vision. It does nothing about the lens inside your eye stiffening with age, which is what presbyopia is, and that happens to essentially everyone starting somewhere around 40 to 45. So the honest version of the arithmetic is that LASIK usually buys you clear distance vision until your mid-forties, and then you start buying reading glasses like everyone else.

This matters enormously for the break-even sum:

• Under 30 at surgery: roughly 15 years of buying nothing at all, then drugstore readers at perhaps $20 to $60 a year. The full savings figure is close to right.
• 35 to 40: perhaps 5 to 10 clear years. The savings are real but a good deal smaller than a naive “annual cost × years remaining” suggests.
• Over 45: you likely need reading correction already, and LASIK will not remove that. Monovision LASIK, where one eye is corrected for distance and the other for near, is the usual offer here, and not everyone tolerates it.

The calculator below asks for your age and stops counting full savings at 45 for exactly this reason. It assumes a modest ongoing reading-glasses cost after that rather than zero.

LASIK success rates:

• 96% of patients achieve 20/20 vision or better
• 99%+ achieve 20/40 or better (legal driving standard in most US states)
• Enhancement procedures may be needed for 5 to 10% of patients, and not every clinic includes them in the quoted price. Ask before you compare quotes.

Risks and side effects:

• Temporary dry eyes (1 to 3 months)
• Night glare or halos, usually fading within 3 to 6 months
• Under or over correction, usually fixable with an enhancement
• Very rare: permanent vision problems, under 1%

One more thing the sums cannot capture. People who get LASIK almost universally say the value was not the money, it was waking up able to see. That is a real benefit and it is worth something, but it is not a number, so do not expect a break-even year to make the decision for you.