Why clinic websites stopped showing prices, product names and before-and-afters, and what to do instead.
You've probably noticed it. You go looking for information about a cosmetic treatment. What it costs, what it's called, what it looks like afterwards. And the websites that used to tell you have gone quiet. Prices have disappeared. Product names now sit behind vaguer descriptions. The before-and-after galleries are gone.
It's frustrating, and we understand why it reads as evasive. It isn't. The rules changed, and this is what compliance with them looks like from the outside. Here's the honest explanation of what happened and, more usefully, how to get the information you're actually after.
On 2 September 2025, Ahpra's new advertising guidelines came into effect for registered health practitioners who offer higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures. They sit alongside older rules from the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which govern how medicines can be advertised to the public.
Between them, those two frameworks cover most of what vanished from clinic websites. The stated intent behind the changes is patient safety. In practice that means three things. Keeping these procedures from being trivialised. Protecting younger people from being marketed to. And making sure nobody is deciding based on advertising that oversells what a treatment can do.
We think that's the right instinct. We'd rather explain the rules than quietly work around them.
This is the one that confuses people most, because the names are common knowledge. You know them. Your friends use them conversationally. And yet no clinic website will print them.
The reason is that these products are prescription-only medicines, and in Australia prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public at all. That rule isn't specific to cosmetic medicine. It applies to every prescription medicine, from blood pressure tablets to antibiotics. The logic is simple. Decisions about prescription medicines belong in a consultation with a practitioner who has assessed you, rather than in marketing.
So a clinic can tell you it offers a cosmetic medicine treatment. It cannot advertise the drug. That's why you'll see generic descriptions like "anti-wrinkle injections" where a brand name used to be: not coyness, just the only lawful way to describe it publicly.
Prices for these treatments largely disappeared for the same reason. A price attached to a prescription medicine identifies that medicine, so publishing it counts as advertising too.
There's a second reason we're comfortable with, separate from the rules. Pricing a prescription treatment as a line item invites you to compare it like a retail product, and that's precisely the wrong frame. What's appropriate for your face (or whether anything is appropriate for your face) isn't something that can be worked out from a price list. We'd rather have that conversation with you than have you make a decision based on a number.
We do publish prices for treatments where it's straightforward and useful to do so. Our skin and wellness treatments are priced openly, because they're not prescription-based.
This one is more nuanced than most people assume, and it's worth being precise. The Ahpra advertising guidelines did not ban before-and-after images outright for non-surgical procedures. What changed is the standard they have to meet.
To use them now, a clinic needs images that are real and unedited: no filters, no smoothing, no retouching, no AI enhancement. Whoever takes them has to work under genuinely consistent conditions: the same lighting, angle, distance and expression, so the comparison stays honest rather than flattering. The patient has to give proper informed consent. They also have to represent typical outcomes rather than cherry-picked best cases. The before image, or a combined view, has to be the most prominent one. Alongside it, the after image has to say how long after treatment it was taken. And any advertisement using them has to carry a clear warning that results will vary from person to person.
Meeting that standard honestly is difficult, considerably more difficult than the industry's habits had been. A great many of the images that used to circulate would not survive it. Different lighting. A different angle. Better makeup, a filter, or simply choosing the one client in fifty who responded exceptionally well. All of it produces a compelling image, and a misleading one.
The same guidelines also tightened the ban on testimonials from social media influencers, and they stop clinics advertising these procedures to anyone under 18.
We've made our position on outcome imagery clear elsewhere on this blog, and it hasn't changed: we don't think a single photograph is an honest summary of a treatment, and we're not willing to market that way even where we could.
Here's the part that matters. The information hasn't disappeared. It's moved into the consultation, which is where the rules intend it to sit and, frankly, where it belongs.
In a consultation you get something a website was never able to give you. We assess your face, your skin and your history. Then we talk through what is and isn't appropriate for you specifically, the actual risks, the realistic outcome and the recovery. Finally you get the cost for your plan, rather than a generic starting price. You can ask anything. Nobody is selling to you from a page.
So if you've been researching and hitting walls, that's not a sign a clinic is hiding something. It's the system working as intended, and the next step it's designed to push you toward is a conversation.
Regulation of advertising is not regulation of care. Choosing a practitioner still matters enormously. So ask directly about qualifications and experience. Ask who will actually perform your treatment, and what happens if something goes wrong. A clinic that's happy to answer those questions is telling you something useful.
An appointment where a practitioner assesses your face, skin and history in person, then talks through what is and is not appropriate for you, the risks, the realistic outcome, the recovery and the cost. At Plump the initial consultation is complimentary and runs 20 minutes.
Because a price attached to a prescription medicine identifies that medicine, and prescription medicines cannot be advertised to the public in Australia. Treatments that are not prescription based, such as our skin and wellness services, are priced openly on this site.
They were not banned outright. The standard they have to meet became much harder: real and unedited images, identical lighting and angle, informed consent, typical rather than best case results, timing stated, and a clear warning that results vary. Most images that used to circulate would not pass.
No. The same rules apply to every registered clinic in Australia, so a website still publishing that information is more likely to be breaching them than being generous. If a page will not tell you something, that is the regulation working rather than evasion.
Ask about qualifications and experience, who will actually perform your treatment, what the risks are, what happens if something goes wrong, and the total cost for your plan. Advertising is regulated. The quality of care is a separate question, and worth asking about directly.
If you've got questions you couldn't get answered online, bring them in. Book a complimentary consultation and we'll talk through your options properly: what's appropriate, what isn't, what it involves and what it costs, with no pressure and no rush.
Book online, or call or text us on 0478 844 048.
