A government dental college is where BDS stops being an expensive degree. Our registry holds 44 government dental colleges that offer BDS, spread across 24 states, with 442 All India Quota seats between them — and their fees are the flattest set of numbers on this site.
This page puts the two things a BDS aspirant actually needs side by side: what each college charges, and the rank it closed at in the most recently published round. Private dental seats are priced commercially; the government list is why a dental seat can still be an affordable one.
1. The fee pattern: one number, almost everywhere
Of the 44 colleges, 42 carry the same annual fee: ₹25,000. Only two publish no fee figure at all in the sources we hold — Goverment Dental College & Hospital and Government Dental College Dibrugarh (the first is spelled exactly as the official college list prints it).
At ₹25,000 a year across the four academic years of the BDS course, the tuition-class cost of the degree lands near ₹1 lakh — before hostel, mess, one-time deposits and any state service bond. Read the figure as the tuition-class number we hold rather than a full cost of attendance, and confirm it on the fee notice of the college you are allotted to. The bulletins and fee documents we have verified are archived on the Downloads page.
Why the numbers are identical: a government dental college's fee is a state policy decision, not a per-college negotiation — so 42 institutions land on the same figure. That is also why the fee is a weak way to compare these colleges: the useful comparison is the rank each one closed at, which is what the table below adds.
2. Every government dental college, fee and closing rank
The table lists all 44 colleges with their annual fee, their All India Quota intake, and the closing rank recorded in 2026 Round 3 for the Open (unreserved) AIQ — the most recent published BDS round in our data. A "—" in the rank column means that college printed no closing rank for that slot in that round; a "—" in the seats column is the same, and neither reads as "no seats".
Fees and seat figures come from each college's registry record; closing ranks come from the MCC 2026 Round 3 allotment. The seat column is the Round 1 AIQ intake, because that is the capacity figure the seat matrix publishes.
3. What the closing ranks say
43 of the 44 colleges print a 2026 Round 3 Open AIQ closing rank — the only one that does not is Government Dental College and Hospital, Nalanda. Across the rest the spread is wide: 11,796 is the toughest government dental seat in the country, 47,011 the gentlest, and the median 38,050 — a median that stood at 36,387 in Round 2, when 28 of these 43 colleges closed at a weaker rank and four at a tighter one.
Two things follow. First, because the fee is identical almost everywhere, the rank is the only real differentiator between these colleges: a ₹25,000 BDS seat closing near 12,000 is a different proposition from one closing near 47,000. Second, a rank in the 30,000s and above is competing for what remains after the stronger candidates have chosen, which is why the same colleges reappear in later rounds at visibly weaker ranks: between Round 2 and Round 3 of 2026 alone, 32 of these 43 colleges moved, 28 of them to a higher number. The pattern is what the stray round guide measures.
Category matters as much as the college, and the table above shows the Open slot only. An OBC (BC) candidate faces a different closing rank at the same college, as does an SC or ST candidate — filter by category in the Cutoff Search to see the number that applies to you.
4. The fee is the easy part; the obligations are not
₹25,000 a year is the tuition-class figure. A BDS seat also carries a one-time caution deposit, hostel and mess charges that vary college by college, and in several states a service bond — an undertaking to serve in a rural or government facility for a fixed period, or pay a penalty to be released. Bonds are set per state, so they move independently of the fee: two dental colleges with the identical ₹25,000 fee can carry very different obligations.
The fees and bonds guide explains how bonds and penalties work and what to check before you accept a seat, and the bulletins and fee notices we have archived sit on the Downloads page. If you are weighing BDS against MBBS, the under-₹5-lakh MBBS list runs the same comparison for the other degree.
5. Government dental colleges: the questions we are asked most
How much does BDS cost in a government dental college?
₹25,000 a year at 42 of the 44 government dental colleges we track — the flattest fee set on this site. Across the four academic years of BDS that is roughly ₹1 lakh in tuition-class cost, before hostel, mess, one-time deposits and any state service bond. Only two colleges publish no fee figure at all in our sources.
How many government dental colleges offer BDS, and how many All India seats do they hold?
44 government dental colleges across 24 states, holding 442 All India Quota BDS seats between them. That AIQ pool is the part central counselling can allot you; each college also holds state-quota seats allotted by its own state authority.
What rank do you need for a government dental college?
For 2026 Round 3, the Open AIQ closing ranks across the 43 colleges that published one ran from 11,796 (toughest) to 47,011 (gentlest), with a median of 38,050. Category slots are separate and usually looser: an OBC (BC), SC or ST candidate faces a different closing rank at the same college.
Do government dental colleges have a service bond?
Many do, and the bond is set by the state, not by the college — so two dental colleges with the identical ₹25,000 fee can carry very different obligations. A bond is an undertaking to serve in a rural or government facility for a fixed period, or pay a penalty to be released. Check your state's bond terms before you accept a seat; the fees and bonds guide explains how they work.