When your vision needs a bit of a boost from corrective lenses, you have options. While that’s great for the freedom to choose what works best to improve your quality of life, it can also leave you in search of some guidance to make that choice. For starters, we’ll dive into the major benefits and drawbacks of your two non-surgical corrective options: glasses or contact lenses.

Cost differences

Expenses are something that most of us need to keep tabs on and build into our considerations when choosing one option over another. Is there a significant price difference between contact lenses and glasses? There’s actually no straightforward answer to this one, due to the complexity and customization across different parameters for both glasses and contacts. For the most part, you’ll select contact lenses by some combination of 3 parameters: color, size, and intended duration of wear. On the other hand, there’s greater variation in the cost of a pair of glasses, stemming from greater variability across more parameters--from different frame styles to lens coating options.

With that in mind, let’s consider the long-term case where your prescription strength does not change over several years timespan. It’s perfectly feasible to use only one pair of glasses for this length of time (barring them being lost or significantly damaged), while you’d be continuously purchasing and cycling through many pairs of contact lenses, depending on their expiration dates. For most people in this scenario, glasses are less expensive and more convenient than contact lenses. This is especially true if you factor in indirect costs, such as to treat dry eye--a common side effect of contact lens wear.