Botox by Facial Area: Every Treatment Zone Explained
Reviewed for medical accuracy against our Medical Review Board · Last updated 22 August 2026
Part of Botox Guides: Basics, Dosing and Safety
Botox is not one treatment, it is about eight, and the dose ranges thirty-fold between the smallest and the largest. Four of those areas are on the FDA label and the rest are off-label. Just as importantly, several of the things people most want fixed are not muscle problems at all, so no dose of any neurotoxin will touch them.
This page is the map: what each area actually achieves, which ones are forgiving and which are not, what to treat first, and the list of things Botox genuinely cannot do. For how many units each area takes, the units guide and calculator goes deeper than this page will.
1. Every area, and what it actually does
Ignore the units for a moment. The useful question about an area is what treating it changes about your face.
| Area | What treating it actually does | FDA status |
|---|---|---|
| Frown lines (glabella) | Softens the vertical lines between the brows that read as stern or angry. The most treated area in the world | Approved |
| Forehead lines | Smooths the horizontal creases. Also lowers the brow, which is why it is treated with the glabella rather than alone | Approved |
| Crow's feet | Softens the fan of lines at the outer eye when you smile. Does not change the eye itself | Approved |
| Platysmal bands (neck) | Relaxes the vertical cords that stand out when you tense. Does nothing for horizontal neck creases | Approved since October 2024 |
| Brow lift | Raises the outer brow a millimetre or two by relaxing what pulls it down. Opens the eye slightly | Off-label |
| Lip flip | Rolls the upper lip edge outward so more pink shows. Adds no volume whatsoever | Off-label |
| Masseter (jaw) | Slims the lower face over months by shrinking a chewing muscle. Also reduces clenching | Off-label |
| Under the eyes | Softens fine crinkling in a very small dose. The area where most injectors say no | Off-label |
Notice how different those outcomes are. Four of them soften lines, one changes brow position, one changes lip shape, one changes face shape over months. Treating "Botox" as a single decision is the first mistake.
2. What Botox cannot fix, and what does
This is the section that saves people money, and it is the one almost no clinic page leads with.
Botox relaxes muscle. If your concern is not caused by a muscle contracting, it will not respond, regardless of dose or injector.
| What people ask for | Why Botox does not do it | What does |
|---|---|---|
| Nasolabial folds (smile lines) | Mostly volume loss and gravity, not muscle. Injecting the muscles here can weaken your smile | Filler, usually |
| Lines etched in at rest | The crease is in the skin itself, not held by contraction | Resurfacing, microneedling, filler |
| Under-eye hollows and tear troughs | Lost volume beneath the skin | Filler, or fat repositioning |
| Skin texture, pores, redness | Nothing to do with muscle | Resurfacing, lasers, skincare |
| Jowls and sagging skin | Skin laxity and descent, a mechanical problem | Energy devices, or surgery |
| Thin lips | Volume. A lip flip changes shape, not size | Filler |
| Hooded eyelids from excess skin | The skin is the problem, and no injectable removes skin | Blepharoplasty |
Our Botox against fillers guide covers the volume question across the whole face, the microneedling comparison covers texture, and the facelift comparison covers laxity. If a clinic offers Botox for anything in the left column, ask them to explain the mechanism.
3. The test that predicts whether it will work on you
There is a fifteen-second version of this whole page, and you can do it in a mirror.
- Look at the line that bothers you with your face completely relaxed.
- Now make the expression that creates it: frown, raise your brows, smile hard.
If the line only appears when you move, it is a dynamic line held by muscle. That is exactly what Botox treats, and you are a good candidate.
If the line is clearly there when you are relaxed, it is a static line etched into the skin. Botox will soften how deep it gets when you move, but it will not remove what is already there. Expecting otherwise is the most common disappointment in aesthetics.
Most people are somewhere in between, and that is fine: relaxing the muscle stops a dynamic line becoming a static one, which is the real argument for treating earlier rather than later. It is also why the registration trials for these products enrolled people with lines at maximum frown and excluded people whose lines could not be lessened even by physically stretching the skin apart.
4. Upper face and lower face are different risks
Every clinic price list presents areas as interchangeable line items. They are not, and the distinction is about what happens if the dose or the placement is wrong.
The upper face is forgiving. Frown lines, forehead, crow's feet, brow. The muscles here move skin. If something goes wrong you get a cosmetic problem: an uneven brow, a heavy forehead, or a drooping eyelid, which happens in about 3% of glabellar treatments. All of it wears off, and the drooping-eyelid version has drops that help within about half an hour.
The lower face and neck are not. The muscles here do jobs. The platysma sits over the muscles you swallow with, so neck treatment carries a genuine risk of difficulty swallowing if it goes too deep. The lip flip weakens the seal you use for straws, whistling and the letters P and B. The muscles around the mouth control your smile.
So the practical rule when choosing an injector: for the upper face, competence is enough. For the neck, the mouth and the jaw, ask specifically how many of that area they have done.
5. What to treat first
If it is your first time, treat your frown lines. Four reasons, in order:
- It is the best-evidenced area anywhere. Approved since 2002, with more trial data behind it than any other cosmetic use.
- It is where the effect is most obvious to you. The glabellar complex is strong, and relaxing it changes how your resting face reads more than any other single area.
- It is forgiving. Upper face, wears off, nothing functional at stake.
- It teaches you how you respond. Everyone metabolises this differently, and learning your own onset and duration on the safest area is worth more than a package deal.
What not to do first: the neck, the masseter, or anything around the mouth. The masseter in particular takes weeks to show and months to fully develop, which makes it a poor first experiment.
6. The areas that have to be treated together
One combination is not optional, and it comes from the label rather than from us.
Botox Cosmetic's prescribing information instructs that forehead lines be treated in conjunction with glabellar lines, and says why: to minimise the potential for brow ptosis. The approved regimen is 20 units into the forehead together with 20 units into the glabellar complex.
The reason is a tug-of-war. One muscle raises your brow and several pull it down. Smooth the forehead alone and you have switched off the only lifter while leaving every depressor at full strength, so the brow falls. That is the mechanism behind both the brow lift and the heavy brow, read in opposite directions.
So if you ask for "just a little in the forehead" and your injector explains why they would rather add the glabella, they are working from the label. That is a good sign, not an upsell.
7. Approved against off-label, and why it matters
Botox Cosmetic holds four approved cosmetic indications: frown lines, crow's feet, forehead lines, and platysma bands in the neck, which joined the label in the revision dated October 2024. Everything else on this page is off-label.
Off-label prescribing is legal, extremely common, and often the right clinical choice. What it changes for you is what exists behind the number you are quoted:
- On-label areas have a labelled dose, an injection map from registration trials, and published adverse event rates.
- Off-label areas have clinical convention. The doses everyone quotes for the masseter or the lip flip come from practice, not from a document a regulator reviewed.
That is not a reason to avoid off-label areas. It is a reason to weight the individual injector far more heavily there, because on those areas their judgement is the protocol.
8. The thirty-fold dose range
The single fact that reframes "Botox" from one treatment into eight: a lip flip is 2 to 6 units and a masseter treatment is 40 to 60 units for the pair. That is roughly thirty times the drug for the same word on a price list.
Which means a per-unit rate tells you almost nothing about what you will pay, and two people saying "I get Botox" may be having wildly different treatments at wildly different prices. Across the sixteen cities where we verify published pricing, rates run $9 to $18 per unit, so the dose matters far more than shopping for a rate. Full per-area ranges are in the units guide, and the price guide covers what moves the total.
Duration varies by area too, and not in the direction people expect. The lip flip fades in six to twelve weeks because a tiny dose sits in a muscle you use constantly. The masseter can last around six months because the dose is large and the muscle is not doing fine work. Same drug, same person.
9. What to ask at the consultation
- Is the line that bothers me dynamic or static? Ask them to show you in the mirror.
- Which areas are you proposing, and which of them are off-label?
- If you are treating my forehead, how are you protecting my brow position?
- How many units per area, and what is the total in dollars?
- For the neck, the mouth or the jaw: how many of these specifically have you done?
- What will this not fix? A good injector will tell you plainly.
- When do we assess, and what happens if it is uneven? The answer should be two weeks.
And the one worth holding onto from this page: if what bothers you is volume, texture or loose skin, this is the wrong treatment, and an injector who says so is worth going back to.
Frequently asked questions
What areas can Botox treat?
What can Botox not fix?
How do I know if Botox will work on my lines?
Which Botox area should I do first?
Why does my injector want to treat my forehead and frown lines together?
Are some Botox areas riskier than others?
Can Botox lift anything?
Does Botox cost the same for every area?
Do all Botox areas last the same time?
Is it better to treat one area or several at once?
Know the count before the quote. The unit count is half the bill, and a low per-unit rate recovered by a high unit count is the commonest way a deal is not one. How to tell.
