Here's a conversation we have almost every week: someone arrives asking for Botox, and what they're describing is a job for filler. Or the other way round. The two get used interchangeably in everyday conversation, but they do completely different things — and knowing which is which will save you time, money and guesswork.
The short version
Anti-wrinkle injections (Botox®) relax muscles. Every time you frown, squint or raise your eyebrows, small facial muscles fold your skin. Do that a few hundred thousand times and the fold becomes a line. Anti-wrinkle injections relax those muscles, so the skin stops being creased — and the lines soften.
Dermal fillers replace volume. As skin ages it loses hyaluronic acid, collagen and fat — the things that keep cheeks full and lines shallow. Fillers put that volume back. They don't touch your muscles at all.
So the question isn't "which is better?" It's "what is my face actually doing?"
A simple test you can do in the mirror
Look at the line that bothers you, with your face completely relaxed.
If the line mostly appears when you move — when you frown, smile or raise your brows — it's an expression line. That's muscle work, and anti-wrinkle injections are the treatment built for it. Forehead lines, frown lines and crow's feet are the classic three.
If the line or hollow is there even when your face is still — deeper nose-to-mouth folds, thinning lips, flattening cheeks, hollows under the eyes — that's lost volume. That's filler territory.
Plenty of faces have both. That's normal, and it's why the two treatments are so often used together: one calms the movement, the other restores the structure.
Why the difference matters
If you treat a volume problem with a muscle relaxant, nothing much happens — the hollow was never caused by movement. If you fill an expression line without relaxing the muscle that causes it, the muscle keeps creasing the skin above the filler. The right treatment in the right place is the whole game, which is why the consultation matters more than the product.
At your consultation, we look at how your face moves, where it has lost volume, and what you want to change — then tell you plainly which treatment fits, or whether a combination like the 8-point facelift would do the job better than either alone.
What they have in common
Both are quick — around fifteen minutes for anti-wrinkle injections, around thirty for dermal fillers. Both need very little downtime. And both depend far more on who is doing the injecting than on what's in the syringe. That's the part we'd encourage you to be fussy about anywhere you go: ask who is treating you and what their qualifications are. At Broadway Retreat every injectable is delivered by experienced medical professionals, in a CQC-registered clinic — and the consultation always comes first.
Still not sure which you need?
That's genuinely fine — it's our job to know, not yours. Arrange your consultation and we'll look together.