How much does it cost to deal with the top of my tree is dying?

Two distinct line items live under this symptom and they routinely get conflated. Deadwood removal prices on crown size and access — it is climbing time with small cuts, cheap relative to a removal, and it makes the yard safer without making the tree healthier. Diagnosis and soil work is the other bucket: a root-collar excavation to look for girdling roots or a buried trunk flare, decompaction, and mulch. If the answer turns out to be a confirmed ash with borer damage, the economics invert — waiting has a real price, because standing dead ash becomes too brittle to climb safely and the removal jumps to crane pricing.