Which pharmacy is actually cheapest?
We price 3,343 medicines against a dozen American cash sources and against what pharmacies paid for the same product. This page counts who actually wins. Every figure on it is computed when you load it, from the same data the drug pages use.
There is no single answer, and the two halves of the real one point in different directions.
When two shops carry the same drug
1,588 of the medicines we price are carried by more than one cash source, so there is a real contest. Here is who holds the cheapest out-the-door price, fees included.
- 72.5%Cost Plus Drugs1,152
- 16.4%HealthWarehouse260
- 9.3%Walmart Prescription Program147
- and 29 more across 7 supermarket and high-street counters, none of them above one percent.
Cost Plus Drugs wins 72.5% of them — and it does not shift much with the price of the drug. Under thirty dollars, between thirty and a hundred, or over a hundred, it stays around seven in ten.
When only one shop carries it at all
The other 1,672 have a single cash source, so being cheapest means being the only one. This is a measure of range, not of price.
- 60.9%HealthWarehouse1,019
- 33.1%Cost Plus Drugs553
- 1.2%Walmart Prescription Program20
- and 80 more across 11 supermarket and high-street counters, none of them above one percent.
So the useful sentence is not “X is cheapest”. It is that Cost Plus Drugs is usually cheaper and HealthWarehouse usually has it — which is why the answer for your medicine is on your medicine’s page, not here.
And all of them cost more than the pharmacy paid
Against the federal NADAC survey of what pharmacies actually paid their wholesaler. The multiple below is the cheapest price we can find, not a typical one — so it is the floor of what a cash payer faces, not the ceiling.
1.44×
Tablets, capsules and devices
Median across 2,079 medicines. A quarter of them are above 3×.
2.86×
Liquids
Median across 418 medicines. A quarter of them are above 8.32×.
2.18×
Creams, gels and ointments
Median across 254 medicines. A quarter of them are above 3.92×.
What that looks like on a real prescription
The widest gaps we hold, one per medicine. Open any of them — the number on this page and the number on that page come from the same place.
- methocarbamol 750 MG Oral Tabletpharmacy paid $1.27$11.219×
- glipizide 5 MG Oral Tabletpharmacy paid $1.05$9.009×
- ciclopirox 7.7 MG/ML Topical Creampharmacy paid $1.57$13.459×
- ammonium lactate 120 MG/ML Topical Creampharmacy paid $1.80$15.569×
- arformoterol 0.0075 MG/ML Inhalation Solutionpharmacy paid $1.23$10.799×
- montelukast 10 MG Oral Tabletpharmacy paid $1.25$10.719×
How this was counted, and who is missing
Cheapest means out the door. Dispensing and shipping are included, because a price that arrives with a fee attached is not the price. Comparisons are per tablet, millilitre or gram, so a thirty-day pack and a ninety-day pack are the same question.
GoodRx and SingleCare are not in these counts. Their terms do not permit us to display or aggregate their prices, so we have never stored one. This compares the sources we can quote: mail-order pharmacies, retail cash programmes, supermarket counters, manufacturers selling direct, and our own free discount card.
A discount card can beat all of it. Card prices are local — they depend on the counter and the ZIP — so they cannot be counted nationally the way these can. Every drug page prices them for where you are.