If you have medications in your life that cost you an arm and a leg, prescription drug apps can help you comparison shop among nearby pharmacies for the best price.
But which app is best when it comes to saving the most money? I put five of the most popular apps to the test — and there was definitely a clear winner!
Here’s What You Need to Know About Saving Money on Prescriptions
To arrive at my results, I got started by going to the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health to determine the most popularly prescribed drugs in the country.
From there, I price shopped some the top drugs on the following apps — which I’ve alphabetized below — and compared the prices:
GoodRx is perhaps the most well known of all the prescription drug apps. It’s accepted at 70,000 pharmacies nationwide — by far the largest network of participating pharmacies.
However, SingleCare has been gaining in popularity recently thanks to a lot of TV ads. With 35,000 participating pharmacies, its network is only half the size of GoodRx.
Unlike its two main competitors, RxSaver by RetailMeNot doesn’t give specifics about how large its pharmacy network is. It simply says it’s accepted at “thousands of pharmacies nationwide,” including CVS, Costco, Kroger, Walgreens and Walmart, among others.
Meanwhile, WellRx isn’t necessarily well known, but it has a large network of more than 65,000 participating pharmacies.
Finally, Blink Health also advertises a network of 35,000 participating pharmacies nationwide.
However, Blink Health does pricing a bit differently than its competitors. They have a Home Delivery Price, an Everyday Low Price and a Blink Smart Deal Price. For the purposes of this comparison, I used the Everyday Low Price because that’s the price available at any of their participating pharmacies.
Here’s what I found when I put these five competitors head-to-head. I’ve highlighted the winner for each drug and whether it was an outright win or a tie among more than one prescription drug app:
| Drug name, dose and count | GoodRx | SingleCare | RxSaver | Blink Health | WellRx |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lisinopril, 20 mg, 90 count | $10.84 | $9.81 | $9.31 | $8.48 | $8.40 |
| Levothyroxine, 50 mcg, 90 count | $10.00 | $10.00 | $10.00 | $45.81 | $10.00 |
| Metformin, 500 mg, 60 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | $3.50 | $4.00 | $4.00 |
| Amlodipine Besylate, 5 mg, 30 count | $7.20 | $9.00 | $3.30 | $3.92 | $4.80 |
| Metoprolol, 50 mg, 30 count | $2.96 | $27.06 | $6.52 | $8.90 | $9.00 |
| Hydrochlorothiazide, 25 mg, 30 count | $3.09 | $3.00 | $0.48 | $3.94 | $3.11 |
| Losartan, 100 mg, 30 count | $7.50 | $9.00 | $5.47 | $8.96 | $9.00 |
| Gabapentin, 300 mg, 90 count | $9.98 | $12.50 | $7.78 | $11.40 | $9.30 |
| Sertraline, 50 mg, 30 count | $7.49 | $7.21 | $4.85 | $7.15 | $5.70 |
| Furosemid, 20 mg, 30 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | $3.60 | $3.97 | $4.00 |
| Atenolol, 50 mg, 30 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | $3.67 | $3.90 | $4.00 |
| Amoxicillin, 500 mg, 30 count | $7.57 | $5.52 | $7.64 | $8.93 | $6.30 |
| Fluoxetine, 20 mg, 30 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | $3.48 | $3.90 | $4.00 |
| Citalopram, 20 mg, 30 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | N/A | $3.92 | $4.00 |
| Trazodone, 50 mg, 30 count | $4.00 | $4.00 | $4.00 | $3.90 | $4.00 |
Analysis of the Results
As you can see, RxSaver offered the cheapest price or tied for the cheapest price in 10 out of 15 instances.
An honorary mention goes to GoodRx, but you might not realize it just by looking at our chart. That’s because they alone identified free drug offers at nearby pharmacies.
For example, I discovered in the course of my research that regional grocery chain Publix offered free Lisinopril, Metformin and Amlodipine Besylate.
GoodRx was the only one that reflected the freebie offer in its price results, which I’ve highlight below in green:
Ultimately, I chose to display the next cheapest price — $4 in this case — in my table. Because that’s the price most widely available on GoodRx to everybody who doesn’t live near a Publix.
Want to be able to find free drug offers on GoodRx, too? Be sure you only enter the drug name; don’t specify a particular dose or count like I did for this article.
That way, their system will automatically default to the free option if there is one available.
Final Thought
There are a lot of prescription drug apps out there and I’ve only spotlighted five of them. If you only want to download one or two to try, I’d recommend RxSaver and GoodRx for the reasons noted above.
However, if there’s one particular medication that’s really eating up your budget each time you fill it, you can always check the price of that drug on each of the apps’ website before making the decision to download.
Meanwhile, if you want the absolute best price each time you get a prescription, remember to re-check prices when you refill the medication every 30 or 90 days. If you check every time you refill, you could find a better price at another pharmacy.
Finally, be sure to check out our article on 10 Ways to Save on Prescription Drugs.
More Prescription Savings Stories on Clark.com:
The post The Best Prescription Savings Apps to Save Money appeared first on Clark Howard.
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