IBUPROFEN: what pharmacies pay, and what that tells you
IBUPROFEN costs a pharmacy a median of $0.0443 per unit. That is what the pharmacy pays to acquire it. It is not your price: a dispensing fee and margin sit between this number and your receipt.
The same name covers two different products here
IBUPROFEN appears in the federal pricing data as 3 distinct products, and they are not the same purchase. At least one is sold over the counter and at least one is prescription-strength, which is why their acquisition costs differ even though the name on the box does not. A single headline price for IBUPROFEN would be averaging two different transactions, so the table below keeps them apart and marks which is which.
Where it sits against every other priced drug
Acquisition cost percentile, 3,439 priced products
This is among the cheapest products in the corpus. At this level the pharmacy’s dispensing fee is usually the larger half of your bill.
The other forms of IBUPROFEN
CMS prices 3 distinct IBUPROFEN products. They are not interchangeable and their costs are not comparable to each other, which is exactly why a single headline price for a drug name is usually meaningless.
The Sold as column is usually the reason two rows differ: an over-the-counter product and a prescription-strength one carry the same drug name and are priced as different products entirely. Unit matters as much: a price per tablet and a price per millilitre are not the same measurement.
| Product | Unit | Class | Sold as | Per unit | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBUPROFEN (shown above) | EA | Generic | Rx | $0.0443 | 2,166 |
| IBUPROFEN | EA | Generic | OTC | $0.0323 | 966 |
| IBUPROFEN | ML | Generic | Rx | $0.0294 | 304 |
What the spread tells you about shopping around
Between the cheapest tenth of listings and the dearest tenth, IBUPROFEN varies by 1.4 times. That is a tight band. That is the ordinary case for something this cheap: there is little room between suppliers to differ over. Pharmacies are buying it at close to the same price, so a difference in what you are charged is a difference in fees and margin rather than in the drug.
Documented interactions
- Ibuprofen with Aspirin (Moderate). Taking ibuprofen with aspirin can reduce aspirin's cardioprotective effects. Ibuprofen competes with aspirin for the same binding site on the COX-1 enzyme in platelets, which can block...
- Ibuprofen with Acetaminophen (Mild). Ibuprofen and acetaminophen can generally be taken together safely and are sometimes recommended in combination for enhanced pain relief.
- Ibuprofen with Naproxen (Severe). Ibuprofen and naproxen are both NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and should not be taken together.
Interaction data is informational and not a substitute for your pharmacist, who can see your full list.
What this page is, and is not
Every figure here is CMS NADAC, the federal survey of what retail pharmacies pay to acquire a drug. It is public-domain federal data and it is the cleanest available floor. It excludes your dispensing fee, your pharmacy's margin, your insurance design and any discount-card pricing, all of which sit between this number and what you hand over. Nothing here is medical advice.
Source: CMS NADAC (National Average Drug Acquisition Cost), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, dataset generated 2026-07-22. See how IBUPROFEN compares across 385 brand and generic pairs, or look up another drug in our price tools.