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How to Pay Less For Prescription Drugs Without Insurance

Prescription drugs with insurance can be really expensive. Prescription drugs without insurance are often considerably more expensive. If you use prescription drugs and you don’t have insurance, odds are you are spending way more than you actually need to. There are several different ways to get your prescription drugs for much cheaper. Some of them will even allow you to get them for free. Allow us to try to save you some money.

Get Insurance

This one might be cheating a little, but it really is the best option. Of course, this depends on the kind of insurance you get. I get it, spending hundreds of dollars a month for something you rarely (if ever) use does sound insane. But, if something unforeseen does happen, the inflated medical costs won’t fall solely on your shoulders.

Moreover, if you qualify for Medicaid, you could get full medical coverage (including free prescriptions) at no cost to you. It’s definitely something to look into.


If you are deadest against insurance, the name of the game becomes mitigating costs. One of the more popular ways of doing so is going generic.

Like with most things, when you buy name brand prescriptions, you’re paying for that name as much as you’re paying for the actual drug. When you buy generic, you don’t have to worry about that.

Generics sometimes get a bad name because less expensive is often interpreted as cheaper and cheaper is often interpreted as worse.

In actuality, name brand drugs and generic drugs usually have the same active ingredients (the reason you’re buying it). The differences are cosmetic or inconsequential for patent reasons.

Get Help

The big bad pharmaceutical companies probably don’t like being considered the big bad pharmaceutical companies. Perhaps that’s why many of them offer assistance programs specifically designed for uninsured and low-income customers. You can go to the Partnership for Prescription Assistance and see if you qualify. If you do, you could get some of your prescriptions for free.

Third Parties Apps

There are now apps that work with pharmacies to offer discounted prices on prescriptions. You buy the prescription through the app, take the receipt to a participating pharmacy and pick up your prescription. Not only can you get drugs for a reduced price, but most of these apps have bonuses for bringing on new customers. Those cash bonuses are put towards the cost of your own prescriptions. If you can get other people to use the app, you can get your prescriptions for “free.”

Shop Around

This one may seem like common sense, but prices aren’t going to be the same everywhere you go. Your best bet is to check prices at multiple different pharmacies and see which one is the cheapest. After you do that, see if you can apply anything else from the list to bring down the costs even further.

Unfortunately, there are some prescriptions that are so specialized that there really isn’t anything you can do to bring down the costs. It’s important to know that that is a possibility. Also, these methods will have different degrees of viability depending on whether your medication is a one-time thing or something you’ll be taking indefinitely.