Guide
How much does a private prescription cost in the UK?
Updated
There is no £9.90 flat rate on a private prescription. You pay what the medicine actually costs, plus the pharmacy's charge for dispensing it, which is why the same script can be cheap at one pharmacy and expensive at another.
How private prescription pricing works
The NHS charge in England (£9.90 per item in 2025/26) is a fixed levy that mostly bears no relation to the medicine's cost. A private prescription, written by a private GP, an online clinic, or occasionally an NHS clinician for medicines the NHS won't fund, is priced from the actual cost of the drug plus the pharmacy's dispensing charge and markup. Pharmacies set their own fees, so it always pays to ring two or three.
- Cheap generics (many antibiotics, older blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs) can cost less privately than the £9.90 NHS charge.
- Branded and newer medicines (e.g. ADHD medication, weight-loss injections) can run to tens or hundreds of pounds a month privately.
- The prescription itself may also carry a private prescribing fee from the clinic or GP, separate from the pharmacy's charge.
Private vs NHS: which is cheaper?
| Situation | Cheaper route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Low-cost generic, one-off course | Often private | Drug cost + fee can undercut the flat £9.90 charge, ask the pharmacist to price it |
| Regular NHS-prescribed medicines, 12+ items/year | NHS with a 12-month PPC | £114.50 caps the year however many items, see our PPC guide |
| You qualify for an exemption | NHS | Free, check the exemption list first |
| Medicine not funded on the NHS | Private is the only route | You pay full cost; compare pharmacy prices, they vary widely |
Three ways to keep a private prescription cheap
- Ask for the generic name on the prescription rather than a brand, where clinically appropriate, the price difference can be large.
- Phone pharmacies for a price before handing the script over, supermarket and online pharmacies are often cheapest, and quotes for the same item genuinely differ.
- Check whether the NHS would prescribe it. If your NHS GP will prescribe the same medicine, the £9.90 charge (or a PPC, or an exemption) usually wins for anything ongoing.
We deliberately don't publish per-drug private prices: they change frequently and vary by pharmacy, so any table would mislead. The reliable facts are the fixed NHS figures, £9.90 per item, £32.05 and £114.50 PPCs (2025/26), and those are the benchmark to compare any private quote against.