Finasteride Cost Per Year

Where this number comes from, and what it is not

There is no authoritative public price for a prescription drug in the United States. What a pharmacy charges you depends on the pharmacy, your insurer, a discount card, a telehealth subscription and a rebate you will never see, and no two of those agree. So a page that states "finasteride costs $X a month" is either quoting one seller or making it up.

One number is published, on a schedule, with a methodology document. The National Average Drug Acquisition Cost is a monthly survey by CMS of the invoice prices retail community pharmacies actually pay, republished weekly for every National Drug Code. It is a floor, not a quote: it is what the pharmacy paid before any dispensing fee, markup, rebate or margin, and no reader can buy at it. Every figure on this page is that number and nothing else, taken from the file of 16 September 2026.

Finasteride is the simplest drug this site has costed. It is one film-coated tablet swallowed once a day, priced per tablet, so a year is 365 tablets and the arithmetic stops there. What is not simple is the spread. In that one file, generic finasteride 1 mg is $0.04260 a tablet across 9 separate NDCs, all at exactly the same rate — and PROPECIA, the same molecule at the same dose from the company that patented it, is $3.96500. That is 93.1×, or $1,431.68 more a year before anyone marks anything up.

There is a second gap, and it is the one this page will not help you exploit. A 5 mg finasteride tablet costs $0.06839 — 61% more than the 1 mg tablet for five times the drug, which is 1.368¢ a milligram against 4.260¢. Quartering a 5 mg tablet is the best-known cost hack in men's hair loss, and the table below prints "Not priced here" where that figure would go. The reason is on the label and is set out under the table.

Finasteride cost per year chart — every published rate

Acquisition cost at one tablet a day, from the CMS NADAC file of 16 September 2026. Read down to your product and across to the period you want. These are pharmacy invoice prices, not retail prices.

All 42 finasteride rows in that week's file are priced per EA with an effective date of 19 August 2026. The 9 generic 1 mg NDCs all carry $0.04260 and the 29 generic 5 mg NDCs all carry $0.06839 — there is no spread inside either group to report. Container totals appear only for the four brand NDCs, because those are the only ones whose label states how many tablets are in the bottle; NADAC does not.

Brand-name finasteride against the generic

The same molecule at the same dose in the same week, one tablet a day for a year. The generic column is the rate CMS prints in its own "Corresponding Generic Drug NADAC Per Unit" field on each brand row.

The two PROPECIA NDCs are 9.6% apart per tablet under one NDC Description, and NADAC alone cannot tell you why. The label can: section 16 supplies "NDC 78206-152-01 bottles of 30 (with desiccant) NDC 78206-152-02 PROPAK ® bottles of 90 (with desiccant)" — the same two NDCs in the label's 10-digit form. Note the counter-example directly beneath — PROSCAR's two NDCs are a bottle of 30 and a bottle of 100 and carry an identical rate, so a bigger package is not a rule, it is something to check.

Price per milligram — and the dose you cannot get at it

The 5 mg tablet is far cheaper per milligram than the 1 mg tablet. The last column is what that would be worth if a 1 mg dose could be taken from it, and for the 5 mg tablets that column is a refusal rather than a number.

Every finasteride label checked for this page — PROPECIA, PROSCAR and six generics from Teva, Aurobindo, Camber and Ascend — declares the FDA structured Score characteristic as 1, a tablet of one piece with no score line. None of them contains a sentence forbidding splitting, and this page does not claim one does. What they all contain is this, from PROPECIA section 5.1 and PROSCAR section 5.3 in identical words: "PROPECIA tablets are coated and will prevent contact with the active ingredient during normal handling, provided that the tablets have not been broken or crushed." The coating is not packaging. It is the labelled protection against a drug that can cause abnormal development of the external genitalia of a male fetus, and a broken tablet is the condition under which the label says that protection stops.

Frequently asked questions

How much does finasteride cost per year?

At the acquisition rate CMS published on 16 September 2026, a year of generic finasteride 1 mg — 365 tablets, the labelled dose for male pattern hair loss — cost a retail pharmacy $15.55, or $1.30 a month. Generic finasteride 5 mg cost $24.96 a year. PROPECIA cost $1,447.22 and PROSCAR $2,083.18. Those are invoice prices paid by pharmacies, not prices you can obtain: your pharmacy adds a dispensing fee and a margin, and your insurer, discount card or telehealth subscription then changes the figure again in either direction.

Why is PROPECIA so much more expensive than generic finasteride?

Because the patent expired and 9 generic NDCs now compete on the same molecule. In the 16 September 2026 NADAC file, PROPECIA is $3.96500 a tablet and generic finasteride 1 mg is $0.04260 — a multiple of 93.1×, or $1,431.68 extra a year at one tablet a day. It is the same 1 mg of the same drug. CMS itself prints the comparison: the PROPECIA rows carry a "Corresponding Generic Drug NADAC Per Unit" field, and its value is the generic rate exactly.

Can I split a 5 mg finasteride tablet to save money?

This page will not price it, and the honest reason is narrower than you may have read elsewhere. Unlike the CIALIS label, which opens its dosage section with "Do not split CIALIS tablets", no finasteride label checked here forbids splitting — the word does not appear in PROPECIA, PROSCAR or any generic label read. What every one of them does say is that "PROSCAR tablets are coated and will prevent contact with the active ingredient during normal handling, provided that the tablets have not been broken or crushed." Finasteride is contraindicated in pregnancy because it can cause abnormal development of a male fetus's external genitalia, and the coating is the label's own stated barrier against that exposure. All eight labels also declare an SPL score of 1 — one piece, no score line. FDA's guidance is that "If a tablet is FDA-approved to be split, this information will be printed in the “HOW SUPPLIED” section of the professional label insert and in the patient package insert. Also, the tablet will be scored with a mark indicating where to split it." Finasteride's does not. That is a conversation for your prescriber, not a cell in our table.

Is the 5 mg finasteride tablet cheaper per milligram than the 1 mg?

Yes, by a factor of 3.1. Generic finasteride 5 mg is $0.06839 a tablet, which is 1.368¢ per milligram; generic 1 mg is $0.04260, which is 4.260¢ per milligram. Five times the drug for 61% more money. That gap is real arithmetic and it is printed in the third table above, but it is the price of the milligrams inside a tablet rather than the price of a milligram you can take — and nothing on this page multiplies it by a dose.

Does a bigger bottle of finasteride cost less per tablet?

Sometimes, and the file shows both answers in the same week. PROPECIA's 90-tablet PROPAK (NDC 78206-152-02) is $3.58511 a tablet against $3.96500 for the 30-tablet bottle (NDC 78206-152-01) — 9.6% less, or $138.66 a year. PROSCAR's bottle of 30 and bottle of 100 carry exactly the same rate, $5.70733. NADAC prints one NDC Description for both members of each pair and does not state a package size, so the only way to know which NDC is which bottle is section 16 of the label.

Which finasteride strength is approved for hair loss?

The 1 mg tablet. PROPECIA's label states it "is indicated for the treatment of male pattern hair loss (androgenetic alopecia) in MEN ONLY" at "one tablet (1 mg) taken once daily". The 5 mg tablet is PROSCAR, indicated for symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia at one tablet once a day. They are the same molecule and different approvals, which is why the yearly costs on this page are labelled by indication: $15.55 a year is a year of the hair-loss dose, and $24.96 a year is a year of the prostate dose, not a cheaper way to buy the first.

What does NADAC actually measure, and why not use GoodRx?

NADAC is a monthly CMS survey of invoice prices retail community pharmacies pay their wholesalers, republished weekly for every NDC with a public methodology. It is the floor under the whole supply chain and it is the same figure whoever reads it. A discount-card price is a commercial offer that varies by pharmacy, by week and by card, and quoting one would be quoting a seller. Both are true numbers about different things; this page states the one that is published rather than the one that is marketed. The 16 September 2026 file carried 42 finasteride rows, and a description grep without the date filter returns 1,766 rows across 37 weekly snapshots — so any figure quoted from NADAC has to name its file, and this page does.

Sources

1. [1]CMS Medicaid — National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC) dataset landing page, carrying the methodology, the survey design and the Data Field Definitions for NADAC Per Unit, Pricing Unit, Classification for Rate Setting and the explanation codes
2. [2]CMS Medicaid — the NADAC weekly file of 16 September 2026, from which every rate on this page was transcribed. Grepping the NDC Description for finasteride, PROPECIA or PROSCAR returns 1,766 rows across 37 weekly snapshots; filtering to As of Date 09/16/2026 leaves 42 in four description groups — FINASTERIDE 1 MG TABLET at 0.04260 (9 NDCs), FINASTERIDE 5 MG TABLET at 0.06839 (29 NDCs), PROPECIA 1 MG TABLET at 3.96500 and 3.58511, PROSCAR 5 MG TABLET at 5.70733. All 42 are priced per EA with an Effective Date of 08/19/2026
3. [3]DailyMed — PROPECIA (finasteride) tablet, film coated, Organon LLC, NDA 020788. Section 1: "PROPECIA ® is indicated for the treatment of male pattern hair loss (androgenetic alopecia) in MEN ONLY ." Section 2: "The recommended dose of PROPECIA is one tablet (1 mg) taken once daily." Section 5.1, repeated in 8.1, 16 and 17: "PROPECIA tablets are coated and will prevent contact with the active ingredient during normal handling, provided that the tablets have not been broken or crushed." Section 16 supplies "NDC 78206-152-01 bottles of 30 (with desiccant) NDC 78206-152-02 PROPAK ® bottles of 90 (with desiccant)". Product Characteristics declare Score: 1
4. [4]DailyMed — PROSCAR (finasteride) tablet, film coated, Organon LLC, NDA 020180. Section 1: "PROSCAR, is a 5α-reductase inhibitor, indicated for the treatment of symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in men with an enlarged prostate". Section 2.1: "The recommended dose of PROSCAR is one tablet (5 mg) taken once a day". Section 5.3: "PROSCAR tablets are coated and will prevent contact with the active ingredient during normal handling, provided that the tablets have not been broken or crushed." Section 16 supplies "NDC 78206-153-01 unit of use bottles of 30 NDC 78206-153-02 unit of use bottles of 100". Product Characteristics declare Score: 1
5. [5]DailyMed — FINASTERIDE tablet, film coated, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, ANDA 076511, the 5 mg generic. Section 5.3: "Finasteride tablets are coated and will prevent contact with the active ingredient during normal handling, provided that the tablets have not been broken or crushed." The word "split" does not occur anywhere in the document. Product Characteristics declare Score: 1
6. [6]DailyMed — FINASTERIDE tablet, film coated, Aurobindo Pharma Limited, ANDA 203687, the 1 mg generic supplying NDC 65862-927. Section 1: "Finasteride tablets are indicated for the treatment of male pattern hair loss (androgenetic alopecia) in MEN ONLY ." Section 2: "The recommended dose of finasteride is one tablet (1 mg) taken once daily." Product Characteristics declare Score: 1
7. [7]FDA — Tablet Splitting. "If a tablet is FDA-approved to be split, this information will be printed in the “HOW SUPPLIED” section of the professional label insert and in the patient package insert. Also, the tablet will be scored with a mark indicating where to split it." and "If a tablet does not include such information in the label, FDA has not evaluated it to ensure that the two halves of a split tablet are the same in weight or drug content or work the same way in the body as the whole tablet."