What is the cheapest way to get finasteride?

Amazon RxPass at $5 a month flat is the lowest we track, but it requires a Prime membership and is unavailable in California and Washington. Cost Plus Drugs is $11.08 delivered with no membership. Both need a prescription you already have. Telehealth subscriptions run $14 to $25 a month and include the prescriber.

How much does the finasteride in a subscription actually cost?

Cost Plus Drugs publishes an itemised breakdown: 72 cents of manufacturing plus 11 cents of markup, so about 83 cents a month of drug, before pharmacy labour. A $25 subscription is roughly 30 times that. The difference pays for the prescriber, the pharmacy work and the convenience, not for the medicine.

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The $5 finasteride

One pharmacy publishes its own cost breakdown for this drug, line by line. That single act of transparency makes the rest of the market legible — and the answer is more interesting than "subscriptions are a ripoff."

Listed prices researched 2026-09-06 · how we verify · every hair-loss channel priced

The itemised number. Cost Plus Drugs breaks its finasteride price into $0.72 of manufacturing and $0.11 of markup — about $0.83 a month of actual drug — then adds $5.00 of pharmacy labour and $5.25 of shipping to reach $11.08 delivered. Almost no pharmacy in America shows you this, which is the only reason the comparison below is possible.

What each channel charges for the same generic

Channel	Price	The catch	Prescription
Amazon RxPass	$5/mo flat (covers 50+ generics)	requires Prime; not available CA/WA; not with Medicaid/CHIP; no HSA/FSA	you supply it
Cost Plus Drugs	$5.83 + $5.25 shipping = $11.08 delivered	itemized: $0.72 mfg + $0.11 markup + $5.00 labor; bring your own prescription	you supply it
Retail + GoodRx coupon	as low as ~$9.75 (avg retail $51.94)	zip- and pharmacy-dependent; prescription required	you supply it
Amazon Pharmacy	$11.60 without insurance	Prime pricing; listed retail $65.10	included
Happy Head	$19 / $16 / $14 by 1 / 3 / 6-month subscription	true monthly billing; consult included	included
Ro	$20 / $18 / $16 by 3 / 6 / 12-month plan	QUARTERLY shipments only (their own page); $16 headline needs the 12-month plan	included
Keeps	~$20–25 (sources spread $16–25)	billed & shipped quarterly + $5/shipment; $5 annual consult after year 1; prices quiz-gated	included
Hims	"starting at $22/mo"	reported billed $75/quarter (= $25/mo); the $22 rate reportedly bills $132 per 6 months	included

The multiples, and what they are multiples of

Subscription	Monthly	× the drug itself	× Cost Plus delivered	Year one
Hims reported billed $75/quarter	$25.00	30×	2.3×	$300
Keeps sources spread $16–25; quarterly + $5/shipment	$22.50	27×	2.0×	$270
Ro 3-month plan; quarterly shipments only	$20.00	24×	1.8×	$240
Happy Head 1-month plan; true monthly billing	$19.00	23×	1.7×	$228

The two columns tell different stories, and only one of them is an indictment. Against the raw drug, the multiples look outrageous — 20 to 30 times. Against Cost Plus delivered, they are 1.7 to 2.3 times, because Cost Plus's own price is mostly labour and shipping too. The honest reading is that the medicine is nearly free and everything else in the chain is not.

So what does the extra actually buy?

The prescriber. The two cheapest options — Amazon RxPass and Cost Plus — both require you to already have a prescription. Subscriptions include the consult. If you do not have a prescriber, that is a real service and not nothing.
Not having to reorder. Which is worth something, and is also the mechanism by which you stop noticing the charge.
A formulation you cannot get generically, for the topical combinations — that part is genuinely different, and priced separately in our combination table.
For plain oral finasteride 1 mg, nothing else. It is the same FDA-approved generic molecule at every row above.

The $5 plan's real price

Amazon RxPass is $5 a month flat and covers 50+ generics, which makes it the cheapest row we track. It is also the row with the most conditions attached: requires Prime; not available CA/WA; not with Medicaid/CHIP; no HSA/FSA

That matters to the arithmetic. If you already pay for Prime, a year of finasteride is $60. If you would be buying Prime for this, it is $199 — still less than every subscription here, but no longer a landslide, and worth knowing before the comparison gets made for you.

How to pick without overthinking it

Have a prescription and Prime? RxPass at $60 a year is hard to beat.
Have a prescription, no Prime? Cost Plus at $11.08 delivered, or a coupon at retail — check both, coupon prices move by zip and pharmacy daily.
Need a prescriber? Compare on the billed cadence, not the headline. Ro and Keeps ship quarterly; Happy Head bills monthly. A "$16/mo" rate that needs a 12-month commitment is a different product from $19 month-to-month.
Live in California or Washington? RxPass is unavailable, so the comparison starts at Cost Plus.

Keep reading: Every hair-loss channel priced · Finasteride cost, every channel · Finasteride: evidence and side effects · Nutrition, stress and the natural options graded

Pricing journalism, not medical advice. Finasteride is a prescription medicine with real side effects that belong in a conversation with a prescriber, not a price table. Listed prices on the researched date; coupon prices float daily and the checkout is the final word. Some links may earn commissions; ordering is by cost, never compensation — disclosure.