What pharmacies paid for prednisone, 2013 to 2026

In May 2014, retail pharmacies paid an average of $6.36 for 30 generic prednisone 10 mg tablets (21.21 cents a tablet), according to the federal government's NADAC survey files¹. That was the highest month on record. By October 2026 the same 30 tablets cost $1.58 (5.27 cents a tablet), according to the 2026 files², a fall of 75 percent from the peak and 72 percent from January 2014.

These are acquisition costs, what pharmacies pay to buy the tablets, and not prices at the counter. In Medicaid's 2025 State Drug Utilization Data³, prescriptions for this product averaged 26.1 tablets across 1.29 million fills, and GxRadar rounds that to a typical fill of 30 tablets. Prednisone is often dispensed in short courses, so fill sizes vary widely. The quantity on any prescription is the prescriber's call.

Prednisone is a corticosteroid, according to the National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus entry⁴, and it is one of the oldest drugs in GxRadar's 47-drug basket. Its generic history starts decades before the modern generic approval pathway existed. GxRadar analyzed CMS NADAC files from November 2013 through October 2026, FDA approval and shortage records and Medicare claims data to show how the price fell and how prednisone compares with other steroids on FDA's current shortage list.

Thirteen years of prednisone prices

Each figure is GxRadar's monthly median of the weekly NADAC per-tablet rate for generic-classified rows listed as prednisone 10 mg tablet, from the yearly files on data.medicaid.gov starting with the 2013 file⁵. The fill column multiplies that rate by 30. The full monthly series is on our prednisone page.

The arithmetic for the latest month is 5.269 cents times 30, or $1.58. The 72 percent decline since January 2014 is steeper than that of the GxRadar generic price index, which stood at 47.4 in October 2026, about 53 percent below January 2014.

The biggest single drop came early. The rate held above 20 cents from May through July 2014, then fell to 14.61 cents by September, a 30 percent cut in two months. After that the slide was gradual, about a cent a year, until the turbulence of 2024. The rate swung from 6.28 cents in March to 4.52 cents in July and hit the series low of 4.35 cents, or $1.31 for 30 tablets, in December 2024, according to the 2024 NADAC files⁶. Our account of the 2024 NADAC swings covers what happened across generics that year.

CMS's December 2024 methodology⁷ described its response as "a temporary, short-term measure to address rate volatility occurring as a result of fluctuations in survey participation." Monthly generic rates became a three-month moving average. Prednisone's rate climbed back to 6.07 cents by August 2025, according to the 2025 files⁸, then eased every month through 2026. The October 2026 figure was the lowest since February 2025.

A generic older than the generic law

FDA approved the first prednisone tablets on Feb. 21, 1955, according to Drugs@FDA records⁹. That predates the 1962 amendments that required new drugs to be shown effective as well as safe. FDA's page on the Drug Efficacy Study Implementation¹⁰ explains that the agency later reviewed drugs approved only for safety between 1938 and 1962, and that drugs "identical, related or similar" to one found effective needed "either an approved NDA or abbreviated new drug application (ANDA)" to be marketed.

That is why prednisone's generic record reaches back so far. GxRadar counted 73 single-ingredient prednisone ANDAs in FDA's data. The earliest is dated Dec. 23, 1971, and the earliest for the 10 mg tablet is April 21, 1972, a dozen years before the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 created the modern pathway for copies of newer drugs. Sixty-six of the 73 are for tablets; the rest cover solutions, a syrup and delayed-release tablets. Many older approvals were strength-specific, and 20 of the 73 cover the 10 mg tablet. Eleven of those 20 still list it as a marketed prescription product, and 26 of all 73 still have a marketed product of some kind. FDA's ANDA program page¹¹ describes the pathway today, and our approvals tracker counts generic approvals by year.

Competition remains wide. CMS's Part D Spending by Drug data¹² list 15 manufacturers of generic prednisone in 2024. FDA economists found in a December 2019 analysis¹³ that with six or more generic makers, prices ran "more than 95%" below the brand's price before generic entry.

Prednisone next to other steroid generics

Several corticosteroids share prednisone's long generic history. Counted the same way, by single-ingredient ANDAs in FDA's data, they look like this, with their status on FDA's shortage list as of Nov. 3, 2026, from the openFDA shortage data¹⁴.

FDA lists each salt as its own ingredient, so the injectable forms on the shortage list sit on their own rows. The plain hydrocortisone count is mostly creams, lotions and ointments. Both current entries are injections, and FDA gave "demand increase for the drug" as a reason on both. That fits the wider pattern on FDA's list, where 71 percent of the 69 current shortages are injectables. Our pieces on why sterile injectables dominate shortage lists and how long shortages last go into that.

GxRadar found no prednisone entry, in any form, among the 230 entries on FDA's list, which includes current, to-be-discontinued and recently resolved shortages. FDA's drug shortages page¹⁵ explains how the agency tracks them, and our shortage tracker follows the same data. The openFDA enforcement records¹⁶ hold 11 recall records naming prednisone since 2012: nine Class II and two Class III, mostly labeling mix-ups and foreign tablets or particles. None was Class I.

Volume and what a fill costs the system

Medicare paid for 15.8 million claims of generic prednisone in 2024, up from 12.1 million in 2020, according to CMS's Part D data. Average spending per claim fell over the same years.

CMS's methodology¹⁷ defines that spending as gross drug cost, including ingredient cost, dispensing fees and sales tax and excluding rebates, and a claim can be any size, so the figures do not compare directly with NADAC. On the Medicaid side, CMS's state reimbursement table for the quarter ending September 2026¹⁸ lists a $10.92 professional dispensing fee in New Jersey and $10.18 in New York, several times the $1.58 ingredient cost of a 30-tablet fill. Our explainers on dispensing fees and what NADAC measures cover the rest of the bill. CMS says on its NADAC page¹⁹ that the three-month moving average for generic rates "will continue until further notice."