Buspirone is a high-volume, low-cost generic with one genuinely unusual pricing quirk: the smallest common strength is the most expensive one, by a wide margin. Medicare Part D covered 7.85 million buspirone claims in 2024 across 1.55 million people, at an average of $14.17 per claim.
Forty-six different labelers market buspirone in the FDA drug directory, which is why the floor price is so low. But they do not all make every strength, and the ones that skip the 7.5 mg tablet leave it costing about five times as much per milligram as the 15 mg. Every figure below was researched on September 4, 2026.
What Does Buspirone Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey, all rows effective August 19, 2026. The 30-day acquisition figures are that per-tablet cost multiplied by the number of tablets, which is the wholesale cost of the medicine before any pharmacy fee. Retail figures come from SingleCare (prices updated September 4, 2026) and Walmart’s Prescription Program list. Medicare figures are 2024 claims.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one tablet | $0.02175 (5 mg) | $0.04231 (15 mg) | $0.11865 (30 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, per milligram | $0.00280 (10 mg tab) | $0.00396 (30 mg tab) | $0.01394 (7.5 mg tab) |
| Acquisition cost, 30 days at 10 mg twice daily | $1.68 | $1.68 | $1.68 |
| Acquisition cost, 30 days at 15 mg twice daily | $2.54 | $2.54 | $2.54 |
| Acquisition cost, 30 days at 60 mg a day | $5.08 (as 15 mg) | $6.10 | $7.12 (as 30 mg) |
| Acquisition cost, 30 days at 7.5 mg twice daily | $1.27 (half a 15 mg) | $3.77 | $6.27 (as 7.5 mg) |
| Walmart Prescription Program, 5 mg or 10 mg | $8.00 (90-day rate, per 30 days) | $9.00 (60 tabs, 30 days) | $24.00 (180 tabs, 90 days) |
| Discount card, 60 of the 5 mg tablets | $4.74 | $12.50 | $20.26 |
| Average retail, no card, 60 of the 5 mg tablets | $45.99 | $45.99 | $45.99 |
| Medicare Part D 2024, average spend per claim | $9.07 | $14.17 | $27.21 |
The single most useful comparison in that table is the last three rows against the first three. The medicine in a month of buspirone costs between about $1.30 and $7.10 wholesale. The card price is $4.74, Walmart’s flat program price is $9.00, and the unhelped counter price is $45.99. Roughly $40 of the retail price is not the drug.
The Medicare spread is worth a look too. Across 2024 Part D claims, the per-claim average by manufacturer ran from $9.07 to $27.21 for the identical generic molecule, which is a three-fold difference driven by contracts rather than chemistry. The overall average was $14.17 per claim and $0.1465 per dosage unit.
What Drives the Price
The 7.5 mg tablet is the expensive one. This is the most counterintuitive fact about buspirone pricing. In the August 2026 CMS file the strengths cost a pharmacy $0.02175 (5 mg), $0.10458 (7.5 mg), $0.02795 (10 mg), $0.04231 (15 mg) and $0.11865 (30 mg) per tablet. Per milligram, the 10 mg and 15 mg tablets are the cheapest at about $0.0028, the 30 mg is $0.0040, and the 7.5 mg is $0.0139. A 7.5 mg tablet costs a pharmacy more than two and a half 10 mg tablets.
The scored tablets change the arithmetic. FDA-approved labeling states that the 5 mg and 10 mg tablets are scored so they can be bisected, and that the 15 mg and 30 mg tablets are multi-scored so they can be bisected or trisected. A 15 mg tablet is labeled to yield 15, 10, 7.5 or 5 mg, and a 30 mg tablet to yield 30, 20, 15 or 10 mg. That matters at the register: 30 days of 7.5 mg twice daily is $6.27 of acquisition cost as 7.5 mg tablets and $1.27 as halves of 15 mg tablets. What appears on your prescription is a prescriber decision and not something a pharmacy can substitute, but it is a fair question to raise at a visit.
The 30 mg tablet is not the bulk discount it looks like. At 60 mg a day, four 15 mg tablets cost $5.08 of acquisition per month while two 30 mg tablets cost $7.12. Buying the bigger pill is the more expensive route on this drug, which is the opposite of how most generics behave.
Whether you use any discount at all. The gap between $4.74 with a card and $45.99 at average retail on the same 60 tablets is about $41 a month, which dwarfs every other decision on this page. SingleCare’s per-pharmacy rows for that fill ranged from $4.74 to $20.26 on September 4, 2026, and those named-chain rows shift between visits, so treat them as a picture of the spread rather than a quote.
Not being a controlled substance. Buspirone is not federally scheduled. There is no monitoring-program lookup at pickup, no federal refill cap, and no obstacle to a 90-day supply or a mail pharmacy. That is a real cost difference against the scheduled drugs in this category: our Xanax cost guide and Klonopin cost guide cover what those restrictions add up to over a year.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Buspirone is one of the clearest cases on this site for simply not using your pharmacy benefit. If your plan charges a $10 or $15 generic copay, the $4.74 card price wins outright, and even Walmart’s flat $9.00 program price is competitive with most copays.
The tradeoff is the standard one. Money spent outside the plan does not count toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum, and you cannot combine a discount card with insurance on the same fill. On a drug this cheap that lost credit rarely matters, though it can if you are filling something expensive in the same year.
There is also very little negotiated discount hiding behind the counter. Medicare Part D, the largest negotiated buyer in the country, paid an average of $14.17 per buspirone claim in 2024, which is more than the cash card price and more than Walmart’s program price. That is a good sign that the retail floor is real rather than a promotional loss leader.
If a pharmacy quotes you $40 or more for a generic buspirone fill, that is a contract artifact rather than the price of the drug. Run it through our fair price checker before you pay.
How to Pay Less
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Run a free discount card before every fill. SingleCare’s buspirone page showed $4.74 for 60 of the 5 mg tablets against a $45.99 stated average retail price on September 4, 2026. Prices differ by chain and move between visits, so check rather than assume. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare explains how to price the same prescription both ways.
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Know which Walmart tier you are in before you go. Walmart’s Prescription Program list, effective March 24, 2025 and read September 4, 2026, lists BUSPIRONE 5MG, 10MG at $9 for a 30-day supply of 60 tablets and $24 for a 90-day supply of 180. That is the $9/$24 tier, not the $4 tier the program is known for, and the 15 mg and 30 mg strengths are not on the list at all. Ask the pharmacy to check your exact strength.
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Fill 90 days at a time. Nothing about buspirone limits supply length, and every route charges its dispensing fee per fill. Walmart’s own list prices 90 days at $24 against $9 for 30 days, a saving of about $12 a year, and mail pharmacies concentrate their fixed shipping cost the same way.
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Ask about strength at your next visit if you are on 7.5 mg tablets. The 7.5 mg presentation is the outlier on this drug, at roughly five times the per-milligram cost of the 15 mg tablet that FDA labeling says is scored to be halved. Dose and strength are prescriber decisions, so this is a question to raise, not a change to make on your own.
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Do not pay a brand premium for a brand that no longer exists. FDA lists every BuSpar product as discontinued, and Medicare Part D recorded no BuSpar claims in 2024. If anything is quoted to you as brand-name BuSpar, ask what NDC is actually being dispensed.
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Price the visit, not just the pills. The prescription costs a few dollars a month; the appointment behind it does not. A free or sliding-scale clinic can handle refills at little or no cost, and our psychiatrist cost guide and therapy cost guide cover what those visits run. If a bill arrives higher than expected, our guide to negotiating medical bills covers what to do about it.
Bottom Line
Budget $5 to $9 a month for buspirone and treat anything near $46 as a reason to shop. The card price of $4.74 for 60 tablets and Walmart’s flat $9.00 program price bracket what this drug actually costs a cash payer, and both beat a typical generic copay.
The one place the price genuinely varies is strength. The 7.5 mg tablet costs about five times as much per milligram as the 15 mg, and the 30 mg costs more per milligram than the 15 mg, so bigger is not cheaper here. There is no brand tier to avoid, because BuSpar is discontinued in every form. If you fill another prescription in this category, our hydroxyzine cost guide, sertraline cost guide and trazodone cost guide run the same arithmetic.