Carvedilol is one of the cheapest heart failure and blood pressure drugs in American pharmacies, and it is also one of the easiest to get mispriced. Two things cause that. The tablet is taken twice a day, so a month is 60 tablets rather than 30, and there is a second carvedilol product, an extended-release capsule, that costs roughly twenty times as much for the same daily dose.
This guide covers all three versions: generic immediate-release tablets, generic carvedilol phosphate extended-release capsules (the generic of Coreg CR), and the brand names themselves. If you want the same breakdown for the other common beta blocker, our metoprolol cost guide splits tartrate against succinate ER. Every figure below was researched on September 4, 2026.
What Does Carvedilol Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey, every row effective August 19, 2026. Cash prices come from Drugs.com and Cost Plus Drugs, both read September 4, 2026. Monthly figures assume the label dosing: 60 immediate-release tablets or 30 extended-release capsules.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one immediate-release tablet | $0.01675 (3.125 mg) | $0.02139 (12.5 mg) | $0.03211 (25 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one extended-release capsule | $5.70644 (80 mg) | $6.38610 (10 mg) | $6.56307 (20 mg) |
| CMS NADAC, 30 days of drug, 60 immediate-release tablets | $1.01 (3.125 mg twice daily) | $1.28 (12.5 mg twice daily) | $1.93 (25 mg twice daily) |
| CMS NADAC, 30 days of drug, 30 extended-release capsules | $171.19 (80 mg) | $193.32 (40 mg) | $196.89 (20 mg) |
| Cost Plus Drugs, 30 immediate-release tablets (half a month) | $5.21 (3.125 mg) | $5.34 (12.5 mg) | $5.66 (25 mg) |
| Cost Plus Drugs, 30 extended-release capsules (one month) | $100.63 (20 mg) | $107.81 (40 mg) | $159.01 (10 mg) |
| Drugs.com cash price, 60 immediate-release tablets (one month) | $6.25 (3.125 mg) | $6.70 (6.25 mg) | $11.11 (25 mg) |
| Drugs.com cash price, 30 extended-release capsules (one month) | $160.26 (80 mg) | $168.17 (40 mg) | $177.82 (20 mg) |
| Brand Coreg, 30 days (60 tablets) | $1,451.62 | $1,451.62 | $1,451.62 |
| Brand Coreg CR, 30 days (30 capsules) | $2,102.72 | $2,102.72 | $2,102.72 |
The wholesale arithmetic explains the whole market. Sixty tablets of the 12.5 mg strength is $1.28 of actual drug. Thirty capsules of the equivalent extended-release strength is $193.32 of actual drug. That is not dispensing markup, that is the ingredient itself, and it is why the retail spread between the two forms stays enormous no matter where you fill.
The one place the gap narrows is a transparent mail pharmacy. Cost Plus Drugs charges $100.63 for 30 of the 20 mg extended-release capsules, which is below the $196.89 that CMS says a pharmacy pays to acquire them. That is the single largest discount available on this drug and it applies only to the extended-release version.
What Drives the Price
Which carvedilol you were prescribed. Immediate-release carvedilol and carvedilol phosphate extended release are separate products with separate approvals and separate generic markets. The immediate-release generic has been commoditized down to pennies a tablet. The extended-release generic has not.
Pill count, not pill price. Carvedilol’s own label sets the trap. The Coreg CR prescribing information includes a conversion table showing that 3.125 mg twice daily equals one 10 mg capsule once daily, 6.25 mg twice daily equals 20 mg, 12.5 mg twice daily equals 40 mg, and 25 mg twice daily equals 80 mg. If a pharmacy quotes you a price on 30 tablets, you are being quoted 15 days.
The food requirement, which is a refill-timing problem. Both labels instruct that carvedilol be taken with food, and the extended-release capsule specifically once daily in the morning with food. Doses tied to meals are the ones people skip, and a skipped dose schedule desynchronizes your refill dates from your 30-day fills. That is an administrative cost rather than a sticker cost, but it is the reason people run out early and pay for an emergency fill.
Brand versus generic, where the brand has effectively left the retail market. FDA’s National Drug Code directory shows Coreg and Coreg CR as active listings from Waylis Therapeutics with no marketing end date, so they are not discontinued. But neither brand appears in CMS’s acquisition survey at all, which is what you would expect from a product with essentially no pharmacy claim volume. Drugs.com still publishes $2,419.37 for 100 Coreg tablets and $2,102.72 for 30 Coreg CR capsules. Treat those as list prices, not as what anyone is paying.
Strength, but only on the extended release. Immediate-release pricing barely moves across strengths: 1.7 cents for the 3.125 mg and 3.2 cents for the 25 mg. Extended-release pricing moves in the wrong direction, with the 10 mg and 80 mg capsules the most expensive at Cost Plus ($159.01 and $159.00 for 30) and the 20 mg the cheapest ($100.63 for 30).
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Immediate-release carvedilol is a textbook case where paying cash beats running the claim. If your copay is $10 or $15 for a 30-day fill, a $6.25 to $11.11 retail cash price or a $5.66 mail-order fill wins outright and you never touch the pharmacy benefit.
The tradeoff is the usual one. Cash you spend outside the plan does not count toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum, and you cannot stack a discount card with insurance on the same fill. On a drug whose ingredients cost about a dollar a month, that lost deductible credit is not worth chasing.
The extended-release capsule is the opposite situation. At $101 to $178 a month it is real money, and if you have any drug coverage at all it is usually worth running through the plan first and comparing. If you are fully self-pay, the mail-order price is the number that matters, because it is roughly half the retail cash price.
If a pharmacy quotes you a three-figure price for immediate-release carvedilol tablets, check it against our fair price checker before you pay. A number like that is a contract artifact, not a market price.
How to Pay Less
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Say the form, the strength and the quantity out loud. Ask for a price on 60 tablets if you take the immediate-release version twice a day, and on 30 capsules if you take the extended release. Comparing a 30-count tablet quote against a 30-count capsule quote makes the capsule look four times worse than it is, and comparing a 30-count tablet quote against a monthly budget makes the tablet look half as expensive as it is.
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Run a free discount card before you fill. Card prices on old generics routinely land under $10 for a full 60-tablet month, and the counter price without one can be many times that. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare covers how to check more than one card on the same prescription and why an online quote can move between visits.
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Price the extended release at a transparent mail pharmacy, because this is where the money is. Cost Plus Drugs charges $100.63 for 30 of the 20 mg capsules and $107.81 for 30 of the 40 mg against Drugs.com retail figures of $177.82 and $168.17, with a flat $5.00 shipping charge added at checkout. Nothing else on this drug saves you $60 to $70 in one step.
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Do not go looking for carvedilol on the Walmart $4 list. A word-level extraction of the program drug list effective March 24, 2025, pulled from the link on the $4 Prescriptions page, returns zero hits for carvedilol at any of its tiers. Amiodarone, amlodipine, metoprolol, lisinopril and losartan are all there at $9 for 30 days and $24 for 90 days. Carvedilol is not, so a trip to price-match it is wasted.
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Ask for a 90-day prescription on the tablets. Fixed dispensing cost dominates a drug whose ingredients run a dollar a month. Drugs.com lists 180 of the 3.125 mg tablets (a full 90 days at twice-daily dosing) from $10.24 against $6.25 for 60, so the per-month cost falls by roughly half.
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Budget for the appointments, not the pills. Carvedilol is usually prescribed for heart failure, post-heart-attack care or high blood pressure, and the follow-up visits cost far more than the drug. A free or sliding-scale clinic can handle refills and monitoring at little or no cost, and if a clinic or hospital sends a bill that surprises you, our guide to negotiating medical bills covers what to do about it.
Bottom Line
Budget $6 to $11 a month for generic carvedilol tablets and treat anything above about $25 as a signal to shop rather than a fact about the drug. Budget $101 to $178 a month if you take the extended-release capsule, and make a transparent mail pharmacy your first call rather than your last, because that one decision is worth more than every other tactic on this page combined.
Above all, count the tablets. A 30-count bottle of immediate-release carvedilol is half a month, and that single misunderstanding is responsible for more surprise pharmacy bills on this drug than the brand-versus-generic gap is. For the rest of a typical cardiac regimen, see our cost guides for lisinopril, amlodipine and Entresto, and if an antiarrhythmic was added at the same visit, our amiodarone cost guide explains why that drug’s monitoring costs more than the drug.