Gabapentin is one of the highest-volume prescriptions in the country and one of the cheapest per pill. Medicare Part D alone paid for 36.8 million gabapentin claims in 2024 across nearly 8 million people, at an average of $14.78 per claim. The drug itself costs a pharmacy three cents a capsule.
That makes gabapentin an unusual pricing story. There is no shortage of cheap supply, so the two things that actually move your bill are which strength you were prescribed and whether your state treats gabapentin as a controlled substance. Every figure below was researched on September 3, 2026.
What Does Gabapentin Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey. Generic rows are effective August 19, 2026, except the 400 mg capsule, which was refreshed September 2, 2026. The brand vintages are split: Neurontin’s 600 mg and 800 mg rows are effective August 19, 2026, the 300 mg is June 3, 2026, and the 100 mg and 400 mg rows still carry a January 1, 2026 date. Cash prices come from Drugs.com and SingleCare, both read September 3, 2026.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one generic pill | $0.02095 (100 mg cap) | $0.03015 (300 mg cap) | $0.09004 (800 mg tab) |
| Discount card, 90 capsules of 300 mg | $8.68 | $8.83 | $8.98 |
| Mail pharmacy, 60 capsules of 400 mg | $13.20 | $15.08 | $16.95 |
| Mail pharmacy, 60 tablets of 600 mg | $14.40 | $14.40 | $14.40 |
| Mail pharmacy, 30 capsules of 100 mg | $11.10 | $11.10 | $11.10 |
| Generic oral solution, 470 mL bottle | $105.00 | $105.00 | $105.00 |
| Average retail, 90 capsules of 300 mg, no card | $75.25 | $75.25 | $75.25 |
| Brand Neurontin, 30 pills | $150.00 (100 mg) | $282.00 (300 mg) | $561.00 (800 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, brand Neurontin, one pill | $2.95761 (100 mg cap) | $7.38653 (300 mg cap) | $16.97766 (800 mg tab) |
| Gralise ER acquisition cost, one tablet | $10.15777 (600 mg) | $10.17827 (300 mg) | $15.25490 (900 mg) |
| Horizant, 30 tablets (300 mg or 600 mg) | $556.97 | $556.97 | $556.97 |
Do the per-pill math yourself, because it explains almost everything. At the common three-times-daily schedule, a month of 300 mg capsules is 90 pills. At $0.03015 of acquisition cost each, that is $2.71 of actual medicine. At $8.68 to $8.98 with a card, you are paying about ten cents a capsule. At the $75.25 average retail price SingleCare publishes for the same fill, you are paying 84 cents a capsule for a three-cent product.
The sources broadly agree on the cheap end and diverge sharply on the expensive end. Drugs.com’s listed cash prices for 90 of the 300 mg capsules cluster at $8.68 to $8.98, and SingleCare’s own card price is $8.98, so the floor is well established. What “no discount at all” costs is much less settled: SingleCare states a $75.25 average retail figure, while the same page’s per-pharmacy rows moved between reads. Treat $75 as a reasonable estimate of an unhelped counter price and anything near it as a signal to shop, not a market rate.
What Drives the Price
Strength, and it is not a small effect. This is the single most under-appreciated fact about gabapentin pricing. The 100, 300 and 400 mg presentations are capsules, and the 600 and 800 mg are tablets made by a smaller set of manufacturers. In the August 2026 CMS data a 300 mg capsule costs $0.03015 and a 600 mg tablet costs $0.06379, so the wholesale cost per milligram is roughly the same but the cost per pill doubles. At retail the gap widens: about $0.10 per 300 mg capsule versus $0.24 per 600 mg tablet through a mail pharmacy. A month at 600 mg three times daily is closer to $22 than to $9.
Brand versus generic. In Medicare Part D data for 2024, generic gabapentin averaged $0.1192 per dosage unit while brand Neurontin averaged $8.8755, Gralise averaged $10.8874 and Horizant averaged $16.6949. Per claim, that was $14.78 for the generic against $1,578.20 for Neurontin. Same active ingredient in the first three cases.
The extended-release products are a separate market. Gralise and Horizant are once-daily formulations approved for specific uses, not interchangeable substitutes you can ask for at the counter. Horizant is gabapentin enacarbil, a different molecule that the body converts to gabapentin, so there is no A-rated generic to switch to. Its acquisition cost is about $17.93 a tablet, which is 280 times the 600 mg immediate-release tablet.
Controlled-substance status in your state. Gabapentin is not federally scheduled, but a 2016 to 2024 policy review published in 2025 found seven states still classify it as a schedule V controlled substance (Alabama, Kentucky, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia), with Michigan having scheduled it in 2019 and rescinded that in May 2024. Seventeen additional states require gabapentin prescriptions to be reported to the state prescription drug monitoring program without scheduling it. In scheduling states you should expect photo ID at pickup, a PDMP check, tighter limits on refills and transfers, and fewer mail-order and 90-day options than a plain generic would get.
Days supply. Every route here charges its fixed costs per fill, so a 90-day script is cheaper per month than three 30-day fills. That option is not always available to you: in the scheduling states above, a longer supply of a schedule V drug is exactly the thing state rules tend to restrict, so a lot of gabapentin patients are stuck paying the 30-day price twelve times a year.
Whether you use any discount at all. The spread between $8.98 and $75.25 on the identical 90-capsule fill is roughly $66 a month, which is far larger than any other decision on this page.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Gabapentin is a textbook case where a cash price often beats a copay. If your plan charges a $10 or $15 generic copay, an $8.98 card price wins outright on the 300 mg capsules, and you do not touch your pharmacy benefit at all.
The usual tradeoff applies and is worth saying plainly. Money 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 this cheap that lost credit almost never matters. It starts to matter if you are also filling something expensive, which is why our levothyroxine cost guide and metformin cost guide reach the same conclusion while our brand-drug pages do not.
Brand and extended-release gabapentin is where cash payers get hurt. Azurity’s Horizant copay savings card zeroes out the cost for commercially insured patients but explicitly excludes anyone on Medicare, Medigap, VA, Department of Defense or TRICARE coverage. Azurity does run a separate cash program for uninsured and self-pay patients at as little as $55 per prescription, with eligibility subject to approval by phone. That is the difference between $55 and $556.97 for the same 30 tablets, so it is worth the call.
If a pharmacy quotes you three figures for generic gabapentin, run it through our fair price checker before you pay. That is a contract artifact, not the price of the drug.
How to Pay Less
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Ask for the 300 mg capsules if your dose allows it. This is the biggest lever most people never pull. Three 300 mg capsules cost about $0.30 at retail; one 900 mg dose taken as a single 800 mg plus a 100 mg costs roughly $0.34, and 600 mg tablets run $0.24 apiece. Dose changes are a prescriber decision, not a pharmacy one, but it is a fair question to raise at your next visit.
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Run a free discount card before you fill. SingleCare’s gabapentin page, prices updated September 3, 2026, showed a card price of $8.98 for 90 of the 300 mg capsules against a $75.25 stated average retail price. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare explains how to price the same prescription both ways and why an online quote can move between visits.
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Price a licensed mail pharmacy, and check whether it ships to your state. Drugs.com’s listings show a mail pharmacy at $13.20 for 60 of the 400 mg capsules and $14.40 for 60 of the 600 mg tablets with free delivery, which beats most counter prices. In the seven schedule V states, confirm the pharmacy can actually ship to you before you transfer the prescription.
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Do not count on a $4 generic program. Walmart’s Prescription Program drug list, effective March 24, 2025 and read September 3, 2026, does not include gabapentin at any strength. It is also not a flat $4 list the way people describe it: the program runs three tiers ($4 per 30 days and $10 per 90 days, $9 and $24, and $15 and $38), and plenty of common generics sit in the higher two. Ask the pharmacy to check your exact drug and strength against the current list rather than assuming.
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Call the manufacturer before paying brand prices. If you genuinely need Horizant, Azurity’s cash program advertises as little as $55 per prescription for self-pay patients at 844-289-3981. For Neurontin there is no equivalent published cash program, and Drugs.com found no manufacturer promotions for generic gabapentin at all, so the discount card is the tool there.
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Budget for the visit, not just the pills. Gabapentin requires an ongoing prescriber relationship, and in scheduling states that often means more frequent check-ins. A free or sliding-scale clinic can handle refills at little or no cost. If a clinic or hospital bills you more than you expected for that visit, our guide to negotiating medical bills covers what to do next, and our physical therapy cost guide covers the non-drug side of nerve and back pain care.
Bottom Line
Budget $9 a month for generic gabapentin at 300 mg three times daily and about $22 a month at 600 mg three times daily, and treat anything above roughly $30 as a reason to shop rather than a fact about the drug. The liquid is the expensive generic form at $105 a bottle, which is worth knowing if a swallowing issue is the only reason it was prescribed.
The costly ways to take this medicine are brand Neurontin at $282 to $561 for 30 pills and Horizant at about $557 for 30, and in both cases the fix is a phone call rather than a different pharmacy. If your state schedules gabapentin, plan on 30-day fills and local pickup, and price your discount card every single month, because that is where the $66 sits.