Jardiance is Boehringer Ingelheim’s brand name for empagliflozin, an SGLT2 inhibitor taken as one tablet a day in 10 mg or 25 mg strengths. It is prescribed for type 2 diabetes, heart failure, and chronic kidney disease, which is why it shows up in three very different sets of pharmacy bills.
The cash-price picture for this drug changed in two ways in 2026, and they point in opposite directions. Medicare’s first round of negotiated drug prices took effect January 1, 2026, and Jardiance was on the list. At the same time, the two SGLT2 and DPP-4 drugs closest to it, Farxiga and Januvia, both got generic competition this year while empagliflozin did not. That leaves Jardiance as the expensive one in its neighborhood for anyone paying out of pocket. Everything below was verified on September 1, 2026.
What Does Jardiance Cost Without Insurance?
Retail figures come from SingleCare’s live Jardiance page for the 25 mg strength in bottles of 30 tablets, updated September 2, 2026. The list price comes from Boehringer Ingelheim’s own patient cost page, and the negotiated price comes from the CMS fact sheet on the 2026 maximum fair prices.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jardiance 25 mg, 30 tablets, discount card at retail | $276.72 (Publix) | $299.53 (Kroger, Harris Teeter) | $325.24 (Walmart) |
| Jardiance 25 mg, 30 tablets, no card, average retail | $767.82 | $767.82 | $767.82 |
| Manufacturer list price, 30-day supply | $350.00 | $350.00 | $350.00 |
| Medicare Part D negotiated price (Part D enrollees only) | $197.00 | $197.00 | $197.00 |
| Jardiance Savings Card (commercial insurance required) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Boehringer Cares patient assistance (if eligible) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Two things jump out. First, the sources disagree on what “cash price” even means: Boehringer says the list price is $350 a month, while SingleCare’s average retail figure is $767.82, more than double. That gap is not a mistake. List price is what the manufacturer sets, and the pharmacy adds its own markup on top, which Boehringer’s page says plainly. Treat $350 as the floor a well-priced pharmacy could theoretically hit and $767.82 as what an unprepared cash payer actually gets charged.
Second, a discount card closes most of that gap for free. The $276.72 to $325.24 range from SingleCare is a roughly $450 monthly saving against the no-card average, and it costs nothing but two minutes at the counter.
Why the negotiated $197 price is not your price
CMS negotiated a maximum fair price of $197.00 for a 30-day supply of Jardiance, effective January 1, 2026, down 66% from the $573.00 list price CMS recorded for 2023. Jardiance was the highest-spend drug of the ten in that first negotiation round, with $8.8 billion in Part D gross covered drug costs and 1,883,000 Part D enrollees using it in 2023.
That price is real, but it is a Medicare Part D price. It applies to people enrolled in standalone Part D plans and Medicare Advantage plans with drug coverage, and manufacturers must make it available through the pharmacies that dispense to those enrollees. If you are uninsured, or insured commercially and paying cash, the $197 figure does not follow you to the register. Use it as a yardstick instead: any cash quote far above it tells you to keep shopping.
What Drives the Price
There is no generic empagliflozin. This is the whole story. The FDA’s first-generic approval list for 2026 is full of dapagliflozin entries (the molecule in Farxiga) and the 2025 list carries the first sitagliptin approval (the molecule in Januvia), but empagliflozin appears on neither. Until that changes, every Jardiance prescription is a brand prescription.
The pharmacy you walk into. SingleCare’s September 2026 data shows the same 30-tablet bottle at $276.72 at Publix, $299.53 at Kroger and Harris Teeter, $318.08 at Walgreens, and $325.24 at Walmart. That is nearly $50 a month of pure location variance on an identical product.
Whether you hand over a discount card. The single largest lever available to a cash payer is the difference between the card price and the no-card price, and it is worth roughly $450 a month here.
Which insurance box you fall into. Boehringer’s savings card requires commercial insurance and explicitly excludes anyone whose prescriptions are paid in part or in full by Medicare, Medicaid, Medigap, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, or TRICARE. The patient assistance program runs on separate eligibility rules. Plenty of people sit between the two.
Dose and day supply. Jardiance comes in 10 mg and 25 mg, and pharmacies fill it in 30-day and 90-day quantities. A 90-day fill usually lowers the per-month cost and cuts two dispensing fees out of your year.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
If you have commercial insurance that covers Jardiance, running it through the plan almost always wins. Boehringer cites IQVIA data showing that about 94% of commercially insured patients pay between $0 and $50 a month for Jardiance, with the remaining 6% averaging about $230. The Jardiance Savings Card can take eligible commercially insured patients to as little as $0 for a 30-day to 90-day prescription, subject to monthly limits.
Coverage-specific numbers Boehringer publishes are worth knowing if you fall into one of these groups. Veterans Administration prescription coverage carries an $11 copay for a 30-day supply. TRICARE is $0 at a military hospital, $48 at a retail pharmacy, and $44 for a 90-day home delivery fill. Medicaid copays run $0 to $10 a month on average.
Medicare is the case where the math genuinely changed this year. Beyond the $197 negotiated price, no Part D plan may charge a deductible above $615 in 2026, and once your out-of-pocket spending on covered Part D drugs reaches $2,100 you move into catastrophic coverage and pay nothing more for covered drugs that calendar year. For someone filling Jardiance monthly, that cap is reachable, which makes running the drug through Part D far better than paying cash on the side. Cash payments do not count toward the cap.
The one scenario where paying cash beats using insurance is a commercial high-deductible plan very early in the year, where the plan would make you pay the full negotiated price anyway. Even then, cash dollars usually do not count toward your deductible, so run the whole-year math rather than one month. Our fair price checker is a fast way to sanity-check any quote you are handed.
How to Pay Less
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Ask for a discount-card price before you agree to fill. The SingleCare data above shows a roughly $450 monthly gap between the card price and the no-card retail average. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare walks through checking both cards on the same drug in about two minutes.
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Call three pharmacies for the exact strength and quantity. A $50 monthly swing between chains on an identical bottle is normal, and the cheapest chain is not the same in every zip code.
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Apply to Boehringer Cares if money is tight. The Boehringer Ingelheim Cares Foundation Patient Assistance Program ships Boehringer medicines free of charge to patients who meet its eligibility rules. Applying is free, refills are free, and shipping is free. Boehringer warns that outside companies charging a fee to submit your application are not affiliated with the Foundation.
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Use the savings card if you have commercial coverage. Eligible patients can pay as little as $0 for a 30-day to 90-day prescription. It is not available to anyone on a government program.
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Ask about a 90-day fill. Fewer dispensing fees and a lower per-month rate on the same tablets.
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Do not overlook the visit that generates the prescription. A free or sliding-scale clinic can handle the prescribing and follow-up at little or no cost, and a routine cash-pay doctor visit typically runs $100 to $300 if you go that route instead.
Bottom Line
Budget $277 to $325 a month if you use a discount card at a major chain, and expect closer to $768 if you walk in with nothing. Boehringer’s own $350 list price sits between those two numbers and is the figure to quote when you are asking a pharmacy why its price is what it is.
The reason this drug still costs three figures in cash when its class-mates do not is simple: empagliflozin has no U.S. generic yet, while dapagliflozin and sitagliptin both got one in 2026. That makes the cash arithmetic on Farxiga and Januvia look very different from this page, and both are worth reading before you assume a three-figure monthly bill is unavoidable in this category. If Jardiance was prescribed for heart failure rather than diabetes, our Entresto cost guide covers the other drug most often filled alongside it. And if you are managing type 2 diabetes on cash more broadly, our insulin cost guide covers the $35 programs and our GLP-1 cost guide covers the injectable side of the same shelf.