Meloxicam is one of the cheapest prescriptions in the United States and also one of the most expensive, depending entirely on which physical form of it lands on your counter. Medicare Part D alone paid for 12.1 million meloxicam tablet claims in 2024 across 4.1 million people, at an average of $4.27 per claim.
That average hides a real trap. The same molecule, dispensed as a capsule instead of a tablet, cost Part D $747.21 per claim in the same year. Nothing about the drug changed. Every figure below was researched fresh on September 4, 2026.
What Does Meloxicam Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey, all rows effective August 19, 2026. Cash prices come from Drugs.com, Cost Plus Drugs and SingleCare, all read September 4, 2026. Cost Plus prices are the pharmacy’s own transparent cost plus 15% plus a $5.00 labor fee, on a 30-count basis, and add $5.00 standard shipping at checkout.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one generic tablet | $0.01652 (7.5 mg) | $0.01759 | $0.01865 (15 mg) |
| Cost Plus Drugs, 30 generic tablets | $5.21 (7.5 mg) | $5.30 | $5.38 (15 mg) |
| Cash price, 30 generic tablets | $4.63 | $4.99 | $9.12 |
| Cash price, 90 generic tablets | $5.59 | $8.23 | $11.75 |
| Average retail, 30 of the 15 mg tablets, no card | $122.22 | $122.22 | $122.22 |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one generic 10 mg capsule | $11.14251 | $11.14251 | $11.14251 |
| Cost Plus Drugs, 30 generic capsules | $258.54 (5 mg) | $267.00 | $275.45 (10 mg) |
| Cash price, 30 generic capsules | $516.21 (10 mg) | $588.05 | $659.89 (5 mg) |
| Generic oral suspension, 100 mL | $877.88 | $926.73 | $975.58 |
| Medicare Part D 2024 spend per claim, tablets | $4.27 | $4.27 | $4.27 |
| Medicare Part D 2024 spend per claim, submicronized capsules | $747.21 | $747.21 | $747.21 |
The tablet numbers are as well corroborated as pricing gets. Four independent sources land in the same place: a pharmacy buys a 15 mg tablet for under two cents, Cost Plus sells 30 for $5.38, Drugs.com’s listings run $4.69 to $9.12 for 30, and SingleCare’s card price is $4.99. If you are quoted more than about $15 for a month of tablets, that is a pharmacy markup rather than the price of the drug.
Where the sources disagree is the unhelped counter price. SingleCare states a $122.22 average retail price for 30 of the 15 mg tablets, while the competitor benchmark shown on Cost Plus’s own page for the same fill is $27.00. That is a four-fold spread between two estimates of the same thing, which tells you the “retail price” of meloxicam is not really a number at all. Treat anything above $30 as a signal to shop.
What Drives the Price
Tablet versus capsule, and it is the whole story. Meloxicam tablets and meloxicam capsules are the same active ingredient at overlapping doses. The capsules are generics of Vivlodex, a submicronized formulation, and only two companies (Lupin and Novitium) hold live approvals for them. In the August 2026 CMS data a 15 mg tablet costs a pharmacy $0.01865 and a 10 mg capsule costs $11.14251. That is roughly 600 times more for the same molecule, and it flows straight through to what you pay.
Every branded version has left the market. Drugs@FDA records Boehringer Ingelheim’s Mobic tablets (NDA 020938) and iCeutica’s Vivlodex capsules (NDA 207233) as discontinued, and the same database records Anjeso, the intravenous meloxicam, and Qmiiz ODT, the orally disintegrating tablet, as discontinued too. In each case the FDA notes the product was not withdrawn for safety or effectiveness reasons. CMS’s acquisition survey returns zero rows for Mobic, Vivlodex, Anjeso and Qmiiz, which is what an absent product looks like in federal data.
Price-comparison sites have not caught up. Several still carry live Mobic price pages built on legacy list prices for a product that is no longer marketed. If a pharmacy or a website quotes you a brand price for meloxicam, ask what they actually have in stock before you agree to anything, because the answer is going to be a generic either way.
The oral suspension is the expensive liquid. Drugs.com prices the generic 7.5 mg/5 mL suspension at $877.88 to $975.58 for 100 mL, or about $8.78 to $9.76 per mL. That one rests on a single source. CMS publishes no NADAC row for meloxicam suspension at all, so there is no federal acquisition benchmark to sanity-check it against, and Cost Plus does not carry it. If a swallowing issue is the only reason a liquid was prescribed, that is worth raising with the prescriber before you fill.
Where you fill it. Because the drug itself costs pennies, essentially all of a tablet price is dispensing fee and markup. That is why a mail pharmacy at $5.38 and a retail counter at $122.22 can both be quoting you the same product on the same day.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Meloxicam tablets are a textbook case where paying cash beats using your pharmacy benefit. If your plan charges a $10 or $15 generic copay, a $4.99 card price or a $5.38 Cost Plus order wins outright, and you never touch the benefit.
The usual tradeoff applies. Money spent 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 five-dollar drug that lost credit almost never matters. The same logic drives our gabapentin cost guide and our prednisone cost guide to the same conclusion.
The calculation flips completely on the capsules. At $258 to $660 for 30, meloxicam capsules are the one form where running it through insurance is likely to be the cheaper path, and where a prior authorization fight may actually be worth having. If your prescription is written for capsules, ask whether tablets would do the same job before you assume the price is fixed. That is a prescriber decision, not a pharmacy one, but it is a fair question to raise.
If a pharmacy hands you a number that does not match anything on this page, run it through our fair price checker before you pay.
How to Pay Less
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Price Cost Plus Drugs before you price anything else. Cost Plus lists meloxicam 15 mg tablets at $5.38 for 30 and 7.5 mg tablets at $5.21 for 30, built openly from manufacturing cost plus a 15% markup plus a $5.00 pharmacy fee, with $5.00 standard shipping added at checkout. On the capsules it is the cheapest source found anywhere: $275.45 for 30 of the 10 mg against $516.21 at Drugs.com’s listings, a 47% cut.
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Run a free discount card on the tablets. SingleCare’s meloxicam page, prices updated September 4, 2026, showed a card price of $4.99 for 30 of the 15 mg tablets against a stated $122.22 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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Ask for a 90-day fill. Drugs.com’s listings put 90 of the 15 mg tablets at $5.59 to $11.75 against $4.69 to $9.12 for 30. Every route charges its fixed costs per fill, so tripling the quantity barely moves the total. Meloxicam is not a controlled substance anywhere in the United States, so 90-day supplies and mail order are both fully available, which is not true of everything in the pain aisle.
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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 4, 2026, contains no meloxicam and no NSAID of any kind. The program is also not one flat $4 list: it runs $4/$10, $9/$24 and $15/$38 tiers plus a $24 inhaler, and its two Pain Management blocks hold only tizanidine ($9/$24) and methocarbamol 750 mg with viscous lidocaine ($15/$38). Ask the pharmacy to check your exact drug and strength rather than assuming.
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Budget for the visit, not just the pills. Meloxicam needs an ongoing prescriber relationship, and at these prices the appointment costs many times the medication. 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.
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Price the non-drug side of the same problem. Meloxicam is usually one line item in a larger arthritis or back-pain budget. Our guides to physical therapy costs, cortisone shot costs and cyclobenzaprine costs cover the rest of it, and colchicine is the comparison point if gout is the reason you are here.
Bottom Line
Budget about $5 to $10 a month for generic meloxicam tablets and treat anything above roughly $30 as a reason to shop rather than a fact about the drug. Two federal datasets and three retail sources all agree on that range, so there is no genuine uncertainty at the cheap end.
The expensive ways to take this medicine are the capsules at $258 to $660 for 30 and the oral suspension at roughly $880 to $976 for 100 mL. Brand Mobic, Vivlodex, Anjeso and Qmiiz ODT are all discontinued, so any brand price you are quoted is a legacy number rather than a live product. If your prescription is written for a capsule or a liquid, that single line on the script is worth more than every discount card in your wallet combined.