Quetiapine is one of the cheapest brand-to-generic collapses in American pharmacy. Medicare Part D covered 9.3 million generic quetiapine claims for 1.4 million people in 2024 at an average of $17.12 per claim, while the 11,938 remaining brand Seroquel claims averaged $728.53 each. Same molecule, 43 times the price.
Two things move a cash payer’s bill here, and dose is not one of them. The first is whether the prescription says immediate-release or extended-release. The second is whether anyone bothered to run a discount card. Every figure below was researched on September 4, 2026.
What Does Seroquel Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey. Every generic row is effective August 19, 2026. The brand vintages are split: brand Seroquel’s 100, 200 and 400 mg rows are effective August 19, 2026, the 25 mg is June 17, 2026, and the 50 mg and 300 mg still carry an April 22, 2026 date. Seroquel XR is older still, ranging from a March 18, 2026 row for the 50 mg and 400 mg back to an October 22, 2025 row for the 150 mg, and CMS publishes no NADAC row at all for the 200 mg XR. Cash prices come from Drugs.com and SingleCare, both read September 4, 2026. The middle column shows a mid-strength example, not a computed average.
| Option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one generic IR tablet | $0.02293 (25 mg) | $0.08566 (200 mg) | $0.15480 (400 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, one generic ER tablet | $0.12066 (50 mg) | $0.21478 (200 mg) | $0.30802 (400 mg) |
| Cash price, 30 generic IR tablets | $9.80 (25 mg) | $11.37 (100 mg) | $14.40 (200 mg) |
| Cash price, 60 generic ER tablets | $29.12 (50 mg) | $44.02 (200 mg) | $57.39 (400 mg) |
| Walmart program price per 30 days, quetiapine 25-300 mg | $8.00 (on a 90-day fill) | $9.00 | $9.00 |
| Discount card, 30 generic IR 100 mg tablets | $8.99 | $8.99 | $11.99 |
| Average retail, 30 generic IR 100 mg, no card | $150.91 | $150.91 | $150.91 |
| Generic IR 150 mg, the outlier strength | $1.22187 (acquisition, 1 tablet) | $1.32 (cash, 1 tablet) | $132.38 (cash, 100 tablets) |
| Brand Seroquel, 100 tablets | $387.40 (25 mg) | $659.13 (100 mg) | $1,901.04 (400 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, brand Seroquel, one tablet | $3.71076 (25 mg) | $6.38067 (100 mg) | $18.68503 (400 mg) |
| Brand Seroquel XR, 60 tablets | $536.84 (50 mg) | $959.11 (200 mg) | $1,473.63 (400 mg) |
| CMS NADAC acquisition cost, brand Seroquel XR, one tablet | $7.76747 (50 mg) | $14.14317 (150 mg) | $23.97506 (400 mg) |
The sources agree closely on the cheap end. Drugs.com’s listed cash prices for generic immediate-release tablets sit between $9.80 and $14.40 for 30, SingleCare’s card price for 30 of the 100 mg is $8.99 after a one-time $3 signup credit and $11.99 without it, and Walmart’s program lists $9 flat. Three independent reads landing inside a $6 band is about as settled as retail drug pricing gets.
What “no discount at all” costs is much less settled. SingleCare puts the average retail price for 30 of the 100 mg tablets at $150.91, and its own per-pharmacy rows on the same page ran from $9.00 at Walmart to $159.00 at CVS. Those chain rows move between reads and should be treated as a picture of the spread rather than a quotable price. Treat $150 as evidence that an unhelped counter price can be absurd, not as the market rate.
What Drives the Price
Immediate-release versus extended-release, which is the whole story. Generic quetiapine ER costs a pharmacy two to four times what the same milligrams cost in immediate-release form: $0.12066 against $0.02822 at 50 mg, and $0.27642 against $0.12852 at 300 mg. Medicare Part D saw the same ratio in 2024, paying $1.3832 per extended-release dosage unit against $0.3146 per immediate-release unit, and $64.98 per ER claim against $17.12. At retail the gap is roughly $29 to $57 for 60 ER tablets against $10 to $15 for 30 IR tablets.
Strength, which is almost irrelevant. This is the unusual part. Quetiapine runs from 25 mg to 400 mg, a 16-fold range, and the pharmacy’s acquisition cost only moves 6.8-fold across it. Thirty tablets of 25 mg cost a pharmacy $0.69 of actual medicine; thirty of the 400 mg cost $4.64. Once a dispensing fee and pharmacy margin land on top, both fills round to about the same $10 to $15. If your dose goes up, your bill usually does not.
The 150 mg immediate-release tablet is the one exception, and it is a big one. FDA’s Drugs@FDA record for Seroquel shows the 150 mg immediate-release strength as discontinued while every other strength stays on the market, and the thin generic supply behind it shows up in the price. CMS puts that tablet’s acquisition cost at $1.22187 against $0.15480 for the 400 mg on the same day, and Drugs.com quotes $132.38 for 100 of them against $36.40 for 100 of the 400 mg. If a prescription lands on 150 mg immediate-release, it is worth asking the pharmacy what the other strengths cost before filling.
Brand versus generic, and who owns the brand now. Drugs@FDA lists Cheplapharm as the current holder of both the Seroquel and Seroquel XR applications, not AstraZeneca, and consumer pricing pages have not all caught up. That matters mostly because the savings programs live with the current owner. Either way the brand is a rounding error in volume terms, with 11,938 Seroquel and 7,036 Seroquel XR Part D claims in 2024 against 9.3 million generic ones.
Whether anyone runs a card. The spread between roughly $9 and $150.91 on the identical 30-tablet fill is bigger than every other decision on this page combined.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Generic quetiapine is a textbook case where the cash price beats a copay. If your plan charges a $10 or $15 generic tier, a $9 Walmart program price or an $8.99 card price wins outright and never touches your pharmacy benefit.
The usual tradeoff is worth stating plainly. 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 drug this cheap that lost credit rarely matters. Our gabapentin cost guide and sertraline cost guide reach the same conclusion for the same reason.
Coverage is where the off-label question turns into a money question. Both SingleCare and Drugs.com note that quetiapine is prescribed for conditions beyond its approved labeling, including insomnia and generalized anxiety, and a plan that decides a prescription falls outside the approved indication can refuse to pay for it. That is not a clinical argument, it is a billing one, and for a drug that costs $9 in cash it usually resolves itself: paying cash is faster than appealing. It resolves very differently if the prescription is for brand Seroquel XR at $1,473 per 60.
If a pharmacy quotes you three different numbers for the same generic fill, run it through our fair price checker before you pay. On this drug, a triple-digit quote is a contract artifact, not the price of the medicine.
How to Pay Less
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Ask whether immediate-release will do. This is the single largest lever and it is the only one that is a prescriber decision rather than a pharmacy one. Extended-release quetiapine costs roughly four times as much per tablet at wholesale and two to four times as much at the counter. It is a fair question to raise at a visit, not something to change on your own.
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Use Walmart’s prescription program, and know it is not a $4 list. Walmart’s drug list, effective March 24, 2025 and read September 4, 2026, puts quetiapine 25 mg, 50 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg and 300 mg in the $9 per 30 days and $24 per 90 days tier under Mental Health. The program actually runs several tiers ($4/$10, $9/$24 and $15/$38), so ask the pharmacy to check your exact strength rather than assuming. The 400 mg tablet and the extended-release version are not on the list at any tier.
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Run a free discount card before every fill. SingleCare’s quetiapine page, prices updated September 4, 2026, showed $11.99 for 30 of the 100 mg tablets, or $8.99 after a one-time $3 signup credit, against a $150.91 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 shift between visits.
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Fill 90 days at a time. Quetiapine is not a federally scheduled controlled substance, so long supplies and mail order are genuinely available, and every route here charges its fixed costs per fill rather than per pill. Walmart’s own list shows the 90-day quantity at $24, which is $8 a month instead of $9, and Drugs.com’s larger pack sizes run down to $0.15 per 25 mg tablet at 90 count against $0.33 at 30 count.
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Call the manufacturer only if you actually need the brand. Seroquelxr.com publishes a savings card carrying a limit of up to $185 per month for cash-paying as well as commercially insured patients after the first $3, with an information line at 1-866-592-6438 run by H2-Pharma. Be realistic about the math: $185 off the $959.11 that Drugs.com lists for 60 of the 200 mg XR tablets still leaves $774, against $44.02 for the same 60 tablets of the generic. There is no equivalent published cash program for brand immediate-release Seroquel.
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Budget for the prescriber visit, not just the pills. Quetiapine requires an ongoing prescribing relationship, and on this drug the appointment costs far more than the medication. Our psychiatrist cost guide covers what those visits run, a free or sliding-scale clinic can often handle refills at little or no cost, and our antidepressant cost guide and trazodone cost guide cover the neighbouring prescriptions people are usually filling at the same time.
Bottom Line
Budget about $9 to $15 a month for generic immediate-release quetiapine at any strength, or $8 a month if you fill 90 days at Walmart’s program price. Treat anything above roughly $30 as a reason to shop rather than a fact about the drug, and treat a triple-digit quote as a mistake worth a second phone call.
The expensive versions are extended-release generic at $29 to $57 per 60 tablets, brand Seroquel at $387 to $1,901 per 100, and brand Seroquel XR at $537 to $1,474 per 60. The 150 mg immediate-release tablet is the strange one, running about eight times the 400 mg tablet because the brand version of that strength was discontinued. If you are filling something in that range, the fix is usually a conversation with the prescriber rather than a different pharmacy. The same logic applies to muscle relaxants, where our cyclobenzaprine cost guide documents an even wider brand gap, and if a bill has already landed, our guide to negotiating medical bills covers what to do next.