Typhoid is one of the few vaccines where the US sells two completely different products for the same job at two very different prices, and where the cheaper one is also the longer-lasting one. That means the order of your decisions (which vaccine, then where to get it) can swing the bill by $200 or more.
The other thing that separates typhoid from a flu shot is the door you walk through. Travel vaccines are routinely given at dedicated travel clinics, and almost every travel clinic charges a pre-travel consult or clinic visit fee on top of the vaccine, typically $30 to $94 per traveler. That fee is the number most people forget to budget for, and it is often larger than the gap between the two vaccines. This guide covers current cash prices for both options as of September 2026, the fees that get stacked on top, and how typhoid fits into a broader travel vaccine budget.
What Does the Typhoid Vaccine Cost Without Insurance?
There are two typhoid vaccines licensed in the US. Per the CDC’s typhoid prevention page, last updated July 13, 2026, the oral vaccine (Vivotif) is four capsules taken one every other day, licensed from age 6, with a booster every five years. The injectable vaccine (Typhim Vi) is a single shot, licensed from age 2, with a booster every two years. Both are supposed to be finished at least two weeks before travel.
The table below combines the cash prices Costco and CVS publish on their own sites, the self-pay price lists published by San Francisco’s city-run AITC clinic (effective July 1, 2026) and the Public Health Institute at Denver Health (effective July 8, 2026), and Drugs.com cash price guide figures, all re-checked September 4, 2026.
| Typhoid option | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral Vivotif, 4 capsules (about 5 years) | $119.83 (Costco) | $123.87 (Drugs.com cash price) | $173 (SF AITC travel clinic) |
| Injectable Typhim Vi, single dose (about 2 years) | $184.99 (CVS out of pocket) | $200 (Denver Health self-pay) | $215 (SF AITC travel clinic) |
| Travel clinic pre-travel consult | $30 (Denver Health clinic visit) | $70-$94 (Denver Health and University Hospitals) | $139-$298 (extended and multi-destination visits) |
| Vaccine administration fee | $20 (each dose after the first, UH) | $26 (SF AITC) | $35 (first vaccination, UH) |
| All-in: capsules filled at a pharmacy | $120 | $124 | $173 (at a travel clinic) |
| All-in: shot at a travel clinic | $215 | $270-$309 | $350+ |
A few notes on how to read that. Costco’s $119.83 for Vivotif comes from its own immunization price list revised August 10, 2026, and Costco does not stock the injectable version at all, so the warehouse-club discount only helps you on the oral route. CVS says it can give the injectable typhoid vaccine at the pharmacy counter and charges $184.99 if you pay out of pocket, while the oral capsules require a prescription from a MinuteClinic provider or another clinician.
The travel clinic tier is where the price climbs. Denver Health’s immunization and travel clinic charges $30 for a clinic visit and $70 for a full travel consultation, San Francisco’s AITC charges $70 per traveler for the initial international-trip visit before any vaccine cost, and University Hospitals in Ohio charges $94 for a standard pre-travel consult, $139 for an extended visit covering three or more destinations, and $298 for a round-the-world consult. University Hospitals adds $35 for the first vaccination and $20 for each additional one. Those numbers vary widely by clinic and region, so ask for the consult fee and the administration fee separately when you call.
For historical context, a 2025 analysis in Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases (via PubMed Central) looked at 2016 through 2022 US claims and found average per-person typhoid vaccination costs of $132.91 for the injectable and $81.23 for the oral vaccine, with pharmacy settings cheaper than clinics on both. Those averages sit below today’s cash sticker prices, but they confirm the same two patterns: oral beats injectable, and pharmacy beats clinic.
What Drives the Price
Which of the two vaccines you get
This is the single biggest lever. The oral course is $120 to $173 and the shot is $185 to $215, a gap of roughly $40 to $95 before anything else is added. Which one is appropriate for you is a clinical question for your pharmacist or clinician, not a pricing decision, but it is worth knowing the price difference exists before that conversation so you can ask about it.
How long the protection lasts
Per-year cost is where the gap really opens up. Using CDC’s booster intervals, the oral course covers about five years, so $120 to $173 works out to roughly $24 to $35 per year. The single shot covers about two years, so $185 to $215 works out to roughly $92 to $108 per year. For anyone who travels to the same regions repeatedly, that difference compounds fast.
Pharmacy versus travel clinic
Same vaccine, different overhead. The capsules are a pharmacy fill, so a warehouse club or a chain pharmacy can hand them over for the drug price alone. A travel clinic bills a medical visit, and that visit is priced as a consultation whether you leave with one vaccine or five. If typhoid is the only thing on your list, a pharmacy is almost always the cheaper door.
The consult fee structure
Travel clinics price the visit, not the vaccine count, which means the consult fee is punishing if you need one vaccine and efficient if you need four. At University Hospitals, one traveler getting four self-pay vaccines pays $94 plus $35 plus three times $20, or $189 in fees. That same $189 spread across four vaccines is about $47 each, versus the full $94 to $129 if typhoid is your only shot.
Where you live
Cash prices for the same vial vary by metro area and clinic type. Public health department and university travel clinics tend to publish flat price lists, while private travel-medicine chains often quote by phone. Call at least two, and use our fair price checker to sanity check any quote.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Travel vaccines sit in an awkward gap. The ACA requires most plans to cover routinely recommended adult vaccines at no cost, but typhoid is not on the routine adult schedule for the general population, so many plans either exclude it or run it through the deductible as a regular medical benefit. That is why the Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases analysis found out-of-pocket costs made up 21% of total spending on the injectable and 33% on the oral vaccine even among people with claims on file.
Practically, that means two things. First, if you have insurance, call your plan and ask specifically whether typhoid vaccine is covered and at what site of care, because a pharmacy fill and a travel clinic visit may be adjudicated completely differently. Second, if you are uninsured or your plan excludes travel vaccines, do not assume the clinic’s insurance rate is your price. Ask for the self-pay or cash price up front, since the published cash lists above are frequently lower than what gets billed to a deductible.
How to Pay Less
Price the oral route first. At $119.83 at Costco and about $124 as a cash pharmacy fill, the capsules are the cheapest typhoid option in the country right now, and they are dispensed at a pharmacy counter, so you can often skip a travel clinic fee entirely. Costco’s pharmacy is generally accessible without a membership, though the member price may not apply.
Bundle your travel vaccines into one visit. Because the consult fee is per visit and not per vaccine, getting typhoid, hepatitis A, and anything else you need in a single appointment cuts the effective fee per shot by more than half. Book one appointment, not three.
Use a city, county, or university travel clinic. Public and academic travel clinics publish flat price lists you can compare before booking, and their consult fees ($70 at San Francisco’s AITC, $94 at University Hospitals) run well below what private travel-medicine chains often quote. Federally funded community health centers charge on a sliding scale and cannot turn you away for inability to pay; our guide to free clinics and sliding-scale care explains how to find one.
Run the oral capsules through a discount card. Vivotif is a prescription pharmacy product, so free discount programs can apply where a travel clinic’s bundled price cannot. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare covers how those cards work and when each one wins.
Ask for the itemized quote before you book. Travel clinics often quote a single all-in number. Ask them to break out the consult fee, the vaccine price, and the administration fee, then compare only the vaccine line against the pharmacy prices above. If you are already holding a surprise bill from a travel visit, our guide to negotiating medical bills walks through what to say.
Check whether you need it at all before you pay. The CDC’s destination pages list which countries carry a typhoid recommendation. Confirming your itinerary against that list before booking a $94 consult is free, and it is the only step here that can take the cost to zero.
Where Typhoid Fits in a Travel Vaccine Budget
Typhoid is usually the middle item on a travel vaccine list, not the expensive one. Using the San Francisco AITC price list effective July 1, 2026, hepatitis A is $118, typhoid is $173 (oral) to $215 (injection), yellow fever is $322, and the rabies pre-exposure vaccine is $399 per dose before you account for the multi-dose series.
For a typical Southeast Asia or South Asia trip, a traveler who needs hepatitis A plus typhoid is looking at roughly $290 to $400 in vaccines plus one $70 to $94 consult. Add yellow fever for parts of Africa or South America and the total moves past $600. Add rabies pre-exposure for a long rural stay and you can clear $1,500, because rabies is a multi-dose series.
Yellow fever deserves its own budgeting exercise, partly because it is the priciest single travel vaccine and partly because only certified centers can issue the yellow card some countries require at the border. Denver Health lists yellow fever at $300 including the international certificate, and notes that travelers 60 and older must book a $70 travel consultation to receive it, while San Francisco AITC lists it at $322. For the two hepatitis vaccines, see our guides to hepatitis A vaccine cost and hepatitis B vaccine cost, and for the pre-exposure series, our rabies vaccine cost guide. If you are pricing an entire adult catch-up schedule rather than a trip, our overview of vaccine costs without insurance is the better starting point.
One more line item worth knowing about: some travel clinics and employers will accept proof of prior immunity rather than repeating a vaccine, which is a blood test rather than a shot. San Francisco AITC prices those immunity titers at $50 to $138 each, so it is worth asking whether a test is cheaper than a repeat dose before you book.
Bottom Line
Without insurance, budget about $120 for the oral typhoid capsules at a warehouse-club or chain pharmacy and about $185 to $215 for the injectable, then add $30 to $94 for the visit if a travel clinic is your only route. The oral course is both the cheaper option and the longer-lasting one, which is not a tradeoff most vaccines offer.
If your trip needs more than one travel vaccine, do it all in one appointment so you pay the consult fee once. If typhoid is the only thing on your list, price a pharmacy before you price a travel clinic, and get the quote itemized either way.