Vesicare is the brand name for solifenacin, one of several anticholinergic drugs used for overactive bladder. Every one of them now has a generic, and every one of those generics is cheap. The brand names are not.
The clearest illustration is Vesicare itself. Drugs.com prices 30 brand tablets at $384.46 while Cost Plus Drugs sells 30 generic solifenacin tablets of the same strength for $6.07, a spread of about 60 to 1 on figures read September 3, 2026. This guide prices the whole anticholinergic shelf, brand and generic, using CMS NADAC acquisition data on the August 19, 2026 vintage, the Drugs.com cash price guide, Cost Plus Drugs product pages, and FDA’s Drugs@FDA marketing-status records.
What Does Vesicare Cost Without Insurance?
The table below shows a 30-day supply of each anticholinergic in the class, with pharmacy acquisition cost from CMS NADAC as the floor and published cash prices above it. Watch the quantity column: trospium’s immediate-release tablet is dosed twice a day, so 60 tablets is a month while 30 is half of one.
| Drug (cash, no insurance) | Low | Typical | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generic solifenacin 5 mg, 30 tablets | $4.65 (CMS NADAC, $0.15500 each) | $6.07 (Cost Plus Drugs, before $5 shipping) | $18.17 (Drugs.com high end) |
| Generic solifenacin 10 mg, 30 tablets | $5.26 (CMS NADAC, $0.17539 each) | $14.24 (Drugs.com) | $34.23 for 90 tablets (Drugs.com) |
| Brand Vesicare 5 mg or 10 mg, 30 tablets | $368.02 (CMS NADAC, $12.26739 per 5 mg tablet) | $384.46 (Drugs.com) | $384.46 (Drugs.com) |
| Generic tolterodine ER 4 mg, 30 capsules | $7.60 (CMS NADAC, $0.25330 each) | $20.83 (Drugs.com) | $40.20 (Drugs.com high end) |
| Brand Detrol LA 4 mg, 30 capsules | $185.95 (Drugs.com low end) | $396.82 (CMS NADAC, $13.22740 each, a February 2025 vintage) | $443.49 (Drugs.com high end) |
| Generic trospium 20 mg, 60 tablets | $12.73 (CMS NADAC, $0.21214 each) | $25.89 (Drugs.com) | $30.71 (Drugs.com high end) |
| Generic trospium ER 60 mg, 30 capsules | $50.28 (CMS NADAC, $1.67585 each) | $81.64 (Drugs.com) | $81.91 (Drugs.com high end) |
| Generic tolterodine 2 mg tablet, 60 | $14.90 (CMS NADAC, $0.24829 each) | $30.00 (Drugs.com) | $192.80 for 500 tablets (Drugs.com) |
The Detrol LA row is the one that needs a caveat. Its CMS acquisition cost is a February 19, 2025 vintage, more than eighteen months stale, while every other row in the table is dated August 19, 2026. A stale NADAC row sitting above a live retail price is what a discontinued brand looks like in the data.
What Drives the Price
Brand versus generic, and it is not close
This is the entire story with this drug class. Drugs.com prices brand Vesicare at $384.46 for 30 tablets and generic solifenacin at $14.83 to $18.17 for 30 of the 5 mg, a 21x to 26x gap on the same site. Against the Cost Plus Drugs price of $6.07 the gap is 63x.
Detrol LA shows the same shape: $185.95 to $443.49 for 30 brand capsules on Drugs.com against $20.83 to $40.20 for 30 generic tolterodine ER capsules. Drugs.com lists no manufacturer coupon for Vesicare or for Detrol LA as of September 3, 2026, so there is no route back down on either brand except switching to the generic.
Whether the brand is even still marketed
FDA’s Drugs@FDA record for Astellas NDA 021518 lists both Vesicare tablet strengths as Discontinued, along with the Vesicare LS oral suspension under a separate application. FDA’s record for NDA 021228 lists both Detrol LA capsule strengths as Discontinued as well.
That matters for a cash payer in a practical way. A brand a pharmacy has to special-order is a brand you may wait on and pay a premium for, and the pharmacy has no incentive to quote you a competitive number for it. If a prescription is written for Vesicare by name, asking whether it can be filled as solifenacin is the single highest-value question in this guide.
How many pills a month actually takes
Cash price quotes are almost always given per bottle, not per month, and that hides real money in this class. Solifenacin and tolterodine ER are once-daily products, so 30 tablets is a month. Immediate-release trospium is dosed twice daily, so the honest monthly comparison for trospium is the 60-count at $25.89, not the 30-count.
Get every quote on the same 30-day basis before comparing drugs. A pharmacy quoting “$13 for trospium” may be quoting half a month.
Extended-release costs more, sometimes a lot more
Within trospium, the extended-release 60 mg capsule is $81.64 for 30 on Drugs.com against $25.89 for 60 of the immediate-release tablets, roughly three times the monthly cost. CMS acquisition data shows the same pattern at $1.67585 per ER capsule against $0.21214 per IR tablet.
Tolterodine runs the other way at retail. The ER 4 mg capsule is $20.83 for 30 on Drugs.com while 60 of the 2 mg immediate-release tablets are $30.00, so the once-daily version is actually the cheaper month there.
The pharmacy counter itself
Because these generics cost pharmacies pennies, nearly the whole spread you see is each pharmacy’s own cash-price policy. Cost Plus Drugs publishes a “retail price at other pharmacies” benchmark of $337.50 for 30 solifenacin tablets next to its own $6.07 price. That benchmark is what an unnegotiated retail quote can look like for a drug whose acquisition cost is under $5.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
For the generics in this class, insurance frequently costs more than paying cash. A $10 or $15 generic copay is above the $6.07 Cost Plus price for a month of solifenacin, so running the claim can be a net loss.
For the brands the calculation reverses. At $384.46 a month, brand Vesicare is one of the few products in this category where coverage genuinely matters. But since generic solifenacin exists at every strength the brand comes in, the better move for almost every cash payer is to move to the generic rather than fight a coverage battle over the brand.
Ask the pharmacist for the cash price before the claim is submitted and compare it to the copay. Pharmacists are permitted to tell you which is cheaper. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare covers how the discount-card channel prices generics like these.
How to Pay Less
1. Confirm the prescription can be filled as a generic. Every anticholinergic named in this guide has a generic. Given a 60x brand-to-generic gap on solifenacin, this is worth a phone call to the prescriber’s office before the script is filled rather than after.
2. Price a transparent mail-order pharmacy first. Cost Plus Drugs publishes its full math on the product page: solifenacin 5 mg for 30 tablets is $0.93 in drug cost, $0.14 in 15% markup and $5.00 in pharmacy labor for $6.07, with $5 standard shipping at checkout. Delivered, that is $11.32 against a $337.50 retail benchmark.
3. Compare the drugs, not just the pharmacies. On the September 3, 2026 figures here, a month of generic solifenacin, tolterodine ER and trospium ranges from about $6 to $82 depending on which molecule and which release form. Generic oxybutynin is cheaper than any of them. Which drug is right for you is a clinical question, but the cost spread is large enough that a prescriber should know you are paying cash.
4. Price the newer drugs too before assuming they are out of reach. The beta-3 agonists Myrbetriq and Gemtesa work differently and are priced differently. If the anticholinergics have not worked out, they are worth pricing rather than writing off.
5. Use a free discount card and check three counters. The spread between $6.07 and a $337.50 retail benchmark for the same 30 tablets is the whole game. Our guide to comparing discount cards covers running one drug through multiple cards, and the fair price checker shows what a reasonable cash number looks like.
6. Budget for the workup, not just the prescription. A $6 drug behind a $700 diagnostic workup is a $706 problem. Urodynamic testing and cystoscopy both cost far more than any pill in this guide. Federally funded health centers charge on income-based sliding scales, and our guide to free and sliding-scale clinics explains how those fees work. If a bill has already landed, our walkthrough on negotiating medical bills covers what to ask for and how to get it in writing.
The Bottom Line
Generic solifenacin should cost you between about $6 and $18 for a 30-day supply. If you are quoted three figures for a month of any anticholinergic bladder drug, you are being quoted a brand price, a retail markup, or both.
Brand Vesicare at $384.46 for 30 tablets has no cost justification when the identical generic is $6.07 delivered from a transparent-pricing pharmacy, and FDA now lists the brand as discontinued anyway. Detrol LA is in the same position at $185.95 to $443.49 against $20.83 for the generic.
The one number worth double-checking on your own receipt is the count. Immediate-release trospium is a twice-daily drug, so a 30-tablet quote is half a month. Everything else in this class is once daily and quoted honestly at 30.