Warfarin is one of the cheapest prescriptions in American pharmacy. It is also one of the few where the pills are a rounding error against the cost of taking them safely.
Every other blood thinner on this site can be priced by looking at a pharmacy shelf. Warfarin cannot, because the drug comes bundled with an indefinite schedule of INR blood tests, and those tests are billed separately, by a different entity, at a price nobody quotes you up front. This guide prices both halves. Every figure was researched on September 4, 2026.
What Does Warfarin Cost Without Insurance?
Acquisition costs come from the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost survey, effective August 19, 2026 and current in the file published September 2, 2026. Lab figures come from the CMS Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (file PUF_CLFS_CY2026_Q3V1, rates effective January 1, 2026) and from CMS’s Medicare Physician and Other Practitioners by Geography and Service dataset, which reports 2024 claims. Cash prices were read September 4, 2026.
| Item | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| NADAC acquisition cost, one warfarin tablet | $0.08667 (2 mg) | $0.09258 (all 9 strengths) | $0.09714 (10 mg) |
| NADAC, 30 days at one tablet daily | $2.60 | $2.78 | $2.91 |
| Walmart Prescription Program, 30 tablets | $4.00 | $4.00 | $4.00 |
| Walmart Prescription Program, 90 tablets | $10.00 ($3.33/mo) | $10.00 | $10.00 |
| Cost Plus Drugs, 30 tablets | $6.24 (5 mg) | $6.47 (2 mg) | $6.72 (7.5 mg) |
| Drugs.com cash price, 30 tablets | $6.34 (2 mg) | $6.67 (5 mg) | $7.22 (2.5 mg) |
| INR test, CPT 85610, Medicare rate | $4.19 (allowed) | $4.29 (fee schedule) | $4.29 |
| INR test, CPT 85610, average billed charge | $27.41 (office) | $27.41 | $33.66 (facility) |
| Blood draw, CPT 36415 | $8.49 (allowed) | $8.49 | $21.82 (billed) |
| Home INR supplies, G0249, per 4 tests | $87.72 (allowed) | $87.72 | $339.79 (billed) |
| CoaguChek XS PT strips, box of 48 | $270.00 | $270.00 | $270.00 |
| One year, drug plus 12 INR checks | about $200 | about $400 | about $680 |
The drug arithmetic is trivial. A pharmacy pays between $0.087 and $0.097 for a warfarin tablet, so a 30-day bottle contains under $3 of medicine at every strength from 1 mg to 10 mg. Warfarin is also flat-priced: unlike most drugs, the 10 mg tablet costs essentially the same as the 1 mg, which is why Walmart charges a single $4 across all nine strengths.
The monitoring arithmetic is where the real money sits. At Medicare’s allowed amounts, a monthly INR check plus the blood draw is $12.68, or about $152 a year. At the average charge actually submitted on those claims, the same pair is $49.23, or about $591 a year. Both numbers dwarf the $48 to $86 you will spend on the pills.
What Drives the Price
How often you get tested. This is the single biggest variable and nobody can quote it to you in advance. A stable patient may test every four to six weeks; someone newly started, recently hospitalized, or on interacting medications may test weekly. Twelve tests a year and fifty-two tests a year are the same prescription at four times the cost.
Where the blood is drawn. CMS’s 2024 claims data shows CPT 85610 billed 3.26 million times in an office setting at an average submitted charge of $27.41, and 1,532 times in a facility setting at $33.66. The allowed amount was $4.19 in both. A hospital outpatient lab and a clinic finger-stick are the same test at different prices.
Whether a visit is billed alongside the draw. An INR check bundled into an office visit costs far more than a nurse-only draw. CPT 99213, the standard established-patient visit, carries an average submitted charge of $189.25 against an $85.37 allowed amount in the same dataset. Ask whether you are being scheduled for a lab-only appointment.
Brand versus generic, which barely matters here. Brand Coumadin is gone. FDA’s Drugs@FDA record for NDA 009218 shows every Coumadin product discontinued, and NADAC returns no Coumadin rows at all. Jantoven, the Upsher-Smith branded generic, is still marketed and carries NADAC prices identical to unbranded warfarin to the fifth decimal at all nine strengths. There is no expensive version of this drug left to accidentally buy.
Home testing, if you can get it. Self-testing shifts the cost from per-visit lab billing to equipment and strips. Medicare’s home INR codes are priced at $134.92 allowed for the initial training (G0248), $87.72 allowed per four tests for materials and equipment (G0249), and $8.40 allowed per four tests for the clinician’s review (G0250). Submitted charges on those same claims are $392.82, $339.79 and $27.27. Buying strips outright is a different market: Save Rite Medical lists 48 CoaguChek XS PT strips at $270.00, which is $5.63 per test and was on backorder the day we checked.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
For the pills, cash wins almost always. A $4 Walmart fill or a $6.24 Cost Plus fill beats nearly every copay tier, and there is no scenario where running a $3 bottle of warfarin through a pharmacy benefit is worth the paperwork. The usual caveat holds: cash spending does not credit toward a deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
For the lab work, the calculus flips. This is one of the few places on this site where insurance is clearly the better tool, because the gap between the billed charge and the negotiated rate is six to one. CMS’s data shows $27.41 submitted against $4.19 allowed on the prothrombin time and $21.82 against $8.49 on the venipuncture. A cash payer with no negotiated rate is exposed to the top of that range twelve or more times a year.
That gap is also your negotiating leverage. Medicare’s published rate is a public number, and it is reasonable to ask a lab to price a routine INR closer to it. If a lab or clinic bills you at charges, run the figure through our fair price checker and then use our guide to negotiating medical bills before you pay.
How to Pay Less
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Fill at Walmart and ask for 90 days. The Prescription Program list effective March 24, 2025 prices warfarin at $4 for 30 tablets and $10 for 90, and all nine strengths are on it. That is $3.33 a month, and it is the lowest published cash price for this drug anywhere. Confirm at the counter, since program pricing can vary by state.
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Price a transparent mail pharmacy if Walmart is inconvenient. Cost Plus Drugs charges $6.24 for 30 tablets of the 5 mg, and its own breakdown shows $1.08 of drug, $0.16 of markup and $5.00 of pharmacy labor, with $5.25 shipping added at checkout. On a drug this cheap the dispensing fee is the whole price, so order 90 days at a time.
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Run a discount card if you fill anywhere else. Drugs.com lists 30 tablets at $6.34 to $7.22 without a card, which is already low, but a card can matter on a 100-count bottle. Our comparison of GoodRx vs. SingleCare explains how to check both on the same prescription.
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Ask the clinic for a lab-only INR appointment and a cash price. You want CPT 85610 quoted by itself, not folded into an office visit. Say the code. If the answer is a three-figure number, that is a charge, not a price, and the Medicare rate of $4.29 gives you a floor to argue from. Our blood work cost guide covers how lab pricing works more generally.
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Use an anticoagulation clinic or a free clinic rather than an ER or urgent care for routine checks. A free or sliding-scale clinic can run the INR and adjust the dose at little or no cost, and dedicated anticoagulation clinics are usually cheaper per check than a hospital outpatient lab, where the average submitted charge runs 23% higher.
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Ask whether home self-testing is realistic for you. It is not cheap up front and coverage rules are narrow, but at $5.63 a strip, weekly self-testing costs about $293 a year in supplies against $591 a year for monthly office draws billed at charges. It only pays off if you are testing often.
Bottom Line
Budget $4 to $7 a month for warfarin itself and $150 to $590 a year for the INR testing that comes with it. The honest all-in figure is roughly $200 to $680 for a first year, most of it lab bills.
That is still dramatically cheaper than the alternatives. Our Eliquis cost guide puts apixaban at $345 for a 30-day supply and our Xarelto cost guide puts rivaroxaban at $197, or roughly $4,140 and $2,364 a year with no routine blood tests. Warfarin is not free, but the monitoring would have to cost about ten times what it does before the newer drugs became the cheaper choice on price alone. If you are also on an antiplatelet, our Plavix cost guide covers that side of the bill.