Yellow fever is the one travel vaccine you cannot shop for the way you shop for a flu shot. Under the International Health Regulations, it has to be given at a center that a state health department has authorized, because only that center holds the uniform stamp that validates your International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis, the yellow card that some countries check at the border. CDC’s Yellow Fever Vaccination Center Registry FAQ puts the rule bluntly: providers are authorized by state health departments, and CDC does not authorize providers.
That restriction, plus the fact that only one yellow fever vaccine is licensed in the United States, is the entire reason this shot costs three to four times what a flu shot costs. There is no pharmacy counter option, no retail price war, and most authorized centers are dedicated travel clinics that bill a consultation fee on top of the dose. This guide covers current published cash prices as of September 2026, the fees that stack onto them, how yellow fever compares to the other travel vaccines you may be buying the same day, and whether the old supply problem still matters.
What Does the Yellow Fever Vaccine Cost Without Insurance?
The prices below come from four authorized yellow fever vaccination centers that publish their own self-pay price lists, re-checked September 4, 2026. Two are public health clinics run by a city or a hospital district and two are private travel clinics, which is roughly the spread you will find in any large metro.
| Yellow fever line item | Low | Average | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| YF-VAX, single dose | $280 (Travel Clinic of NYC) | $295-$300 (NY Center, Denver Health) | $322 (SF AITC) |
| Pre-travel consultation fee | $70 (SF AITC travel health visit) | $95 (both New York clinics) | $95 |
| All-in, one visit, one vaccine | $300 (Denver Health, no consult required under 60) | $375-$390 (both New York clinics) | $392 (SF AITC) |
| Yellow card reissue after loss | $51 (SF AITC) | $51 | $51 |
| Medical waiver instead of the vaccine | $61 (SF AITC) | $61 | $61 |
| Hepatitis A, same visit, for comparison | $110 (Denver Health) | $118 (SF AITC) | $135 (NY Center) |
| Rabies pre-exposure, per dose, for comparison | $360 (Denver Health) | $399 (SF AITC) | $475 (NY Center) |
A few notes on reading that table. Denver Health’s $300 explicitly “includes International Certificate,” and its page says patients aged 9 months through 59 years can get the yellow fever vaccine without a full travel consultation, which is why $300 is the realistic floor for an all-in visit. Travelers 60 and older at Denver Health must book a travel consultation at $70 because of the higher adverse event risk in that age group, taking them to $370.
San Francisco’s AITC clinic sits at the top with $322 per dose plus a $70 travel health visit fee per traveler, or $392 all in. The two New York clinics land in between at $280 and $295 for the dose, each with a $95 consultation fee, so $375 and $390 respectively. The New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine also collects a $25 scheduling fee at booking that is applied toward the visit.
Across all four sources the dose alone spans $280 to $322, a 15% spread, and the all-in visit spans roughly $300 to $400. That is unusually tight for a cash-pay medical service, and it is a direct consequence of the fact that every seller is buying the same single licensed product.
What Drives the Price
Only one product, and only authorized sellers
The 2026 CDC Yellow Book states that only one yellow fever vaccine, YF-VAX from Sanofi Pasteur, is licensed for use in the United States. CDC’s 2021 clinical update on the return of YF-VAX adds that providers need a current Yellow Fever Vaccination Stamp issued by their state or territorial health department before they can even order it from the manufacturer. Fewer sellers means less price pressure than you get on a routine vaccine that any pharmacy can stock.
The consultation fee is the real add-on
Nearly every travel clinic charges a pre-travel consult separately from the vaccine, from $70 at San Francisco AITC to $95 at both New York clinics. If yellow fever is the only shot you need, that fee can be 25% of your bill. Public health clinics that let low-risk adults skip the consult, as Denver Health does for ages 9 months through 59 years, are the cheapest door.
Public clinic versus private travel clinic
The two city and hospital-district clinics in the table are not systematically cheaper than the private ones. Denver Health at $300 undercuts San Francisco AITC at $322, and the private Travel Clinic of New York City is the cheapest dose in the set at $280. Do not assume the health department wins here the way it usually does. Call both.
The paperwork has its own price list
San Francisco AITC charges $51 to reissue a lost International Certificate or yellow fever certificate, $61 for a yellow fever vaccination waiver, and $41 for form completion. If you have a medical contraindication and need a waiver rather than the shot, that is a real line item.
Your other travel vaccines
Yellow fever is rarely bought alone. Adding a typhoid vaccine, a hepatitis A vaccine or a rabies pre-exposure series to the same visit is where a single trip’s vaccine budget goes from $300 to over $1,000. The upside is that you only pay the consultation fee once.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Travel vaccines sit outside the routine adult immunization schedule, so the preventive-care rules that make a flu shot free at an in-network pharmacy generally do not apply. Many plans exclude travel vaccines entirely or apply them to the deductible.
More to the point, most authorized yellow fever centers do not bill insurance at all. San Francisco AITC states it is “currently unable to bill insurance” and has opted out of Medicare. Denver Health’s travel clinic says it does not bill insurance plans for travel-related services and that Medicaid does not pay for most of them. Both provide an itemized receipt you can submit yourself.
That means the published cash price is usually the only price, which is actually good news: there is no chargemaster markup to argue with and no surprise bill weeks later. Pay at the visit, keep the itemized receipt, and file it with your plan if you want to try for reimbursement. If a clinic does bill you afterward for something you were not quoted, our guide to negotiating medical bills covers how to push back.
How to Pay Less
Start with the CDC clinic search, then call on price. CDC and state health departments maintain a public registry of authorized yellow fever vaccination centers with a search tool on the Travelers’ Health site. It lists who can legally give the shot but not what they charge, so pull the list and call three. The published spread of $280 to $322 on the dose and $70 to $95 on the consult means the same shot can differ by more than $100 across town.
Ask whether you can skip the pre-travel consult. Some public clinics let healthy adults under 60 book a short vaccination-only appointment. Denver Health does exactly this, which is why its $300 all-in beats clinics with cheaper doses. If you already know what you need and do not want malaria or travelers’ diarrhea prescriptions, ask for a vaccine-only slot.
Bundle every shot into one visit. The consultation fee is charged per traveler, not per vaccine. If you also need typhoid, hepatitis A or polio, getting them all at the same appointment spreads that $70 to $95 across the whole list instead of paying it twice.
Check the county health department travel clinic. City and county travel clinics were two of the four price sources in this guide and both publish their fees openly, which private practices often do not. Our guide to free and sliding-scale clinics covers how to find public health options near you, and some of them run reduced-cost programs for the routine vaccines you may need in the same visit.
Do not buy a booster you do not need. This is the single biggest way people overpay. CDC’s Yellow Book states that a single primary dose provides sustained immunity and lifelong protection, and that the International Health Regulations were amended in 2016 so a completed yellow card is valid for the lifetime of the vaccinee. Countries cannot require proof of revaccination if your last dose was more than 10 years ago. If you were vaccinated in 2009 and a travel agent tells you to redo it, check your card first. Finding it is cheaper than a new $300 dose, and even a $51 reissue at San Francisco AITC beats buying the vaccine again.
Sanity-check any quote well above $322. Some national travel clinic chains do not publish prices at all. Run the number through our fair price tool before you accept a quote that is far outside the published range, and ask what the quoted figure includes.
Is the Yellow Fever Vaccine Still in Short Supply?
This question follows the vaccine around because of a real shortage that is now years in the past, and a lot of older travel advice has not caught up.
Here is the current picture. A YF-VAX manufacturing disruption led CDC to warn in 2017 that the US supply would be depleted, and Sanofi Pasteur imported Stamaril, a comparable yellow fever vaccine made in France, under an expanded-access investigational new drug protocol at a limited number of US clinics. The 2026 CDC Yellow Book describes that arrangement in the past tense: Stamaril was imported and used from 2015 to 2021 during a US shortage. CDC’s clinical update announcing that YF-VAX was once again available for purchase in the United States was published in 2021.
As of September 2026, YF-VAX is the only yellow fever vaccine licensed in the United States and the expanded-access route is closed. That means you should not go looking for a Stamaril clinic, and you should treat any page that tells you to as out of date. Individual clinics can still be temporarily out of stock, so confirm availability when you call, especially if your trip is inside four weeks. CDC notes the certificate is valid beginning 10 days after the date of vaccination, so build that lead time into your plans.
One last practical note for anyone assembling medical paperwork this year rather than planning a vacation: the vaccination record review inside an immigration medical exam does not include yellow fever, which is not on the CDC’s required list for adjustment of status. If a clinic tries to sell you one as part of that process, it is an upsell, not a requirement.