Zyrtec is cetirizine hydrochloride, a once-daily antihistamine that has been available without a prescription since the late 2000s. Like most of the allergy aisle it is a pure cash purchase for almost everyone, because commercial drug plans generally do not reimburse over-the-counter medicines.
What makes cetirizine worth a careful look is that the spread between the branded box and the store-brand bottle is one of the widest on the shelf, and the adjacent options (Zyrtec-D behind the counter, and levocetirizine sold as Xyzal) are priced on completely different logic. This guide lays out the per-tablet math for each. All prices were checked September 5, 2026.
What Does Zyrtec Cost Without Insurance?
Cetirizine is a once-a-day tablet, so cents per tablet equals cents per day. That is the number to shop on, and retailers now print it for you: Walmart shows a price per 100 count and Sam’s Club shows a price per each.
| Option | Low | Average / typical | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Zyrtec 10 mg, per tablet | 26.7 cents | 49.5 cents | $1.19 |
| Brand Zyrtec 10 mg, one package | $5.97 (5 ct) | $19.97 (30 ct) | $39.97 (90 ct) |
| Store-brand cetirizine 10 mg, per tablet | 3.7 cents | 9.4 cents | 21.3 cents |
| Store-brand cetirizine, one bottle | $2.98 (14 ct) | $14.78 (400 ct) | $20.88 (365 ct) |
| Brand Zyrtec-D 12 Hour, per tablet | $1.26 | not published | $1.46 |
| Generic levocetirizine 5 mg, per tablet | 5.2 cents (CMS, Rx listings) | 22.0 cents (CMS, OTC listings) | 28.2 cents (Walmart retail) |
| What pharmacies pay (CMS NADAC), cetirizine 10 mg | 6.3 cents | 6.3 cents | 6.3 cents |
Walmart’s Zyrtec listing prices the brand at $19.97 for 30 tablets, $29.67 for 60 and $39.97 for 90, which the site converts to $66.57, $49.45 and $44.41 per 100 tablets. A five-pack of single-dose sachets is $5.97, or $119.40 per 100 tablets. Sam’s Club sells a 120-count Zyrtec pack for $31.98, marked down from $39.98 with $8 off through September 20, at 27 cents each.
Walmart’s Equate cetirizine ladder runs $2.98 for 14 tablets, $7.48 for 45, $12.88 for 90, $16.88 for 180 and $20.88 for 365, which the product page labels as 21.3, 16.6, 14.3, 9.4 and 5.7 cents per tablet. Sam’s Club’s Member’s Mark 400-count bottle is $14.78, down from $14.98, at about 4 cents each.
CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost data effective August 19, 2026 prices cetirizine 10 mg at $0.06293 per tablet, which is what an average pharmacy pays a wholesaler. The Member’s Mark bottle sells below that figure, which tells you the warehouse private-label channel is genuinely cheaper than the pharmacy supply chain for this molecule, not merely discounted.
What Drives the Price
Brand versus store brand. About a 7 to 1 gap at comparable counts. Sam’s Club’s own shelf carries brand Zyrtec at 27 cents a tablet and Member’s Mark cetirizine at 4 cents.
Count. The small package is the expensive one, always. Equate cetirizine is 21.3 cents a tablet in a 14-count and 5.7 cents in a 365-count. Brand Zyrtec is $1.19 a tablet in a five-dose sachet pack and 44.4 cents in a 90-count bottle.
Format. Anything that dissolves, gels or chews costs more. Walmart prices Zyrtec liquid-gel capsules at $17.82 for 25 (marked from $19.97) and citrus dissolve tablets at $17.82 for 24, both above the per-tablet rate of the plain 90-count bottle. The 5 mg low-dose tablet is $20.67 for 35, or 59.1 cents each, more per tablet than the standard strength.
The decongestant. Adding pseudoephedrine roughly quintuples the per-dose price. Zyrtec-D 12 Hour is $30.17 for 24 tablets ($1.26 each) and $17.48 for 12 on Walmart’s pseudoephedrine listing, against roughly 67 cents for a plain 30-count Zyrtec tablet. The Equate cetirizine-D equivalent is $16.37 at 68.2 cents each, which works out to a 24-count, so the generic saves real money here.
Packaging status, not the molecule. CMS data shows levocetirizine 5 mg listed at $0.22042 per tablet under over-the-counter NDCs and $0.05170 under prescription NDCs. Same drug, same strength, four times the acquisition cost purely because of how it is packaged and labeled for retail.
Membership. The best per-tablet prices here sit behind a paid warehouse club membership, and clubs price by warehouse, so an online figure may not match the shelf at your local location. Factor the annual membership fee in if allergy medicine is the only reason you would join.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
For plain cetirizine there is essentially nothing to insure. It is an over-the-counter drug, and most commercial plans exclude OTC purchases entirely. The narrow exceptions are Medicare Advantage plans that issue an OTC allowance card and some state Medicaid or CHIP programs that cover cetirizine when a prescriber writes for it, including the children’s oral solution, which CMS data still tracks under prescription NDCs.
Chasing a prescription for a drug that costs 4 cents a tablet at Sam’s Club is not a strategy on cash. A self-pay office visit runs into the low hundreds in most markets, which our doctor visit cost guide breaks down, and there is no counter price hiding behind the prescription that beats the club shelf.
Zyrtec-D is the one product where you must interact with the pharmacy counter, and it is about regulation, not price. FDA states that under the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, sales of pseudoephedrine products are limited to behind the counter, purchasers must present photo identification, the amount an individual may buy each month is limited, and stores must retain personal information about purchasers for at least two years, with DEA enforcing. In most states no prescription is required, just ID.
If you are filling a written prescription for anything in this class, it is still worth running a discount card before you pay. Card prices for named chains move session to session and should be treated as quotes to verify at the counter rather than fixed figures. Our GoodRx vs. SingleCare comparison covers how to check both.
How to Pay Less
Switch to the store brand and buy the big bottle. Going from a 30-count brand Zyrtec box at $19.97 to a 400-count Member’s Mark bottle at $14.78 takes your cost per day from about 67 cents to about 4 cents. For daily use that is roughly $230 a year.
Never buy the travel pack as your supply. Zyrtec’s five-dose sachet pack works out to $119.40 per 100 tablets on Walmart’s own math, which is more than 20 times the price of the same drug in a 365-count Equate bottle.
Price levocetirizine against cetirizine before you assume. Equate levocetirizine 5 mg is $9.88 for 35 tablets at Walmart, or 28.2 cents each, which beats every brand Zyrtec price but loses badly to a 365-count Equate cetirizine bottle at 5.7 cents. Which molecule is appropriate is a clinical question, but if a clinician has said either is fine, price both at the same count.
Buy plain and add a decongestant only when you need one. At $1.26 a tablet, Zyrtec-D costs more than 20 times a store-brand cetirizine tablet. Buying the plain antihistamine cheaply and handling congestion separately, if a pharmacist agrees that suits you, is usually the cheaper structure.
Use pre-tax dollars. The IRS confirmed that the CARES Act made over-the-counter drugs reimbursable from HSAs, health FSAs, Archer MSAs and HRAs without a prescription for amounts paid after December 31, 2019. Keep the receipt, including for behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine purchases.
Compare pharmacy counters for the things you cannot buy off a shelf. Our guides to Walmart pharmacy prices, Costco pharmacy prices and Cost Plus Drugs prices cover where cash prescriptions land cheapest.
If the visit itself is the barrier, start with a community clinic. Federally supported health centers charge on an income-based sliding scale. Our guide to free clinics and sliding-scale care explains how to find one and what to expect to pay.
When a 4-Cent Pill Stops Being the Whole Answer
An oral antihistamine is the cheapest rung of allergy care. Everything above it costs meaningfully more, and knowing those numbers in advance makes the next conversation with a clinician easier.
A steroid nasal spray is roughly comparable in price; see Flonase cost. A different oral antihistamine may suit better or cost less; see Claritin cost for loratadine and our montelukast cost guide for the prescription tablet option. Identifying triggers is priced in allergy testing cost without insurance, immunotherapy in our allergy shots cost guide, and the biologic tier in Xolair cost. If severe reactions are part of the picture, epinephrine pricing is covered in our EpiPen cost guide and Neffy cost guide.
None of that is guidance on what to take. It is a price map so a cost conversation starts from real figures.
The bottom line for September 2026: brand Zyrtec runs 27 to 67 cents a tablet at the retailers we checked, the identical store-brand cetirizine runs 3.7 to 21 cents, and the single highest-value move on this drug is putting the 30-count brand box back and buying a several-hundred-count generic bottle instead.