Pill Splitting: A Legal Way to Cut Your Drug Costs in Half

Many tablets cost the same regardless of strength. Splitting a double-dose pill can cut your costs by 50%. Here's when it works and when it doesn't.

Here's a quirk of drug pricing that can save you serious money: for many medications, the price of a tablet is the same regardless of the dose. A 20 mg tablet of atorvastatin costs roughly the same as a 40 mg tablet. If your prescribed dose is 20 mg, your doctor can prescribe the 40 mg tablet instead, you split each pill in half, and you've just cut your cost by 50%.

This isn't a hack or a loophole — it's a legitimate, doctor-approved cost-saving strategy that pharmacists and physicians recommend regularly.

Why It Works

Drug manufacturers typically price tablets by count, not by milligram strength. Producing a 10 mg tablet costs roughly the same as producing a 40 mg tablet — the manufacturing, packaging, and distribution costs are nearly identical. So the pharmacy pays the same wholesale price regardless of strength, and charges you the same retail price. Your cost per dose drops by half when you split a double-strength tablet.

When Pill Splitting Works

Pill splitting is appropriate for medications where the dose is easily divisible and the drug is stable when split. Good candidates include most statins (atorvastatin, simvastatin, rosuvastatin), many blood pressure medications (lisinopril, losartan, amlodipine), many antidepressants (sertraline, citalopram), and other common generics available in scored tablets.

"Scored" tablets — those with a line down the middle — are designed to be split evenly. A pill splitter (available for a few dollars at any pharmacy) gives cleaner, more consistent splits than a knife.

When NOT to Split

Never split a pill without your doctor's approval. Some medications should never be split, including extended-release or controlled-release tablets (splitting destroys the time-release mechanism, releasing the full dose at once), capsules filled with liquid or beads, enteric-coated tablets (the coating protects the drug from stomach acid), very small tablets where accurate splitting is impossible, and medications with a narrow therapeutic index, where small dose variations can cause problems (like warfarin or levothyroxine).

How to Do It Right

Use a pill splitter, not a kitchen knife. Split only one or two tablets at a time — pre-splitting an entire bottle can cause the exposed halves to degrade faster. Store split tablets in the original bottle or a similar airtight container. If a tablet crumbles instead of splitting cleanly, it may not be a good candidate for splitting — talk to your pharmacist.

The Savings

On a medication like atorvastatin, pill splitting can save $50 to $100 per year even at already-low generic prices. On more expensive medications, the savings can be much larger. It's one of the simplest ways to reduce prescription costs, and it's endorsed by consumer health advocates, pharmacists, and physicians alike.