Stephen at Superwild · 15 May 2026 · 9 min read

What we found — the UK Dog Medication Price Index, May 2026

The May 2026 edition of the Vet Bill Saver UK Dog Medication Price Index is published. 78 manually-curated medications, six VMD-approved online pharmacies, full vet-vs-online comparison, refreshed monthly. Three findings worth flagging.

Finding 1 — the biggest mark-up isn't Apoquel. It's gabapentin.

The headline-grabbing case for online dispensing is usually Apoquel, because it's expensive at the vet in absolute terms — typically £75–£110 a month. But the ratio story is somewhere else entirely.

Gabapentin 100 mg capsules are a long-off-patent human generic. The wholesale trade price is roughly 4–8 pence per capsule for the strengths a UK vet is most likely to prescribe. The cheapest VMD-approved online pharmacy retails them at around 9–11p per capsule. The average UK vet practice charges £1.40–£2.80 per capsule — a trade-to-vet ratio of roughly 15–35×.

The mechanism: fixed minimum dispensing fees absorb the dispensary's overhead on every line, irrespective of the underlying drug cost. On a £45/month Apoquel pack the fee is invisible inside the larger price. On a 30-tablet pack of gabapentin that costs the practice 90p wholesale, the dispensing fee makes the same line £45–£60. The ratio explodes; the absolute mark-up looks small. From an owner's perspective the £30+ monthly saving is real money.

Same pattern across the cheap-generics family:

• Prednisolone 5 mg — vet ~£18/mo, online ~£4/mo for a typical course.
• Metronidazole 250 mg — vet ~£22/course, online ~£6/course.
• Furosemide 40 mg — vet ~£20/mo, online ~£7/mo.
• Tramadol 50 mg — vet ~£25 for a 30-tablet course, online ~£8 (controlled drug, 28-day prescription window).

These are the medications most owners don't bother switching because the absolute price looks low. Across a Cavalier on heart medication for 4 years, those four cheap-generic lines alone add up to a four-figure cumulative bill.

Finding 2 — Cardisure is undersold.

Cardisure is Dechra's generic pimobendan: same active ingredient as Vetmedin, same regulator (UK VMD), same dose, same chewable presentation, same indication. It has been available in the UK since the original Boehringer Ingelheim patent expired and is dispensed by every VMD-approved online pharmacy in our index.

For a 12 kg Cavalier on the typical maintenance dose (5 mg twice daily):

• Branded Vetmedin at the average UK vet: ~£55/month
• Generic Cardisure online: ~£22/month
• Annual saving: ~£396
• 5-year saving for a typical Cavalier diagnosed in late middle age: £2,500–£4,000

The reason it's undersold is not regulatory — it's prescribing inertia. Most UK practice formularies default to the branded product unless asked. From 23 September 2026 the CMA Order requires vets to disclose cheaper alternatives, which should narrow this gap. For now, owners who actively ask are materially better off than owners who don't.

Full side-by-side: Vetmedin vs Cardisure.

Finding 3 — online prices move week-to-week.

We refresh the price index on the first weekend of every month. Between the April and May reads, the changes that mattered:

• Apoquel: the cheapest-to-most-expensive spread tightened by roughly £7/month. The cheapest pharmacies held; the upper end came down. Net: more choice for owners.
• Galliprant: crept up by £2–£4/month at most pharmacies. Not enough to change the value proposition versus other NSAIDs, but worth watching at the next refresh.
• Bravecto: stable. No meaningful price movement at any of the six pharmacies between April and May.
• Gabapentin: unchanged. The cheap end of the catalogue tends not to move — the absolute price is so low that pharmacies don't reprice. The vet vs online ratio (finding 1) therefore persists month after month.

The takeaway for owners: a written prescription typically authorises 6 months of repeat dispensing. Across that window the cheapest pharmacy can change. Run the calculator before each refill, not just at the initial switch.

Methodology

For each medication in our manually-curated catalogue we pull the public list price from the product page of every VMD-approved UK online pharmacy that stocks it (Animed Direct, Pet Drugs Online, VetUK, Hyperdrug, PetMeds, Chemist.co.uk). Vet practice price ranges are derived from the CMA's 2025 provisional report appendices, the CMA Final Report, ManyPets annual price data, VetHelpDirect averages, and our own monthly spot-checks across a sample of UK practices.

For weight-banded products we compute the per-month cost at the modal UK dog weight (15 kg). For mg/kg-dosed products we compute the cost across small (5–10 kg), medium (10–25 kg) and large (25–40 kg) dogs and report the medium band as the headline. Affiliate commission rate is never a ranking factor — pharmacies are sorted by per-month cost.

Full per-medication data + the downloadable PDF: Vet Bill Saver Price Index.

Press attribution lines

Working journalists are welcome to cite the index. Suggested attribution:

"Vet Bill Saver, an independent UK consumer price comparison service, found that the biggest mark-up on UK vet medication isn't on Apoquel but on cheap generics like gabapentin, where the trade-to-vet ratio can run 15-35× because fixed minimum dispensing fees absorb the small underlying drug cost. (Source: Vet Bill Saver UK Dog Medication Price Index, May 2026.)"

Contact for the underlying dataset and quote attribution: hello@vetbillsaver.com. Methodology notes, the press kit and the monthly PDF are at vetbillsaver.com/press.

Indicative pricing, May 2026. Sources: pharmacy public product pages; CMA Final Report (March 2026); CMA provisional report appendices (2025). Not medical advice. Always follow your prescribing vet's instructions.