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Why is my dog's medication so expensive?

Apoquel for a 15 kg dog costs around £85-£110/month at a UK vet practice. The same product, in the same packaging, is around £45/month from a VMD-approved online pharmacy. Why?

The dispensing fee is built into the price

Vet practices apply a substantial mark-up on prescription products. Industry-standard mark-up is 100-200% on wholesale, plus a per-item dispensing fee. The CMA's 2025 provisional findings calculated the average mark-up on the top-selling parasiticides at 100-150%. For some long-tail chronic medications, the mark-up exceeds 250%.

Online pharmacies operate at higher volumes

Animed Direct, Pet Drugs Online and others dispense thousands of prescriptions per day across the country. They negotiate volume pricing with manufacturers and run on much thinner margins. They make a small profit on each sale rather than a large profit per item.

Many UK vet practices are owned by large groups

Roughly 60% of UK vet practices are owned by six corporate groups: CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners. These groups have a financial incentive to maximise per-client revenue. Independent practices often (but not always) charge less. From 23 September 2026 the CMA's corporate-disclosure remedy means practices have to tell you in consultations which group owns them. Full breakdown on the corporate vet groups page.

It is not the vet's fault. It is the system's design.

Individual vets do not set the dispensing prices in most practices - corporate pricing teams do. The CMA's 2026 Order is the first attempt to fix the structural problem rather than blame individual clinicians.

What you can do