Why the same medication costs so differently in-practice vs online

The same box of tablets can cost noticeably more bought from your vet's own dispensary than from an online pharmacy — including the ones this site's Pharmacy comparison lists. That gap isn't automatically a sign either side is doing something wrong; it comes from a few real structural differences.

A practice's in-house price bundles in more than the packet itself. There's a dispensing fee for the pharmacist-equivalent work of checking the prescription and preparing it safely, the practice's own wholesale cost (which is rarely as favourable as the bulk buying power of a large online pharmacy), and the convenience of walking out with the medicine the same day rather than waiting for delivery. An online pharmacy, by contrast, is usually a higher-volume, lower-overhead operation competing mainly on price for medicines it can dispense against a prescription your vet has already written.

That's exactly why the CMA's draft Order requires practices to actively tell owners this option exists, rather than leaving it to be discovered. Once the relevant remedies take effect, practices will have to display a standard notice about the right to request a written prescription, hand out a standard flyer for ongoing medication, and print a standard line on invoices and receipts — all pointing owners toward the fact that buying prescribed medicine online, once you have a prescription, is often cheaper.

A written prescription does usually carry its own fee (see our prescription fee cap article) — so the real comparison is the practice's dispensing price for the medicine itself against an online pharmacy's price plus that prescription fee, not just the sticker price on the box.