Drugs.com app alternatives: what changed, and the best free interaction checkers

The short version

The Drugs.com website interaction checker is still free, and its drug database is still one of the best available to the public. What changed is the mobile app: app-store reviews report a steep new subscription — figures around $69.99 a year come up again and again, with some users seeing a monthly option near $8.99 — replacing the roughly $1–$5-a-year ad-free upgrade longtime users describe paying before. We can't independently confirm every number (app pricing varies by platform, region, and date — check the store listing yourself before deciding), but the pattern across many reviews is consistent.

If that price sent you looking for alternatives, this article covers what actually matters in an interaction checker, and an honest list of where to go — including the perfectly good option of staying with Drugs.com in your browser.

What happened with the Drugs.com app

Piecing this together from public app-store reviews and the developer's replies to them:

• Longtime users report a big jump. Reviews describe paying about $0.99–$4.99 per year for an ad-free app in the past, then being offered a subscription in the range of $65–$69.99 per year at renewal.
• The developer has offered a path back. In replies to some reviews, Drugs.com has said existing ad-free subscribers can contact its app support team to keep their old plan. If you were grandfathered in, that's worth an email before paying the new rate.
• The app still installs free. Core lookups work without a subscription; the paid tier is about removing ads and unlocking extras.

To be fair to Drugs.com: licensed drug data is expensive to maintain, and the company has kept its website free for decades. This isn't a scandal — it's a subscription price many people understandably don't want to pay when the same company offers the content free in a browser.

What actually matters in an interaction checker

Before the list, here's the checklist we'd use to judge any of these tools — including ours.

Real supplement coverage

Most checkers were built around prescriptions, with supplements bolted on afterward. Test any tool with the exact things you take: an herb should be findable under its common synonyms, and a supplement-plus-supplement pair (not just supplement-plus-drug) should return something more useful than "no results found."

Severity you can act on

A good result tells you how serious and what to do: is this a "never combine" pair, a "space them four hours apart" pair, or a "fine together, mention it to your pharmacist" pair? A bare red icon isn't guidance.

Awareness of your total dose

Two different products can each contain magnesium, and no name-based checker will notice you're doubling up. If you take blends or a multivitamin, look for a tool that reads labels and totals milligrams against upper limits.

Honest pricing

Free should mean free, with the paid line drawn clearly — before you've typed in your whole regimen, not after.

The honest list of alternatives

1. The Drugs.com website — still excellent, still free

The interaction checker at Drugs.com runs in any browser, costs nothing, and sits on one of the most complete consumer drug databases anywhere — the app pricing change doesn't touch it. If your main need is checking prescription drugs against each other, it remains a top pick regardless of what you think of the app. Its limits for supplement users: it matches products by name, so it won't total milligrams across labels or catch you doubling up between blends.

2. WebMD Interaction Checker — quickest casual check

WebMD's checker is free, needs no sign-up, and speaks plain consumer English. Good for a fast one-off question; lighter on supplement-to-supplement depth.

3. Medscape — the clinician's tool

Medscape's interaction checker is free with registration and aimed at healthcare professionals: up to 30 drugs, herbals, and supplements at once, with results tiered from "contraindicated" down to "minor." The trade-off is clinical vocabulary — it assumes you know what to do with a phrase like "monitor closely."

4. CanIStackThis — built for the supplement half of the problem

That's us, so weigh this section accordingly. Our interaction checker is free with no list-size cap, and it's supplement-first: supplement-with-supplement and supplement-with-medication interactions, spacing and timing guidance, and a label milligram tally (built on the NIH label database) that catches doubling-up across products. A free account personalizes checks with your saved health profile. Our scoring is deterministic and publicly documented, and we never run ads, sell products, or take affiliate commissions.

What stays free here

Since a pricing change is probably why you're reading this, here's ours in plain terms: the checker, safety scoring, Build My Stack, and the label milligram tally are free without an account (rate-limited). A free account adds phone reminders with calendar export, one saved stack we automatically re-score about monthly (with an email if its score moves), and one free bottle scan. What's free today stays free.

Spot an error?

App pricing changes fast, and some numbers above come from user reports rather than an official price sheet. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us at /contact — a human reads every message, and we correct articles rather than let them rot.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Interaction checkers — ours included — are screening tools, not a substitute for your pharmacist or prescriber.