5 Minute Clinical Consult app: 5MCC cost, the subscription, Medicine Central and which version to buy

The 5 Minute Clinical Consult app most clinicians mean is the one from Unbound Medicine, and it costs $99.99 a year. You download it free, get 14 days of full access, and then Apple charges $99.99 for a one year subscription unless you switch auto-renew off at least 24 hours before the trial ends. The purchase covers the iPhone, iPad, Mac and web versions. We read that on the US App Store in September 2026, alongside four other ways to buy the same content, which range from $11.99 a month to $169.99 a year.

Which one you should buy depends on whether you want the fastest pocket answer, a drug guide in the same app, or the larger web edition with patient handouts. Here is every option, what it includes, and the one listing we would not touch.

5 Minute Clinical Consult app prices compared

Two things stand out. The app and the web store price are the same product at almost the same price, so buy wherever your payment method and receipts are easiest; a program or employer reimbursing you will usually want an invoice from the vendor rather than an App Store receipt. And the Skyscape listing, still live on the US App Store, sells the 2019 edition. It shares the name and it will turn up in App Store search, but it is seven editions behind.

What the $99.99 subscription includes

The Unbound app is built around fast lookup. You search or browse by disease or symptom, and every entry follows the same template: basics, diagnosis, treatment, medications, follow-up, and ICD-10 codes. The 2026 app edition lists 1,000+ new and updated topics, 150+ diagnostic and treatment algorithms, full-color images of dermatologic conditions, evidence-based designations on proven treatments, and notes and highlights you can add yourself.

Unbound adds two things the print book does not have. You get 200 pediatric topics from the 5-Minute Pediatric Consult, and McGraw-Hill's Diagnosaurus, which organizes more than 1,000 differential diagnoses by organ system, symptom or disease and links each one back to the full 5MCC entry. For an outpatient clinician, that differential tool is often the most-used part of the app.

The subscription terms are unusually forgiving. If you do not renew, Unbound says you can keep using the app; you just stop getting diagnosis and treatment updates. Content lives on the device, so it works without signal. Frank J. Domino, MD, is editor-in-chief, and Wolters Kluwer is the publisher. On the US App Store the Unbound app holds a 4.8 average from 3,100 ratings.

Medicine Central: when the bundle is the better buy

Medicine Central is the Unbound bundle that one App Store reviewer, a student pharmacist, recommends buying instead of 5MCC alone. It contains the full 5 Minute Clinical Consult plus Davis's Drug Guide (5,000+ trade and generic drugs), Diagnosaurus, the Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests (450+ lab tests) and Prime PubMed. The first year is $169.99 and renewal is $99.99, the same as 5MCC on its own.

So the real price of the bundle is $70 once. If you do not already pay for a drug reference, that is a cheap way to get one inside the same app, with cross-links from a condition to the drugs used to treat it. If you already carry a drug database, such as epocrates+ at $179.99 a year or a Lexicomp subscription, skip the bundle and buy 5MCC alone. Unbound also sells the Johns Hopkins antibiotic guide and the Harriet Lane Handbook on the same platform; we priced those in Johns Hopkins ABX Guide cost and Harriet Lane Handbook app.

5 Minute Clinical Consult app vs 5MinuteConsult Online

These are different products from different companies, which confuses a lot of buyers. 5MinuteConsult Online is Wolters Kluwer's own web edition. It is larger: 2,000+ disease and condition monographs and 400 algorithms, against 1,000+ conditions in the app. It also has the feature primary care clinicians ask for most, 3,000+ patient education handouts in English and Spanish, and Wolters Kluwer advertises CE/CME credit on it. It lists at $11.99 a month.

The app wins at the point of care. It opens instantly, works offline, and bundles Diagnosaurus and the pediatric topics. The online edition wins in the office, where you have a browser open anyway and want to print a handout for the patient in front of you. If you only buy one, pick by where you look things up. Clinicians who look things up in the hallway should buy the app; those who chart at a desk and hand out a lot of patient material should try the online edition for a month first.

Is the 5 Minute Clinical Consult app worth it?

For primary care, urgent care and outpatient NPs and PAs, usually yes. $99.99 a year works out to about 27 cents a day for a reference written by more than 1,000 family medicine and primary care contributors, organized so that the answer to a routine question is always in the same place. Many residency programs and employers give a book or education allowance, and this is exactly the kind of purchase it covers. Check your hospital or school library first, since Unbound and Wolters Kluwer both sell institutional licenses and you may already have access.

It is not worth it as your only reference if your patients are complex. 5MCC is updated once a year, and each entry is a summary, not an argument from the evidence. When a case has several interacting conditions or a guideline changed this spring, you need a deeper, continuously updated reference. We compare the two head to head in 5 Minute Clinical Consult vs UpToDate, including what UpToDate costs an individual, which Wolters Kluwer does not publish.

For residents, there is one more practical use. The templated entries are a ready outline for a case presentation, and some residents turn their case write-up into slides for morning report rather than building a deck from scratch at midnight.

How to buy it without paying twice

Start the 14 day trial on a real clinic week, not a quiet one, so you know whether you actually reach for it. If you want the invoice in your name for reimbursement, cancel the in-app trial and buy the one year subscription on unboundmedicine.com instead, then sign in on your phone. Put a reminder in your calendar a few days before the renewal date, because both routes renew automatically, and Unbound's auto-renew is handled in your Apple account settings when you bought through the App Store. And do not buy the Skyscape listing by mistake; check that the developer shown is Unbound Medicine, Inc.

Where a quick-reference stops

The medications section of a 5MCC entry tells you the first-line drugs for the condition. It does not look at the rest of your patient's medication list and warn you that the new prescription interacts with something already on it, that this patient's kidney function changes the dose, or that a documented allergy rules out the obvious choice. You only get those answers when you think to ask each question separately.

That is the step Prescriber.io is built for. You enter the drug and the patient's scenario once, and one card returns interactions across the whole list, contraindications, allergy blockers, renal and hepatic dose adjustments and alternatives, each with a cited source, for you to review and sign. It sits next to 5MCC rather than replacing it, and it is priced per clinician on our pricing page. If you are still building the rest of your reference stack, our best drug reference app guide compares paid and free options by role.