Harrison's app: which paid version to buy, from the $74.99 Manual to the $249.99 Principles app

There are four Harrison's apps on the US App Store, and none of them carries the current book. The pocket Harrison's Manual of Medicine sells from Skyscape at $74.99 a year and from Unbound Medicine as an $89.99 purchase, both built on 20th edition content. The full Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine sells as a McGraw Hill app called Harrison's Internal Med. 21/E for $249.99, last updated in April 2024. The 22nd edition, published on June 17, 2025, is not an app at all. We read every listing and price at the source in September 2026.

So the useful question is not "which Harrison's app is best" but which Harrison's you actually need on your phone: the condensed ward manual, the full textbook, or the current edition in whatever format it comes in. Here is every option with its price and what it gets you.

Harrison's app prices compared

Two lines on that table matter more than the rest. The $249.99 app and the $249.00 ebook cost the same, and only the ebook is the current edition. And the two Manual apps, Skyscape and Unbound, are the same book at a $15 difference, with the Skyscape version sold as a renewing subscription and the Unbound listing showing a single $89.99 purchase that covers web access as well.

Harrison's Manual of Medicine app: Skyscape or Unbound?

The Manual is the book most residents mean when they say "Harrison's on my phone". It condenses the textbook into templated chapters on the conditions you see on an inpatient service and in clinic: diagnosis, clinical features and treatment, with decision trees and summary tables. Both apps say their content derives from the 20th edition of Harrison's Principles.

Pick Skyscape if you want the lowest entry price. The standalone Skyscape app sells the Manual at $74.99 for a year, $49.99 for six months or $37.99 for three, which suits a single inpatient rotation. If you also want a drug guide and a calculator set in the same place, the Skyscape Manual Bundle is the better-reviewed listing, at 4.7 from 181 ratings against 4.3 from 6 for the standalone app, and its description says the apps keep working where hospital Wi-Fi drops out.

Pick Unbound if you want to read on a computer too. Its listing includes the companion website on the same purchase, and it carries the larger review base of the two single-title apps. Unbound sells its other titles, such as the 5 Minute Clinical Consult app and the Harriet Lane Handbook app, as one year subscriptions with cheaper renewals, so read the term at checkout rather than assuming the $89.99 is permanent.

Is the Harrison's Internal Med. 21/E app worth $249.99?

Only if you specifically need the full textbook as a native iPhone app. The McGraw Hill app puts all of Harrison's Principles, 21st edition, on the device, with a search that suggests only words found in the text. That is useful for long drug and syndrome names. But it has not been updated since April 2024, it sits one edition behind, and it has too few ratings for Apple to display a score.

For the same money, $249.00 buys the 22nd edition as a VitalSource ebook with lifetime access, or the two volume print set from McGraw Hill. McGraw Hill describes the 22nd edition as extensively restructured, with a standardized format for each disease chapter. If you are buying the full text in 2026, buy the current one.

Harrison's on AccessMedicine: the route most clinicians already have

AccessMedicine, McGraw Hill's online medical library, carries Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 22nd Edition, and for many clinicians it costs nothing personally. McGraw Hill's own trial page says its subscriptions are ordered and managed by an institution's administrator or librarian, and it does not offer trials directly to students. Try signing in through your hospital or school library first. If it works, you already have the current edition online, plus the rest of the AccessMedicine library; since July 2026 that also includes AHFS Drug Information, which we price on our AHFS Drug Information cost page.

Leaving a program or a hospital job usually means losing that login. That is the moment a personal purchase makes sense, and the choice comes down to the $74.99 Manual for ward speed or the $249 ebook for the current full text.

Harrison's for board review

McGraw Hill also publishes Harrison's Self-Assessment and Board Review, sold separately from all of the above, with board-style clinical vignettes built on the textbook. None of the reference apps includes it. Chief residents who run a weekly board review for their program often write their own questions from the chapters instead, and an auto-graded quiz saves them the marking. For your own learning budget, the JAMA subscription cost page shows how AMA membership bundles the journal and JN Learning CME for $45 a year for residents, and the UpToDate CME credits page covers how that reference earns credit as you search.

Which Harrison's app to buy

• Resident on the wards: the Skyscape Manual Bundle if you want calculators and a drug guide in one app, or the Unbound Manual if you read on a laptop too. Check your AccessMedicine login before paying for the full text.
• Internist or hospitalist without institutional access: the $249 22nd edition ebook, not the 21/E app.
• Nurse practitioner or PA in primary care: the Manual covers inpatient medicine well, but an outpatient reference such as the 5 Minute Clinical Consult may fit better; our 5 Minute Clinical Consult vs UpToDate comparison prices both.
• Short rotation: the $37.99 three month Skyscape plan, with auto-renew switched off.

Where a textbook stops

Harrison's tells you how a disease is diagnosed and treated. It does not know that the patient in front of you is on eleven other drugs, has a creatinine clearance of 32 and a documented sulfa allergy. Those checks happen at the prescription, and you only get them from a textbook if you look up each one 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 medication list, contraindications, allergy blockers and renal and hepatic dose adjustments, each with a cited source, for you to review, verify and sign. It sits next to Harrison's rather than replacing it; you can try the drug interaction checker on a real case, and plans are on our pricing page. If you are still choosing the rest of your stack, our best drug reference app guide compares the drug references by role.