Tarascon Pharmacopoeia app: discontinued, and the paid drug reference apps that replace it

For most of the 2010s the Tarascon Pharmacopoeia app was the digital version of the little book in every white coat pocket: $49.99 a year, a drug database the publisher updated weekly, an interaction checker, dozens of reference tables and, from 2019, GoodRx retail prices next to each drug. Then it went quiet. The Android app disappeared from Google Play in January 2021, the iPhone listing now returns an error page, and when we walked through Tarascon's own product catalog on 16 September 2026 the Pharmacopoeia section was empty and the Mobile Solutions section held one title, a chemotherapy manual from 2018.

If you are reading this, you probably opened your phone to renew and found nothing to renew. This page sets out what we could and could not verify about the app's status, what it cost, and the paid drug reference apps that do the same job today, with every price read at the vendor this month. It ends with the one thing none of them do, because that gap is what we built Prescriber.io for.

Is the Tarascon Pharmacopoeia app still available?

No, not through either store. Here is the evidence, item by item, so you can judge it yourself.

Put together, that is a product nobody has formally killed and nobody is selling. If the app is still on your phone it may keep opening, but a subscription reference with no store to bill through is a reference that has stopped updating, and drug dosing content from 2020 or 2021 is not something to prescribe from in 2026. The sensible reading is that the Tarascon app is finished, whether or not a notice ever appears.

What the Tarascon app cost and what it actually did

The App Store listing sold a $49.99 annual subscription, auto-renewing, with a 30 day free trial. That bought the Deluxe edition's content in searchable form: FDA-approved and evidence-based off-label dosing for adults and children, black box warnings, pregnancy and lactation safety, metabolism, relative cost codes from $ to $$$$$, Canadian trade names, a multi-drug interaction checker, a herbal and alternative therapy section, and by the publisher's count 47 reference tables and 15 calculators. In May 2019 Jones & Bartlett partnered with GoodRx so the app could show live retail prices and send coupons to patients.

Two things made it hard to replace. It was cheap for what it held, at roughly a quarter of epocrates+ today. And it was edited the way the book was: a panel of around 50 clinicians across specialties reviewing concise, opinionated entries, rather than a database dump. Nothing on the market today is a like-for-like copy at $49.99, so the replacement question becomes which parts of Tarascon you actually used.

Tarascon Pharmacopoeia app replacement: drug reference apps compared by price

These are the paid and free apps a former Tarascon subscriber will be weighing, with the individual price each vendor publishes as of September 2026. Institutional licenses are quoted separately and are not shown.

Two observations on that table. First, the $49.99 slot Tarascon occupied is now held by the narrow references: Hopkins, Sanford's mobile plan and Davis's. A general drug reference at that price no longer exists, so a former Tarascon user either drops to Epocrates free or steps up to $145 or more. Second, the drug content in Epocrates does not improve when you pay, so the $179.99 upgrade is a decision about disease monographs, not about dosing accuracy. Our Epocrates cost guide works through which tier is worth it.

Which replacement fits how you used Tarascon

You used it as a shirt-pocket dose check

Install Epocrates and stop there for a month. The free tier's monographs, pediatric dosing and interaction checker cover what most residents, hospitalists and primary care clinicians opened Tarascon for, and the app is on so many phones that a colleague can confirm what you are seeing. Upgrade to epocrates+ only if you find yourself wanting the disease and lab content. If advertising in a clinical tool bothers you, PEPID's Portable Drug Companion at about $145 a year is the ad-free equivalent and adds IV compatibility, which Tarascon never had.

You are in an emergency department or urgent care

PEPID is the natural successor, because it is the only reference here built around a department rather than a drug. The Emergency Medicine Suite at $299.95 bundles the drug database with ED topics, toxicology and antidotes, a lab manual and clinical tools, and residents can carry it for $9.99 a month. Trial it for the full two weeks before buying, since PEPID does not refund. We put the two most common ED choices side by side in PEPID vs Epocrates, and every PEPID price is on the PEPID cost page.

You are a pharmacist, or you used the metabolism and adjustment fields heavily

Tarascon's metabolism, renal and hepatic notes were compressed versions of what a compendium holds in full. UpToDate Lexidrug at $29.99 a month gives you the full monographs those notes were distilled from, including the adjustment tables and the interaction analysis pharmacists lean on. It is the most expensive option on the list for an individual, roughly $360 a year, and one subscription covers one content package, so pick the package for your setting. Our Lexidrug subscription guide explains the packages and what the App Store price does and does not include.

You mainly used the anti-infective tables

Tarascon's antimicrobial spectrum and empiric therapy tables were a big reason many carried it, and they are the easiest part to replace well. The Johns Hopkins ABX Guide at $39.95 a year is the closest to the old price and adds expert commentary on each pathogen and syndrome; Sanford Guide All Access at $79.99 adds dosing calculators and interactive regimen tables. Either gives you the national picture. The local one comes from your hospital's antibiogram, and pharmacy teams that still circulate it as a PDF are moving it into antibiogram software that keeps the susceptibility data current so the empiric choice matches what your own lab is growing. We compare the two guides on price and content in Sanford Guide vs Johns Hopkins ABX Guide.

You are a nurse who liked the concise entries

Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses at $39.99 a year sits almost exactly where Tarascon did on price and is written for the administration question rather than the prescribing one: what to assess before you give it, what to monitor after, how it is compatible. It is smaller than the pharmacy compendia on purpose. If you also give IV medications, PEPID's nursing suites add IV compatibility for $214.95 a year.

Is there a 2026 Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia?

We could not find one, and we looked at the publisher's catalog, the Tarascon storefront and the major book retailers. The newest edition listed anywhere is the 2020 Deluxe Lab-Coat Edition, published in December 2019. Secondhand copies of that edition are being offered at multiples of the original cover price, which tells you how many people are still looking for it, and also why you should not buy one: a drug book that predates the current antivirals, the diabetes and anticoagulant labels approved since, and every dosing revision in between is not a safe pocket reference. If your hospital library subscribes to STAT Ref, Tarascon content may still be reachable through it, but check the edition date before relying on a dose.

The broader market for pocket references has moved the same way. Print pharmacopoeias have given way to subscription apps, and we keep the current field, including Micromedex and the Medscape free tier, in one place on our best drug reference app page.

What none of these replacements do

Every app in the table above waits for a question. You look up the drug, you read the dose, and if you remember to, you open the interaction checker and type in the rest of the list. That is what Tarascon did too, and it is fine for the lookup. It is weak at the moment that matters, when the order is written and the harmful combination is the one nobody thought to check, or the creatinine that makes the standard dose wrong came back after the order went in.

Prescriber.io runs at that moment rather than before it. You enter the drug and the patient's scenario once, and the card returns interactions across the whole medication list, contraindications and allergy blockers, renal and hepatic dose adjustments and guideline-based alternatives together, each with a cited source, for a licensed clinician to review and sign. It is priced per clinician per month, from $29 to $59, and it sits alongside whichever reference you pick from the table above. Replace the Tarascon app with the reference that fits your setting, then add the check that the reference never made.