UpToDate Lexidrug: what it is, what it costs, and how it differs from UpToDate

The short answer: UpToDate Lexidrug is the drug database Wolters Kluwer used to sell as Lexicomp. Same content lineage, same publisher, new name. It is a separate product from UpToDate itself, it is sold separately, and unlike UpToDate it carries a published US price: $29.99 a month on the App Store, verified in August 2026. If your questions are about drugs rather than about how to manage a disease, Lexidrug is the product you are actually looking for.

The rename created a lot of avoidable confusion, partly because both products now lead with the UpToDate name and partly because the two are genuinely related under the hood. Here is what changed, what did not, and how to decide which one you need.

What is UpToDate Lexidrug?

Lexidrug is a drug information database: monographs, dosing, interactions, adverse effects, compatibility, patient education. It is the reference a pharmacist reaches for when the question is "what does this drug do, at what dose, and what does it collide with". Wolters Kluwer publishes it, and it sits in the same product family as UpToDate, which is why the branding now carries the UpToDate name in front of it.

Before the rebrand it was called Lexicomp, and a great deal of institutional documentation, library catalogs and citation guides still say Lexicomp. The App Store listing itself still shows both names, with "Lexi-Comp" appearing alongside "UpToDate Lexidrug" as of August 2026. If you find a link, a login page or a library record that says Lexicomp, you have found the right product.

One thing worth being precise about: there is no publicly verifiable date for when the Lexicomp name formally became Lexidrug. Plenty of pages online state one confidently. The vendor has not published a clean changeover date that we can confirm, so we do not repeat one.

What is the difference between UpToDate and UpToDate Lexidrug?

They answer different kinds of question, and that is the whole distinction.

UpToDate is a graded clinical reference. Topic reviews written and edited by named clinicians, covering diagnosis and management across the whole of medicine, with recommendation grades attached. You go to it with "how should I manage this patient".

Lexidrug is a drug compendium. You go to it with "what is the renal dose of this, and can I give it with that".

The part that surprises people is the direction of the relationship. UpToDate's own drug monograph content comes from Lexidrug. When you look up a drug inside UpToDate, you are substantially reading Lexidrug content delivered through the UpToDate interface. That means paying for UpToDate primarily to get drug information is paying for a disease reference in order to reach a drug database you could license directly, and license more cheaply.

Prices verified at the vendor's own listings in August 2026. We do not repeat software-directory figures, because the directories quote numbers Wolters Kluwer never published and they disagree with one another.

How much does UpToDate Lexidrug cost?

The App Store listing shows two in-app packages, both at $29.99 a month: the Lexicomp Professional Package and Lexi-COMPLETE. That works out to roughly $360 a year for individual access, and it is a real published figure rather than an estimate.

This is the detail that makes Lexidrug interesting well beyond its own product page. Its sibling, UpToDate, publishes nothing at all. Re-checked at the UpToDate store in August 2026, there is no dollar figure anywhere on it, at any tier: the store asks for your country and your professional role before it will quote, and groups of twenty or more users are sent to sales instead of to checkout. Same vendor, same month, opposite policy. We walk through what each tier is and how to get a real quote in our guide to UpToDate subscription cost and pricing.

The pattern is not about product quality. It tracks who signs the check. Anything sold to a clinician with a credit card carries a price you can read before you commit. Anything sold to a procurement department carries a phone number. Micromedex, which sells almost entirely into hospital pharmacies, publishes nothing either. There is more on how those individual figures compare in our breakdown of the Lexicomp subscription price.

Does UpToDate Lexidrug have a free trial?

Yes, and the terms are unusually specific, so read them before you tap. New individual users get a one-month free trial to the UpToDate Lexidrug Hospital Pharmacist package. At the end of the trial, the subscription automatically bills $29.99 per month through your iTunes account. To avoid the charge you must cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends.

Two things there catch people out. The trial is to a specific named package, the Hospital Pharmacist one, not to Lexidrug in general. And the cancellation deadline is a day before expiry rather than on it, which is a common enough pattern across app subscriptions that it is worth a calendar reminder on the day you start any trial. If your practice runs enough of these to lose track, a spend alert that flags a renewal before it bills is a cheaper fix than discovering it on the card statement three months later.

How do you cite UpToDate Lexidrug?

This comes up constantly in academic and residency settings, and the rename made it worse because older citations say Lexicomp. Both AMA and APA treat a continuously updated database like this as a database entry rather than a book, which means an access date is mandatory. The content changes under the same URL, so the date you looked is part of what makes the citation reproducible.

The elements you generally need are the monograph title, the database name, the publisher, and the date you accessed it, plus the URL. Where a citation is graded, follow your institution's own style guide over any general pattern, because health-sciences libraries frequently publish a house format for exactly this database. Ask your medical librarian; most have a page for it already.

One substantive point that matters more than the formatting. Lexidrug is a tertiary source, and so is UpToDate. Both summarize and interpret primary literature rather than reporting it. That is exactly what you want at the point of care and exactly what a reviewer will push back on if you cite it as evidence for a novel claim in a manuscript. Use it for established drug facts, and go to the labeling or the primary literature when the claim carries weight.

Who should buy Lexidrug instead of UpToDate?

Pharmacists, most obviously. The depth of the monographs, the compatibility data and the dosing detail are built for pharmacy practice, and the packages are named accordingly.

Beyond that, the honest test is which question you ask more often. If most of your lookups are drug questions, buy the drug database and save the difference. If you regularly need to read your way into an unfamiliar condition, the disease reference earns its cost. Clinicians whose lookups are genuinely split tend to be best served by institutional access to both, which is usually already available and usually forgotten about. We lay out the trade in detail in the UpToDate vs Lexicomp comparison, and set Lexidrug against the other pharmacy-grade option in Lexicomp vs Micromedex.

Before buying anything, check what you already have. Most US hospitals, health systems and academic medical centers license Lexidrug, UpToDate or both, and access usually runs through an employee login or the medical library. Lexidrug also integrates into Epic, MEDITECH and Cerner where an institution licenses it, so if your EHR already surfaces the monographs, your organization is paying for it and a personal subscription buys you very little. In July 2026 Wolters Kluwer and Epic announced a combined offering aimed specifically at rural hospitals, federally qualified health centers and smaller ambulatory practices, so that integrated access is reaching organizations that previously would not have had it.

What Lexidrug does not do

It is a reference, which means it waits to be asked. It will tell you everything about a drug once you have thought to look the drug up, and nothing at all about the one you did not think to check. That gap is the entire reason interaction checking exists as a separate category from drug information, and it is the gap Prescriber.io works in: the check runs against the whole medication list at the moment you are about to sign, flags what collides, surfaces the renal and hepatic adjustments, and cites its sources so you can verify before you act.

The two are complements, not substitutes. Keep a reference for reading. Run a check before signing. A good comparison of what each reference is genuinely best at is in our roundup of the best drug reference apps by role.