Lexidrug subscription plans: what $29.99 a month buys, and how Lexicomp packages really work

Almost every page that quotes a Lexidrug price stops at the number. The number on its own is misleading, because both app store listings are specific about what it covers: new individual users get a trial of the UpToDate Lexidrug Hospital Pharmacist package, and it is that package which then bills at $29.99 a month.

Lexidrug is not one database. It is a library of content sets that Wolters Kluwer licenses in bundles aimed at particular roles. A hospital pharmacist package is a sensible default for the largest single group of buyers, but if you are a dentist, a neonatologist or a nurse, the set you actually need may not be in the bundle you just subscribed to. That is the difference between a $29.99 subscription that answers your questions and one that quietly does not.

So the useful question is never "how much is Lexidrug". It is "which package, and does it contain the database I open every day".

No, and the free-to-download app confuses this. There is no permanently free tier. Two routes get you Lexidrug without paying personally: the app trial, and an institutional license held by your hospital, university or medical library.

The second route is far more common than clinicians realize. Most US teaching hospitals and health-science libraries already license this content, usually with a mobile access code included. Checking the library catalog takes two minutes and regularly saves $360 a year.

This is small and genuinely useful. The App Store listing states that new individual users receive a one-month free trial to the Hospital Pharmacist package. The Google Play listing, for the same package at the same $29.99, states 14 days.

If you intend to evaluate properly, against real medication lists from your own practice rather than a few test lookups, a month is a meaningfully better runway than a fortnight. Both stores require you to cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends, and both renew monthly without asking again.

Try to buy an individual web subscription and the "Subscribe to UpToDate Lexidrug" button hands you to a storefront that asks for your country and profession before it shows you anything at all. There is no rate card behind it that you can read the way you can read Sanford Guide's or the Johns Hopkins ABX Guide's.

That pattern is consistent across this market, and it tracks who signs the check rather than product quality. References sold to individuals publish prices. References sold to institutions do not, because the number varies by beds, seats or covered lives and the vendor would rather anchor the conversation itself. We keep a running tally of who publishes what in our clinical decision support software comparison, and the Lexicomp subscription price breakdown goes deeper on what drives an institutional Lexidrug quote up or down.

One useful boundary is published, though. The UpToDate store states that organizations with 20 or more users should explore enterprise solutions or contact sales, which puts the self-serve ceiling at 19 seats. Below that you can buy without a procurement cycle. At 20 you are in a negotiation.

Yes. Lexidrug is the current name of the drug reference sold for years as Lexicomp, and Wolters Kluwer still labels it "UpToDate Lexidrug (formerly Lexicomp)" in its own storefront so that returning subscribers recognize it. The underlying databases kept the Lexi-Drugs naming, which is why you will see both words on the same screen.

We deliberately do not state a rename date. Several sites give one confidently, but the vendor does not publish it and the circulating dates trace back to secondary summaries rather than to Wolters Kluwer. If you are renewing an old Lexicomp subscription, you are renewing Lexidrug, and that is the part that actually matters at checkout.