About Us

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs is committed to selling medications at transparent and affordable prices. Read more about our mission.

Usage and Samples

Cost Plus Drugs provides an API, with results served from GCP US-Central-1 at the following URL:

https://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main

In all cases, canonical and authoritative purchase information is available at the returned url for each medication. For API calls requesting unit quantities, a price estimate is provided, subject to additional shipping charges and terms available at the returned url.

Full Listings

By default, calls to the main entrypoint will return a full set of all medications available. For example,

curl "https://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main"

returns:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Abacavir / Lamivudine",
      "ndc": "68180028806",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "AbacavirLamivudine-600mg_300mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "600mg/300mg",
      "unit_price": "$1.820",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/abacavirlamivudine-600mg_300mg-tablet/"
    },
    {
      "brand_name": "",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Albendazole",
      "ndc": "78482011002",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "Albendazole-200mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "200mg",
      "unit_price": "$17.250",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/albendazole-200mg-tablet/"
    },
  ...

A full example output, with offerings and prices as of 2022-03-23, is available here.

Search and query filters

In addition to the full listings, the following query string parameters may be used to search for specific medications or sets of medications:

• ndc (National Drug Code, without hyphens)
• brand_name (Brand name, case insensitive)
• medication_name (Medication name, case insensitive)
• strength (Medication dosage strength. Caller must specify value and unit, as in 10mg.)

For example,

curl "http://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?ndc=16729017117"

finds the corresponding NDC:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017117",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-10mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "10mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.050",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-10mg-tablet/"
    }
  ]
}

A related search, by brand name:

curl "https://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?brand_name=Elavil"

returns all available strengths of Amitriptyline:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017501",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-100mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "100mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.560",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-100mg-tablet/"
    },
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017117",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-10mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "10mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.050",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-10mg-tablet/"
    },
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017601",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-150mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "150mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.570",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-150mg-tablet/"
    },
  ...

Combinations of search parameters are also supported. For example, further specifying a desired dosage, by adding a strength parameter, returns the same individual result as the above ndc query:

curl "https://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?brand_name=Elavil&strength=10mg"

Price and quantity queries

Quotes for specific products at given unit quantities can be requested with the aditional parameter quantity_units. Each of:

curl "http://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?ndc=16729017117&quantity_units=30"

and

curl "http://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?medication_name=amitriptyline&strength=10mg&quantity_units=30"

return:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017117",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "requested_quote": "$4.50",
      "requested_quote_units": 30,
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-10mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "10mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.050",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-10mg-tablet/"
    }
  ]
}

Price quotes via search by brand name are also supported, however callers must specify that generic equivalents are acceptable, with the additional query term generic_equivalent_ok set to yes or true. That is,

curl "http://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?brand_name=elavil&strength=10mg&quantity_units=30"

returns the partial error:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "error_message": "You must affirm parameter 'generic_equivalent_ok' with 'true' or 'yes' to receive quote",
      "form": "Tablet",

To search for generics by equivalent brand, the format is:

curl "http://us-central1-costplusdrugs-publicapi.cloudfunctions.net/main?brand_name=elavil&strength=10mg&quantity_units=30&generic_equivalent_ok=true"

which returns:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "brand_name": "Elavil",
      "form": "Tablet",
      "medication_name": "Amitriptyline",
      "ndc": "16729017117",
      "pill_nonpill": "Pill",
      "requested_quote": "$4.50",
      "requested_quote_units": 30,
      "slug": "Amitriptyline-10mg-Tablet",
      "strength": "10mg",
      "unit_price": "$0.050",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/amitriptyline-10mg-tablet/"
    }
  ]
}