Thirty tablets cost me under six dollars. Is a generic that cheap actually weaker?
Generic Deltasone at 2.5 mg costs less than the fee for the visit that prescribes it
Figures below belong to the 2.5 mg strength this page is built around, at four licensed US counters. None of it is a quote a pharmacist has to honour.
| Pharmacy | Strength / count | How the window works | Official page |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVS | 2.5 mg x 30 | Ordinary cash counter | CVS pharmacy |
| Publix | 2.5 mg x 30 | Supermarket pharmacy counter | Publix pharmacy |
| Amazon Pharmacy | 2.5 mg x 30 | Mail pharmacy, not a store aisle | Amazon Pharmacy pharmacy |
| Harris Teeter | 2.5 mg x 30 | Kroger-family pharmacy counter | Harris Teeter pharmacy |
Published cash figures for the 2.5 mg strength sit in a narrow band. GoodRx quotes it by the 90-count, roughly $25.96 retail against a $12.09 coupon price. Cost Plus Drugs sells 2.5 mg x 30 for $5.81 and itemises where the money goes: 70 cents of manufacturing, 11 cents of markup, then $5.00 of pharmacy labor, plus shipping at checkout. The Drugs.com price guide opens 100 tablets at $12.89, about 13 cents each. Line those three sources up and the pattern is hard to miss. The drug is nearly free; the dispensing is the bill.
Which is why the cheapest results for this search are usually selling something adjacent. Telehealth pages rank on their consultation fee, $19 for a text visit or $39 for video against $150 and up at urgent care. Honest arithmetic, and it answers a question about access only.
Prednisone is prescription-only in the United States and it is not a controlled substance, so a routine remote consultation can legitimately end in a valid prescription sent to a pharmacy of your choosing. Any site offering to ship tablets without one sits outside that system entirely. Each pharmacy link above opens that chain's own pharmacy page; GoodRx and SingleCare publish separate figures of their own, which the caption names.
One number here outranks every price. Prednisone 2.5 mg a day is the exposure at which American rheumatology starts formally counting fracture risk, and 2.5 mg is also the step the endocrine societies use for a taper crossing the 10 to 20 mg band. The cheapest tablet on the shelf can be a threshold dose, a planned reduction, or a leftover nobody has reviewed.
The effect outlives the blood level, which is why the tablet goes in before 9 am
| Property | Hydrocortisone | Prednisone or prednisolone | Dexamethasone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relative glucocorticoid activity | 1 | 4 | 20 to 30 |
| Relative mineralocorticoid activity | 1 | 0.6 | 0 |
| Physiologic daily dose | 20 mg | 5 mg | 0.75 mg |
| Serum half-life | 1.5 to 2 h | 2 to 3.5 h | 3 to 4.5 h |
| Duration of action | 8 to 12 h | 18 to 36 h | 36 to 54 h |
Prednisone is inactive as swallowed. The liver converts it to prednisolone, which does the work, and that single step is why clinicians reach for prednisolone directly in advanced liver disease. Relative to hydrocortisone, prednisolone carries about four times the glucocorticoid activity and roughly 0.6 of the mineralocorticoid activity, with a physiologic dose near 5 mg a day.
Serum half-life runs 2 to 3.5 hours. Duration of action runs 18 to 36 hours. That gap carries most of the practical consequences: once-daily dosing works, a tablet taken at breakfast can still wreck sleep that night, and no argument about a missed dose is settled by asking how fast the drug leaves the blood.
The label is direct about timing. Adrenal cortex activity peaks between 2 and 8 am and bottoms out between 4 pm and midnight, so a single daily dose given in the morning suppresses the axis least, and the instruction is to give prednisone before 9 am. Divided doses go at evenly spaced intervals. Gastric irritation is reduced by taking it before, during or immediately after meals, or with milk. There is no therapeutic advantage to swallowing it on an empty stomach and then feeling sick.
Alternate-day therapy exploits the same gap. Twice the usual daily dose every other morning keeps the anti-inflammatory effect, which persists longer than the drug does, while letting the axis come back up on the off day. The label credits it with less pituitary-adrenal suppression, fewer Cushingoid changes, fewer withdrawal symptoms and less growth suppression in children, and it names the agents unsuited to it: dexamethasone and betamethasone, whose suppression simply carries over. Establishing the pattern in someone already suppressed after years of daily dosing is often difficult.
Live vaccines are contraindicated at immunosuppressive doses, and CDC puts 20 mg on that
Infections the label expects to be excluded or watched before a prolonged course
- Latent tuberculosis or tuberculin reactivity: monitor closely for reactivation, and give chemoprophylaxis during prolonged therapy
- Hepatitis B: screen before starting immunosuppressive or prolonged treatment, since reactivation occurs in carriers and occasionally in apparently resolved infection
- Strongyloides: immunosuppression can drive hyperinfection with widespread larval migration, severe enterocolitis and potentially fatal gram-negative sepsis
- Amebiasis: rule out latent or active infection before treating anyone who has spent time in the tropics or who has unexplained diarrhoea
The label allows no ambiguity: live or live-attenuated vaccines are contraindicated in patients receiving immunosuppressive doses of corticosteroids. Killed and inactivated vaccines may be given, though the antibody response may be diminished and cannot be predicted. Patients on replacement doses for adrenal insufficiency can be immunised normally.
CDC attaches numbers to the word immunosuppressive. Prednisone at 20 mg a day or more, or 2 mg/kg a day in anyone over 10 kg, given for 14 consecutive days or longer, counts as high-dose corticosteroid treatment, and live-virus vaccination is deferred for at least one month after it stops. Outside that definition the restriction does not apply: courses under 14 days, daily doses below 20 mg, long-term alternate-day short-acting regimens, physiologic replacement, and topical, inhaled, intra-articular or intralesional routes. Someone maintained on 2.5 mg is not in the restricted group, and telling the vaccinating clinician the dose and its duration settles it.
The screening the price-comparison pages skip is the infectious side. Corticosteroids reactivate quiet infections, and the label names them individually.
A taper moves in decrements, and 2.5 mg is one of them
| Daily prednisone dose | Suggested decrement | Interval |
|---|---|---|
| Above 40 mg | 5 to 10 mg | Weekly |
| 20 to 40 mg | 5 mg | Weekly |
| 10 to 20 mg | 2.5 mg | Every 1 to 4 weeks |
| 5 to 10 mg | 1 mg | Every 1 to 4 weeks |
Tapering is only attempted, in the 2024 endocrine guideline, once the disease that justified the steroid is controlled and the steroid is no longer needed for it. That ordering is not decorative. Reducing into an active flare buys a relapse, a rescue course, and a longer total exposure than the original prescription would have produced.
Above roughly 30 mg a day there is room to move fast and in large steps, because adrenal atrophy is already assumed and no test will change the plan at that height. The guideline explicitly recommends against routine adrenal testing while doses stay supraphysiologic. Speed increases again if the steroid itself is causing damage: uncontrolled hypertension or hyperglycaemia, glucocorticoid-induced psychosis, herpetic keratitis. In those cases the priority is getting to a physiologic dose, and the disease takes second place for a while.
The 2.5 mg row is where an ordinary rheumatology or respiratory taper spends real time. Someone coming down from 15 mg on 2.5 mg steps every two to four weeks needs the strength in the bottle to match the step, which is the practical reason a labeled 2.5 mg tablet exists alongside a scored 5 mg one. Splitting tablets on a kitchen counter works until the halves stop being halves.
Fatigue at 4 mg has three explanations, and they can be told apart
| Feature | Withdrawal syndrome | Adrenal insufficiency | Disease flare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Symptoms | Fatigue, malaise, sleep disturbance, arthralgia | Fatigue, malaise, nausea, arthralgia | Fatigue, malaise, disease-specific symptoms |
| Signs | May show features of steroid excess | Postural hypotension, weight loss | Disease-specific signs |
| Laboratory | Normal electrolytes | Hyponatraemia, hypoglycaemia | Rising inflammatory markers |
| Usual dose at onset | Any point, often below 15 mg prednisolone | Below 5 mg, or during intercurrent illness | Any point, especially after a fast reduction |
| Axis testing | Rarely useful above 5 mg | Low morning cortisol with low ACTH | Rarely useful above 5 mg |
Patients feel bad on the way down often enough that a reduction gets abandoned for the wrong reason. Three conditions produce a tired, aching, unwell person during a taper, and the current dose narrows the field before any blood is drawn.
Glucocorticoid withdrawal syndrome comes from dependence on a supraphysiologic dose and typically appears once prednisolone drops below 15 mg daily. True adrenal insufficiency generally waits until the dose is under 5 mg, unless an intercurrent illness forces the issue. A flare of the original disease can arrive at any point, and it is likeliest after a rapid reduction.
Signs and laboratory work separate them further. Postural hypotension and weight loss point at adrenal insufficiency, often with hyponatraemia and hypoglycaemia; withdrawal syndrome leaves electrolytes alone and may still show signs of steroid excess; rising inflammatory markers with disease-specific findings, synovitis in rheumatoid arthritis for instance, point at the underlying condition. Above 5 mg a day a morning cortisol is rarely worth drawing, because it will read low from the exogenous dosing whichever of the three is responsible.
Management diverges at that point. Severe withdrawal is handled by going back up to the most recent dose the patient tolerated, then tapering more slowly from there. Hypotension with vomiting or diarrhoea in anyone on current or recent steroids is treated as possible adrenal crisis, whatever the drug, route or dose, and that means parenteral glucocorticoid and fluid resuscitation the same hour.
Rheumatology already treats 2.5 mg a day as a dose that needs a bone plan
The 2022 ACR guideline draws its line at prednisone 2.5 mg daily continued for more than three months. Above it, for adults starting or staying on treatment, initial fracture-risk assessment is a strong recommendation, and the guideline wants it as soon as possible after the first dose.
The content of that assessment is specific: dose, duration and pattern of steroid use, prior fractures, falls, alcohol and smoking history, low body weight or significant weight loss, parental hip fracture, hypogonadism, thyroid and parathyroid disease, malabsorption, chronic liver disease, height loss. FRAX for anyone 40 or older, since it is not validated below that age. Bone density by DXA with vertebral fracture assessment or spinal x-ray where available, repeated every one to two years while steroids continue.
Risk banding then decides drug treatment. A FRAX ten-year probability of major osteoporotic fracture below 10% is low risk, 10 to 19% moderate, 20% or above high. The 2022 revision added a very high risk band: prior osteoporotic fracture, a bone density T score of -3.5 or worse, glucocorticoid-adjusted FRAX at or above 30% for major fracture or 4.5% for hip, or heavy exposure defined as 30 mg daily for more than 30 days or a cumulative 5 g in one year. From moderate risk upward, pharmacologic treatment is strongly recommended, with the choice between oral or intravenous bisphosphonates, denosumab and parathyroid hormone analogs left to shared decision-making. Calcium, vitamin D and lifestyle measures apply across every risk band.
So a 2.5 mg tablet inside a long maintenance prescription is not a rounding error in the record. It is the threshold itself.
Sick days, surgery, and the twelve months after the last tablet
After large doses over a prolonged period, the label states that relative adrenocortical insufficiency may persist for up to 12 months after the drug is stopped, and that hormone therapy should be reinstituted in any situation of stress during that window. Where mineralocorticoid secretion is impaired, salt or a mineralocorticoid goes alongside. That is the single most useful thing to hand a surgeon, dentist or emergency team, and it stays true when the patient feels entirely recovered.
Stress dosing has thresholds. For mild illness, anyone taking more than 10 mg of prednisolone equivalent already has cover and needs no increase. Patients at physiologic or sub-physiologic doses raise the daily dose to 10 mg for a few days until the illness passes. Moderate to severe physiological stress, or an illness that impairs absorption, calls for three times the physiologic dose, around 15 mg of prednisolone daily, tapered back as recovery comes. Vomiting that prevents swallowing means switching to parenteral hydrocortisone, which is why the plan belongs on paper in advance.
Adrenal crisis presents as hypotension, light-headedness, nausea and abdominal pain, and it kills through shock when it is missed. Treatment is fluid resuscitation with hydrocortisone 100 mg intravenously, followed by 200 mg over 24 hours in three to four divided doses or as a continuous infusion, while whatever precipitated it gets managed. Patients on long-term glucocorticoids should leave the clinic with a written plan for mild, moderate and severe illness, and be offered a medic alert bracelet.
How a taper ends: one milligram a month, or one morning cortisol
Morning cortisol thresholds used during a glucocorticoid taper
- Morning cortisol above 300 nmol/L: axis has probably recovered, and the glucocorticoid can be stopped without further tapering
- 150 to 300 nmol/L: recovery is possible but unproven; continue a physiologic dose and retest in a few weeks, or press on with the taper if the value sits high in that range
- Below 150 nmol/L: ongoing suppression; hold the physiologic dose and retest in a few months to allow more recovery time
- Persistently intermediate values: cosyntropin stimulation with cortisol at 30 and 60 minutes, sufficiency generally at a peak of 400 to 500 nmol/L
Every long taper converges on the same place, the physiologic daily equivalent of about 4 to 6 mg of prednisone, or 15 to 25 mg of hydrocortisone. From there the 2024 guideline offers two routes to zero, and the choice between them is practical.
Route one uses symptoms alone. A worked example from Australian Prescriber: someone on prednisolone longer than six months comes down from 5 mg by 1 mg every month until the drug stops, with the patient taught in advance what increasing fatigue, lethargy and postural dizziness would mean. On hydrocortisone the equivalent below 20 mg is roughly 4 mg a month. Slower is appropriate for longer exposure or larger cumulative doses.
Route two measures the axis. A serum cortisol drawn between 8 and 10 am, before the morning dose, reads on a continuum, with higher values pointing to recovery. Two caveats decide whether the result means anything at all. Dexamethasone makes the test uninterpretable, because its 36 to 54 hour duration of action suppresses the axis throughout; switch to an equivalent prednisolone or hydrocortisone dose first. And anything that raises corticosteroid-binding globulin, oral estrogen or pregnancy, lifts the total cortisol without lifting the free hormone.
Dynamic testing is not part of the routine. The guideline suggests against reflex stimulation tests during a taper, reserving a cosyntropin test for persistently intermediate results, where a peak of roughly 400 to 500 nmol/L indicates sufficiency depending on the assay. Patients whose axis has not recovered after twelve months at a physiologic dose belong with an endocrinologist, as do those with an earlier adrenal crisis.
Most short courses stop on the last day and nothing is tapered
For therapy under three to four weeks, the endocrine guideline suggests not tapering at all, irrespective of dose, and stopping without any cortisol testing. Australian Prescriber puts the same position in plainer words: patients treated for up to three to four weeks, even at relatively high doses, rarely develop sustained axis suppression, so serum cortisol measurement is not required and the drug can be stopped abruptly once it is no longer needed.
Worth being straight about the evidence behind that. The recommendation carries the lowest certainty rating the guideline uses, and the underlying data are thin, resting largely on small suppression-and-recovery studies. But thin evidence pointing one way is still a position, and the guideline states it plainly.
Popular health pages mostly do the opposite. They take the long-course rule, never stop steroids suddenly, and apply it to a five-day pack for a chest flare or hives. That generalisation has costs: people hoard leftover tablets to build a taper nobody prescribed, or they read ordinary post-viral tiredness after a burst as adrenal failure. A course that ran nine days and finished on schedule is a closed episode.
What still deserves a call after a short burst is the disease. If the wheeze, rash or joint is no better by the final tablet, that is a treatment failure and the next decision belongs to a clinician, not to the remaining tablets in the bottle.
What belongs in writing once the prescription ends
Five facts do more work than any tablet count: the highest daily dose reached, the total weeks or months of exposure, the date of the last supraphysiologic dose, whether the taper was completed or abandoned partway, and whether a morning cortisol was ever measured. Nobody reconstructs that from a pharmacy history, and the next clinician to face an operation or a fever will be acting on it.
Cumulative exposure is the figure people underestimate, because it accrues invisibly. Repeated bursts for asthma or sinus disease each look trivial in isolation, yet 5 g of prednisone in a single year is one of the criteria that puts a patient in the very high fracture-risk band. No individual prescription in that sequence needs to look unusual for the total to arrive there.
Ownership of the taper sits with the prescriber, and the 2024 guideline says so deliberately: managing glucocorticoid therapy is a general medical skill, because at least one percent of the population is taking these drugs and endocrinology could not possibly review each reduction. So the person who wrote the prescription is the person to ask when the plan is unclear, the bottle will empty before the schedule does, or the disease stirs as the dose comes down.
Last Updated
Straight talk
Your questions, answered plainly
Answered by Dr. Marc Vidal, MD · Internal medicine & clinical pharmacology
Prednisone questions arrive in two kinds: what the tablet costs, and what happens when it stops. The second kind is where people get hurt. Everything below is general education, and your own prescriber owns the dose and the pace.
No. A generic 2.5 mg prednisone tablet has to deliver the same 2.5 mg of prednisone USP as any other, and the price reflects dispensing economics. Cost Plus Drugs publishes its own breakdown for exactly this reason: about 70 cents of manufacturing, 11 cents of markup, and five dollars of pharmacy labor. The steroid itself costs almost nothing to make. What does change between manufacturers is the look of the tablet, its colour, shape, score line and the code pressed into it, so a refill can arrive looking unfamiliar while being the same medicine. Trust the strength printed on the pharmacy label over the appearance of the tablet, and ask the pharmacist if the two disagree.
Five days of prednisone for a chest flare. Do I have to step down at the end?
For a course that short, current guidance says you stop on the last day. The 2024 endocrine guideline suggests no taper for therapy under three to four weeks whatever the dose, and no cortisol testing either, because sustained suppression of your own cortisol production is unlikely over that span. Follow the written instructions you were given, since some prescribers deliberately front-load the dose over five days. The thing to watch is the illness, not the withdrawal. If the wheeze or the cough is no better by the final tablet, that is a treatment failure and needs review; do not extend the course from what is left in the bottle.
Fourteen months at 7.5 mg for polymyalgia. What does the end of this look like?
In two stages. The first brings you toward a physiologic dose, roughly 4 to 6 mg of prednisone daily, at a rate your disease tolerates; from 10 to 20 mg the guideline decrement is 2.5 mg every one to four weeks, which is where a genuine 2.5 mg tablet earns its place. The second stage is slower, because your adrenal glands have to restart after more than a year of being switched off. A common approach is 1 mg a month from 5 mg down to zero, with you knowing in advance what increasing fatigue or dizziness on standing would mean. Some clinicians check a morning cortisol instead of tapering blind. Polymyalgia also relapses readily, so expect the pace to be revisited more than once.
My GP called 2.5 mg almost nothing. My rheumatologist ordered a bone scan. Who is right?
Both, about different things. Symptomatically 2.5 mg is a small dose, and for a couple of weeks it does very little harm. As an exposure it is the exact number the 2022 American College of Rheumatology guideline uses: 2.5 mg or more daily for longer than three months triggers a formal fracture-risk assessment, and that assessment includes bone density testing with vertebral fracture assessment, FRAX if you are 40 or over, and a repeat scan every one to two years while treatment continues. Your rheumatologist is following the guideline for the duration you are actually facing. Ask which risk band you landed in, because that determines whether calcium and vitamin D alone are enough or whether bone treatment is recommended.
What cortisol number lets me stop the last milligram?
The test is a serum cortisol drawn between 8 and 10 in the morning, before you take that day's dose. Above 300 nmol/L, your axis has probably recovered and the steroid can usually be stopped without further tapering. Between 150 and 300, recovery may be under way: the usual advice is to hold a physiologic dose and retest in a few weeks. Below 150 suggests the axis is still suppressed, so you stay on a physiologic dose and retest in a few months. Two things make the result meaningless: taking dexamethasone, which suppresses the axis throughout its long duration of action, and anything that raises cortisol-binding protein, such as oral estrogen or pregnancy. Tell the requesting clinician about both.
Aching all over and exhausted since I reached 4 mg. Withdrawal, or my disease returning?
Three possibilities overlap here, and the dose helps sort them. At 4 mg you are near or below physiologic replacement, so genuine adrenal insufficiency is on the list, and its giveaways are dizziness or a blood pressure drop on standing, weight loss, nausea, and sometimes low sodium or low glucose on bloods. A withdrawal syndrome from losing a supraphysiologic dose usually starts higher up, below about 15 mg, and leaves electrolytes normal. A flare of your original condition tends to bring back its own specific symptoms and pushes inflammatory markers up. Ring your prescriber this week; waiting it out is the wrong instinct here, and vomiting, collapse or confusion needs same-day care. If the answer is withdrawal, the standard fix is going back to the last dose that felt fine and then reducing more slowly.
Shingles vaccine while I am on 2.5 mg. Allowed?
Almost on two counts. The shingles vaccine used in most countries now is a recombinant, non-live product, and the label restriction applies to live and live-attenuated vaccines at immunosuppressive doses. Even for live vaccines, CDC sets the concerning threshold at 20 mg of prednisone a day or more for 14 consecutive days or longer; 2.5 mg sits well under it, as do alternate-day short-acting regimens and replacement dosing. Inactivated vaccines can go ahead at any steroid dose, with the caveat that the antibody response may be weaker and cannot be predicted. Tell whoever gives the injection your current dose and how many weeks you have been on it, and let them decide from that.
My course ended four months ago. I have surgery next week. Does the anaesthetist need to know?
Yes, and this is the single most important thing you will tell them. After large doses over a prolonged period, the label warns that relative adrenal insufficiency can persist for up to 12 months after stopping, and that hormone cover should be reinstated during any significant stress in that window. Surgery counts. Bring dates and numbers if you have them: the highest daily dose, how many months it ran, and when the last tablet was taken. The surgical team can then decide about perioperative steroid cover instead of guessing. If you develop a fever or a vomiting illness before the operation, say the same thing to whoever sees you first.
It burns my stomach. Anything besides taking it with food?
Food first, because the label is explicit: gastric irritation is reduced by taking prednisone before, during or immediately after a meal, or with milk. Then look at what else you are swallowing. Combining it with ibuprofen, naproxen or another anti-inflammatory raises the risk of ulcer and gastrointestinal bleeding, and that combination is common precisely because people are in pain. Existing ulcer disease, diverticulitis, a recent bowel join or active colitis all raise the stakes further. Black stools, vomit that looks like coffee grounds, or a sharply tender abdomen need seeing that day. An antacid answers none of those.
I am on carbamazepine. Does that change how much prednisone I am really getting?
It can. Carbamazepine induces CYP3A4, and the label lists it alongside barbiturates, phenytoin and rifampin as drugs that speed up corticosteroid metabolism enough that the steroid dose may need increasing. Inhibitors work the other way: ketoconazole, itraconazole, ritonavir, indinavir and macrolides such as erythromycin raise steroid levels, and ketoconazole alone has been reported to cut corticosteroid metabolism by up to 60%. Two more to flag on the same review: corticosteroids usually blunt the response to warfarin, so anticoagulation needs closer monitoring, and combining them with amphotericin B or potassium-losing diuretics deepens low potassium. None of this is a reason to adjust your own dose. It is a reason for one proper medication review.
My son's team wants alternate-day dosing. What is the reasoning?
The anti-inflammatory effect of prednisone lasts longer than the drug itself, so giving twice the daily dose every other morning can hold the disease while leaving a day for the pituitary and adrenal glands to work. The label credits that pattern with less hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal suppression, fewer Cushingoid features, fewer withdrawal symptoms and less growth suppression, which is why paediatric teams reach for it in long courses. Two practical points. Symptoms can break through late in the off day, and that is expected; it does not mean the schedule has failed. And the schedule only works with shorter-acting steroids: dexamethasone and betamethasone suppress for too long and are not used this way. Keep growth measurements and steroid dates on the same page.
I am at 5 mg long-term. What do I do when I get a stomach bug?
At 5 mg you are close to physiologic replacement, so you cannot assume your body will raise its own cortisol during illness. Published guidance for mild illness is that anyone above 10 mg of prednisolone equivalent already has enough cover, while patients at or below physiologic dosing increase to 10 mg daily for a few days until it passes. For moderate or severe illness, or anything that stops absorption, the recommendation is around three times the physiologic dose, roughly 15 mg daily, then a gradual return. If you are vomiting and cannot keep tablets down, that is not a wait-and-see situation: you need injected hydrocortisone and assessment. Ask your prescriber for this in writing now, while you are well, and ask about a medic alert bracelet.
Can you give me a guaranteed cheapest price for Deltasone 2.5 mg?
No, and any page that does is quoting a number it cannot honour. Brand Deltasone was discontinued in the United States, so what you are buying is generic prednisone, and cash prices move with postcode, chain, pack size and coupon status. What can be said honestly is the shape of the published figures: coupon services list the 90-count in the low teens of dollars, a mail pharmacy lists thirty tablets for a few dollars with a fixed dispensing fee, and price guides put 100 tablets around 13 cents each. If cost is genuinely the obstacle, say so out loud to the prescriber and pharmacist. Strength and pack size can often be chosen to match the written taper and the budget at once.
Read each reply as a general teaching point, not a plan built for the person who asked. Your own situation - notes, bloods, every medicine you take - belongs in front of a prescriber who can weigh all of it together.