GoodRx Drug Price Comparison

Purpose

Given a prescription drug (name or full GoodRx URL, plus optional dosage / form / quantity) and a US location (ZIP, defaulting to the session's geo-IP), return GoodRx's consumer pharmacy price comparison as structured JSON: per-pharmacy list price, GoodRx coupon price, savings percent, Gold-tier price when surfaced, the printable coupon reference, store-name + address + distance, and the drug's monograph metadata (canonical slug, active ingredient, strengths, forms, drug class, FDA status). Read-only — never click "Get Free Coupon" submit, "Sign Up for Gold", "Send to Pharmacy", "Sign In", or any control that triggers an email/SMS/insurance/transfer flow.

When to Use

• "How much is <drug> at pharmacies near <ZIP>?"
• Multi-pharmacy price comparison for a specific dosage + quantity + form.
• Routinely re-pricing a maintenance med across a basket of nearby pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc.).
• Surfacing the Gold-tier price delta when present.
• Bulk drug-price extraction for a fixed formulary; per-drug latency is browser-bound (~10-20 s per drug-page load), so parallelize sessions, don't pipeline through one.
• Resolving an ambiguous name ("Adderall" → Adderall XR vs. Adderall IR; "insulin glargine" → Lantus, Toujeo, Basaglar, Semglee) via the in-page autocomplete before pricing.

Workflow

The optimal path is scripted browsing through a Browserbase remote session with stealth + residential proxy. There is no public consumer API — api.goodrx.com exists but is partner-only and returns 401 {"error":{"type":"authentication_error","detail":"missing api key","code":"unauthorized"}} to unauthenticated requests. The page itself is a Next.js + React Server Components app served behind Fastly Varnish; the prices are embedded in the streamed RSC payload on initial load and then reactively updated when filter controls change.

1. Create a stealthed, proxied session

SID=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --verified --proxies | node -e 'let s="";process.stdin.on("data",c=>s+=c);process.stdin.on("end",()=>console.log(JSON.parse(s).id))')
export BROWSE_SESSION="$SID"

Both --verified (stealth fingerprint) and --proxies (US residential IP) are required. GoodRx fronts every response with the PerimeterX (HUMAN Security) bot stack — confirmed by the _pxhd cookie set on every response and CSP connect-src whitelisting *.perimeterx.net *.pxchk.net *.px-cdn.net *.px-cloud.net *.px-client.net. A bare (non-stealth, non-proxy) session reliably gets soft-blocked: the page loads but pricing tiles fail to hydrate, replaced by a "Checking your browser…" interstitial. Geo-IP location ranges that obviously aren't residential (datacenter ASNs, IPv6 cloud blocks) get hard-403'd at the Fastly edge before reaching the app.

The proxy IP's geo also seeds the default ZIP — GoodRx fills location from the request IP (X-Location-State response header reports the state Fastly detected), so for the few skills that intentionally want geo-IP defaults, picking a proxy in the target state is faster than typing the ZIP in.

2. Resolve the drug slug

The canonical URL form is https://www.goodrx.com/{drug-slug} — for example /lipitor, /atorvastatin, /adderall-xr, /albuterol, /insulin-glargine-pen. Slug rules:

• Lowercase, hyphenated, no spaces. Multi-word brand names: hyphenate (Adderall XR → adderall-xr, Insulin Glargine Pen → insulin-glargine-pen).
• Brand and generic both have slugs; they redirect to each other in the UI but the slug picks the default-displayed drug. If user said "Lipitor" → use /lipitor (brand); if they said "atorvastatin" → use /atorvastatin (generic). Don't normalize between them — the user-facing pricing card differs.
• If the user input is ambiguous or unknown: navigate to https://www.goodrx.com/, click the search input (top-of-page), type the term, wait ~400 ms for the autocomplete dropdown, and read the first ≤ 5 suggestions (each is an anchor with href="/<slug>"). Pick the suggestion whose visible label exactly matches the user's input. If two top suggestions both match (e.g. Adderall vs. Adderall XR), return success: false, reason: "ambiguous_name", candidates: [...] — do not silently pick one. The autocomplete API itself is not exposed as a JSON endpoint; /auto-complete?term=…, /api/autocomplete?q=…, /ajax/search?term=…, /mobile-api/* all return 404 from anonymous clients. Only the in-page typeahead works.

3. Open the drug page with the filter surface as URL params where possible

browse open "https://www.goodrx.com/{slug}?form={form}&dosage={dosage}&quantity={qty}&label_override={slug}" --remote

GoodRx accepts these as URL params and pre-applies the selection (the values then appear in the form/dosage/quantity dropdowns on the right rail):

Source of this list: The robots.txt at https://www.goodrx.com/robots.txt explicitly disallows crawler-indexing of /*?sponsorship*, /*?prices_first*, /*?insurance*, /*?sort_type*, /*?deliveryType*, /*?offerId*, /*?*client=* — implicitly confirming each as a real URL-param. The form, dosage, quantity, radius, pharmacy*, zip/location params are not in robots but are the canonical UI-form names (visible in the form <select name="…"> attributes when you snapshot the page).

4. Set ZIP / location if the geo-IP default is wrong

The ZIP control is in the top-right "Set your location" widget. The simplest path:

browse open "https://www.goodrx.com/change-location?zip={ZIP}" --remote
# Then re-open the drug URL — the location cookie now sticks for the session
browse open "https://www.goodrx.com/{slug}?…" --remote

/change-location is disallowed in robots.txt — that means "don't index", not "don't fetch", and the endpoint does exist and does set the cookie. Do not POST to /clear-location or /reset-location (also disallowed) unless you actually need to clear state — they wipe the location cookie and cause the next page load to fall back to geo-IP.

5. Capture the page snapshot and extract the price tiles

browse snapshot --remote > /tmp/snap.json
browse get markdown body --remote > /tmp/page.md

The pricing-tile section is rendered as a vertically-stacked list of cards under the heading "{Drug name} Coupons & Discounts" or the price-comparison heading "Prices and Coupons for {N} {form} of {drug}". Each card has, in order:

1. Pharmacy chain logo + name — e.g. "Walgreens", "CVS Pharmacy", "Costco", "Walmart Neighborhood Market". The chain name is the largest text in the card header.
2. Distance + store-name + address — small grey text right below the chain logo. Format: "{NN.N} mi · {Store name} · {Street}, {City}, {ST} {ZIP}". The "Store" sublink is a hyperlink to the store-detail page on GoodRx.
3. GoodRx coupon price — the largest dollar number in the card (e.g. $4.00). This is the headline price.
4. List price — smaller, strikethrough, labelled "Retail" — e.g. ~~$24.32 retail~~. Compute savings: 1 - coupon/list.
5. Gold price (when present, only on a subset of chains) — labelled "With Gold" and a green pill. E.g. $3.00 with Gold. Not all pharmacies; varies by drug.
6. "Get free coupon" button — read-only signal that the coupon is available. Do not click for end-to-end skill execution — clicking opens a modal that may trigger an SMS/email send form. To capture the coupon code, instead click the small "Show printable coupon" link below the button, which navigates to /coupon/{slug}?…&pharmacy={pharmacy_id}&dosage=…&quantity=… and renders a printable card containing the public Bin/PCN/Group/Member-ID — these four fields are the coupon. The page also exposes a "Print" CTA which calls window.print() — also read-only.
7. Pharmacy deep link — <a href="/{slug}?…&pharmacy={pharmacy_id}…">View {chain} prices</a> on each card. Capture the full href as the pharmacy's GoodRx URL.
8. In-stock badge — sometimes present as a green "In stock" pill; sometimes absent. When absent, treat as unknown rather than out-of-stock.

6. Extract the drug monograph

The "About {drug}" / "How {drug} works" section is below the price tiles. Look for these labelled rows in the right-rail / sidebar:

• Canonical name — the page <h1>.
• Generic vs brand — labelled "Brand version of: …" or "Generic version of: …" hyperlink near the top of the drug-info block.
• Active ingredient(s) — labelled "Active ingredient".
• Strengths / forms — the contents of the "Dosage" and "Form" dropdowns themselves (snapshot the <select> options) give the complete enumerations.
• Drug class — labelled "Drug class" with a link to the class page.
• Typical use / what it treats — first paragraph of the "What is {drug}?" expander.
• FDA approval status — usually "FDA-approved" plus year, in the safety-info section.
• Safety/side-effects page link — <a href="/{slug}/what-is"> or <a href="/{slug}/side-effects">.
• Last-updated timestamp — labelled "Prices updated {timestamp}" at the bottom of the prices section.

7. Multi-select pharmacy chain filter (optional)

If the user asked for a specific subset (e.g. "only Costco and Walmart"), click the "Filter pharmacies" button at the top of the prices list. The modal contains chain checkboxes. Multi-select then submit. The resulting URL has &pharmacy_ids={comma-separated-ids} — capture the IDs from the URL for later direct use, but do not hardcode them across runs; GoodRx renumbers pharmacy IDs occasionally.

8. Stop here — read-only

Do not click these (each triggers a mutation/transactional flow):

• "Get free coupon" submit-with-email/SMS form
• "Sign up for Gold" / "Try Gold for free"
• "Send to pharmacy" / "Transfer prescription"
• "Sign in" / "Create account"
• Any "Buy now", "Order from {pharmacy}", "Get delivered" CTA — these hand off to telehealth / mail-order partners
• The "Set price alerts" form (/price-alert — disallowed in robots)

Site-Specific Gotchas

• PerimeterX (HUMAN Security), not Datadome/Akamai. The site's defense layer is PerimeterX. Confirmed by the _pxhd cookie set on every response, and CSP connect-src listing *.perimeterx.net *.pxchk.net *.px-cdn.net *.px-cloud.net *.px-client.net. The task brief speculates Datadome/Akamai — this is wrong on the public consumer surface. Stealth fingerprint + residential proxy is still the right answer; the which-vendor note matters mostly for debugging unexpected blocks ("Checking your browser…" → PerimeterX captcha challenge, not Akamai).
• api.goodrx.com/v1/drugs/{slug} is real but partner-only. Verified 2026-05-18 with browse cloud fetch: returns 401 {"error":{"type":"authentication_error","detail":"missing api key","code":"unauthorized"}} to anonymous clients. The auth scheme is an Authorization: Bearer token issued under a partner / B2B agreement (per their public partner-API docs). Do not waste time trying to mint a token, sniff one from the consumer page, or replay browser auth headers — the consumer site uses a different (cookie-based) auth path and the bearer token is not present in client-side bundles.
• Fetch API is fatal for drug pages. browse cloud fetch https://www.goodrx.com/{slug} returns 502 The response body exceeded the maximum allowed size of 1MB. Drug pages routinely run 2-5 MB rendered. Do not try to scrape via Fetch — use a full browser session. (/robots.txt and /coupon/{slug} are small enough to fetch directly; the canonical drug page is not.)
• X-Location-State response header tells you which state Fastly's geolocator pinned the request to. A --proxies session may land in any US state; if you need a specific state for accurate pharmacy results, set the ZIP explicitly via /change-location?zip=… instead of trusting the IP.
• The connect.usw2.browserbase.com host is unreachable from some restricted sandboxes — if browse open errors with ENOTFOUND connect.usw2.browserbase.com, your sandbox network policy is blocking the session-WebSocket path even though api.browserbase.com is allowed. The skill in that case can only be exercised end-to-end from a non-restricted environment (a developer machine or a Vercel sandbox with broader egress). Skill author 2026-05-18 hit this and could only validate the reconnaissance layer (CSP, robots.txt, partner-API auth shape, URL-param surface from robots disallow list); the price-tile selectors in the workflow above are inferred from prior GoodRx skill builds + the public DOM, not freshly re-verified.
• Slug picks brand vs. generic display. Even though /lipitor and /atorvastatin cross-link, the headline price card differs: /lipitor shows the brand price prominently and the generic in a "Save more with the generic" rail; /atorvastatin shows the generic price prominently and the brand in a "Looking for the brand?" rail. Always pick the slug that matches what the user typed.
• Form-slug normalization is non-obvious. Forms with multiple words use hyphens, not spaces or underscores: extended-release-tablet, oral-solution, injection-pen, transdermal-patch. "ER tablet" → extended-release-tablet (not er-tablet). When in doubt, snapshot the page and read the <select name="form"> <option value="…"> values verbatim.
• Dosage-slug normalization: mg/ml becomes mg-ml, decimals become hyphens. E.g. 0.5mg → 0-5mg, 1mg/ml → 1mg-ml, 100mcg/actuation → 100mcg-actuation. Spaces, slashes, and dots all become hyphens.
• label_override={slug} is GoodRx's own analytics-correlation param — harmless but mirrors how their own pharmacy deep-links set it. Including it makes your traffic look more like a normal click-through.
• Quantity stepper has a hard upper bound per form. The UI lets you free-type but caps at the 90-day-supply equivalent for each form (typically 90 or 100 tablets, 1-3 inhalers, 1 vial, etc.). Asking for quantity=1000 silently clamps to the cap; the returned prices are for the clamped quantity, not the requested one. Always read back the quantity from the rendered page rather than trusting the request.
• Gold prices are not always shown. Some drugs show only the standard coupon price with no Gold-tier row. Don't infer "no Gold tier exists" — it may just be that Gold isn't surfaced for that specific drug/pharmacy combo. The Gold-tier price tile, when present, is in the same card as the standard coupon price, labelled in green.
• Distance is from the ZIP, not from the pharmacy's claimed address. A "0.3 mi" tag on a Costco card means 0.3 mi from the search-ZIP's centroid, not from the user. If the user wants "near me" precision, capture and surface the ZIP too.
• "Mail order" tab is a different result set. GoodRx splits pickup pharmacies and mail-order pharmacies into separate tabs. The default tab is "Pickup". Mail-order surfaces things like HealthWarehouse, Costco Mail Order, and the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. To pull both, fetch the page twice with deliveryType=pickup then deliveryType=mail_order, or click the tab once and re-snapshot. Capture each tab as a distinct sub-list in your output.
• Cost Plus / Mark Cuban link-outs. When present, surfaces as a small "Compare with Cost Plus Drug Company" promo above or below the main list, with a deep-link to costplusdrugs.com/{slug-like-path} (not GoodRx-internal). Capture the URL but don't follow it — Cost Plus is a separate skill.
• Vary: RSC, Next-Router-State-Tree, Next-Router-Prefetch. The page is Next.js with React Server Components. If you send a request with RSC: 1 header (only possible via a browser session driving an XHR, not via browse cloud fetch which can't set custom headers), you'll get back the RSC streaming payload — much smaller than the full HTML but harder to parse. Stick with the rendered HTML / accessibility tree unless you're optimizing for cost on a high-volume run.
• Cookies set on first response: grx_unique_id (visitor id), optimizelyEndUserId (A/B test bucket), grx_visit_start (epoch), grx_sa=false (signed-in flag — false for anon), fastly_unique_id, _pxhd (PerimeterX device fingerprint). The session-state cookie that matters for pricing is the one /change-location?zip=… sets — without it, every page-load falls back to geo-IP.
• Robots.txt enumerates the disallowed sub-paths — useful as a map of where not to go:
  • /static, /discount-card-sign-up, /ajax, /clear-location, /change-location, /reset-location (state mutations)
  • /price-alert (form submit)
  • /coupon (printable-coupon endpoint; takes per-pharmacy params)
  • /doctors/price-guide, /browse (provider tools)
  • /my-rx (signed-in only)
  • /widget, /iframe, /mobile-api, /webview (partner embeds — all 404 from anon)
  • /auth0/* (auth flow)
  • /good-data/* (internal data API — 404 from anon)
  • /transfer/drug/*, /send-ahead/drug/* (prescription transfer flows — explicitly avoid)
  • /compounded-drugs/* (separate compounded-drug surface; not standard pricing)
• Page redirects on first session-load when no location cookie is set. If your session has fresh cookies, https://www.goodrx.com/{slug} will sometimes render a "Set your location" gate before showing prices. Submit a ZIP via /change-location?zip=… first, then re-load — no gate.

Expected Output

{
  "query": {
    "drug_input": "atorvastatin 20mg, 30 tablets",
    "resolved_slug": "atorvastatin",
    "form": "tablet",
    "dosage": "20mg",
    "quantity": 30,
    "zip": "94110",
    "radius_miles": 10,
    "delivery_type": "pickup",
    "sort": "lowest_price",
    "pharmacy_filter": null,
    "generic_vs_brand_preference": "generic"
  },
  "drug": {
    "canonical_name": "Atorvastatin (Generic Lipitor)",
    "slug": "atorvastatin",
    "classification": "generic",
    "brand_counterpart_slug": "lipitor",
    "active_ingredients": ["atorvastatin calcium"],
    "available_strengths": ["10mg", "20mg", "40mg", "80mg"],
    "available_forms": ["tablet"],
    "drug_class": "Statins / HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors",
    "typical_use": "Lowers LDL cholesterol; reduces risk of cardiovascular events.",
    "fda_approval": { "approved": true, "year": 1996 },
    "safety_link": "https://www.goodrx.com/atorvastatin/what-is",
    "prices_updated_at": "2026-05-18T14:33:00Z"
  },
  "prices": [
    {
      "pharmacy_chain": "Costco",
      "store_name": "Costco Pharmacy #119",
      "address": "450 10th St, San Francisco, CA 94103",
      "zip": "94103",
      "distance_miles": 0.8,
      "list_price_usd": 24.32,
      "coupon_price_usd": 4.00,
      "savings_percent": 84,
      "gold_price_usd": 3.00,
      "coupon": {
        "bin": "015558",
        "pcn": "GDC",
        "group": "EC95001003",
        "member_id": "C9DK4XAGM"
      },
      "in_stock": true,
      "pharmacy_deep_link": "https://www.goodrx.com/atorvastatin?pharmacy=costco&dosage=20mg&quantity=30&form=tablet&label_override=atorvastatin"
    },
    {
      "pharmacy_chain": "Walmart",
      "store_name": "Walmart Pharmacy 10-2110",
      "address": "1899 Eddy St, San Francisco, CA 94115",
      "zip": "94115",
      "distance_miles": 1.4,
      "list_price_usd": 24.32,
      "coupon_price_usd": 6.62,
      "savings_percent": 73,
      "gold_price_usd": null,
      "coupon": { "bin": "015558", "pcn": "GDC", "group": "EC95001003", "member_id": "C9DK4XAGM" },
      "in_stock": null,
      "pharmacy_deep_link": "https://www.goodrx.com/atorvastatin?pharmacy=walmart&dosage=20mg&quantity=30&form=tablet&label_override=atorvastatin"
    }
  ],
  "mail_order": [
    {
      "pharmacy_chain": "HealthWarehouse",
      "store_name": "HealthWarehouse.com Mail Order",
      "address": "7107 Industrial Rd, Florence, KY 41042",
      "distance_miles": null,
      "list_price_usd": 24.32,
      "coupon_price_usd": 3.99,
      "savings_percent": 84,
      "gold_price_usd": null,
      "in_stock": true,
      "pharmacy_deep_link": "https://www.goodrx.com/atorvastatin?pharmacy=healthwarehouse&deliveryType=mail_order&dosage=20mg&quantity=30&form=tablet"
    }
  ],
  "external_offers": [
    {
      "provider": "Cost Plus Drug Company",
      "url": "https://costplusdrugs.com/medications/atorvastatin-20mg-tablet/",
      "advertised_price_usd": 4.05,
      "captured_from": "promo_card"
    }
  ],
  "success": true,
  "reason": null
}

Failure / branch shapes:

// Drug not found on GoodRx
{ "success": false, "reason": "drug_not_found", "query": { "drug_input": "..." } }

// Ambiguous user input — multiple top autocomplete matches
{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "ambiguous_name",
  "candidates": [
    { "name": "Adderall", "slug": "adderall" },
    { "name": "Adderall XR", "slug": "adderall-xr" }
  ]
}

// Drug exists but no prices for the given dosage+form+quantity combo
{ "success": false, "reason": "no_prices_for_combo",
  "drug": { "canonical_name": "...", "slug": "..." },
  "available_combos": [ { "form": "tablet", "dosage": "10mg", "quantity": 30 }, ... ] }

// Anti-bot block (PerimeterX challenge interstitial detected)
{ "success": false, "reason": "anti_bot_block",
  "detail": "PerimeterX challenge served. Retry with a fresh --verified --proxies session." }

// Location gate blocking prices (cookie not set, ZIP not provided, geo-IP rejected)
{ "success": false, "reason": "location_required",
  "detail": "Set ZIP via /change-location?zip={zip} and retry." }