HRT Cost Calculator

What the HRT Cost Calculator does

The HRT Cost Calculator gives you a rough monthly out-of-pocket range for hormone replacement therapy across the brands listed in the clearhormones directory. You choose four things: estrogen form (patch, cream or gel, pill, pellet, or "not sure"), whether to add progesterone, whether you have insurance or are paying cash, and your state. It returns a headline range plus a cheapest-first list of up to ten matching providers, each with its own estimated monthly range and links to visit the provider or read the site's review.

It is a rule-based calculator, not a model, quote engine, or dataset. Every figure starts from a single number each brand publishes on the site — its "starting price" — and gets adjusted by fixed multipliers written into the tool. The formulation you pick scales the price (the tool uses patch 1.0, cream or gel 0.85, pill 0.8, and pellet 2.5), adding progesterone multiplies the low end by 1.2, and the high end of each range is set at 1.6 times the low. If you say you have insurance, the tool replaces that math with a flat placeholder of $0 to half the starting price, since it has no way to read your actual plan.

The tool also narrows the list to providers you could plausibly use. Picking a state keeps only brands that list that state as available; choosing "I have insurance" keeps only brands that accept insurance; "cash-pay only" drops insurance-first brands priced at $0; and selecting the pellet form keeps only brands that offer compounded medications. Brands with no published starting price still appear but are marked "price not published."

How to read your result

Read the bold headline as the full spread, not a typical bill. It is literally the lowest low and the highest high among every brand that matched your filters, so a wide range usually means the matched providers differ a lot in price, not that your own cost is uncertain across that whole span. The per-provider ranges below it are more useful for comparison because each one is tied to a specific brand's starting price.

A range shown as $0 on the low end is an insurance placeholder, not a promise of free treatment. It appears whenever a matching brand accepts insurance and you have not chosen cash-pay. Your real cost depends on your deductible, copay, and whether that brand is in-network — none of which the tool can see. If you want the cash-price math instead, switch coverage to "cash-pay only."

Use the output as a shortlist to research, then verify. The list links to each provider and to the site's own review of it. Prices, dose tiers, consult fees, and lab costs change often, so confirm the current number directly with any provider before you commit. The estimate belongs in a conversation with a prescriber who can match a formulation and dose to you — it does not diagnose, prescribe, or tell you which therapy is appropriate.

What the result is based on

Every dollar figure traces to one input: the brand's own published "starting price" in the clearhormones directory. The cash-pay path multiplies that price by a fixed formulation factor (patch 1.0, cream or gel 0.85, pill 0.8, pellet 2.5) and, if you add progesterone, by 1.2, then sets the high end at 1.6 times the low. There is no pricing model, no external dataset, and no clinical validation behind these numbers — they are flat assumptions coded into the tool.

When a brand accepts insurance and you have not selected cash-pay, the tool ignores that math and substitutes a placeholder range of $0 to half the starting price, because it cannot read your plan. It then filters the site's active brands by your state (the brand must list it as available), by coverage, and by formulation (pellet keeps only brands that offer compounded medications), sorts them cheapest-first, and shows up to ten.

The headline range is simply the minimum low and maximum high across all matching brands. A brand with no published starting price shows "price not published" and does not affect the range.

What it cannot tell you

• The formulation multipliers are flat assumptions, not brand-specific pricing. A patch, cream, pill, or pellet is priced by scaling one starting number, so the tool cannot reflect that a given brand may charge very differently for each form, or that the same form varies by dose tier.
• The insurance estimate is generic. It applies the same $0-to-half-price placeholder to every insurance-accepting brand and knows nothing about your deductible, copay, coinsurance, or whether the brand is in-network — so the low end can read $0 even when your real cost is not.
• It only covers the active brands in the clearhormones directory. Local clinics, retail and mail-order pharmacies, GoodRx or discount-card pricing, and telehealth providers not listed here are invisible to the tool, so the "cheapest" result is only the cheapest among the brands it tracks.
• It estimates the recurring medication cost only. One-time or periodic charges — the initial consult, follow-up visits, required bloodwork, shipping, and any membership fee — are not in the number.
• The progesterone toggle adds a flat 20% and nothing more. It does not distinguish micronized oral progesterone, a combination product, or a progestin IUD, which carry different real-world costs.
• State filtering relies on each brand self-reporting where it operates, and pellet pricing uses a single 2.5 multiplier that cannot capture how much real pellet costs vary by provider and insertion schedule.