Drug Rankings

Drugs ranked by cost, safety signals, recalls, and shortages. All data from FDA, FAERS, and NADAC sources.

What These Rankings Show

PlainMeds tracks 6 ranking views derived from 682 prescription drugs, 3,720 FAERS adverse-event reports, 1,000 FDA enforcement recalls, and 1,679 active and resolved drug shortages. Cost-of-care leaderboards use CMS NADAC per-unit acquisition pricing, the actual price pharmacies pay before markup, across 23,166 monthly pricing records. Safety leaderboards aggregate FDA Adverse Event Reporting System volumes for total reports, death-associated reports, and hospitalization reports separately, so a drug high on report-volume need not be high on serious-outcome volume.

Ranking caveats: FAERS is a passive surveillance system, so widely-prescribed drugs accumulate reports faster than rarely-prescribed ones; rankings should be read as signal-detection indicators for further investigation, not per-patient risk scores. Recall rankings reflect manufacturer-batch enforcement actions, not aggregate severity. Shortage durations include both manufacturing-quality and active-ingredient supply causes, and a drug appearing on multiple lists (cost + recalls + shortages) usually points to concentrated-supplier or single-source manufacturing fragility rather than a single safety story. See the full methodology & limitations page for ranking logic and data vintage.

Most Expensive Drugs

Drugs with the highest NADAC cost per unit, the priciest medications on the market.

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  1. 1 ustekinumab $26,794.63
  2. 2 risankizumab $20,211.78
  3. 3 guselkumab $13,350.90
  4. 4 secukinumab $7,206.70
  5. 5 golimumab $6,818.88

Most Adverse Event Reports

Drugs with the most FDA adverse event reports filed through FAERS.

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  1. 1 adalimumab 695,825
  2. 2 etanercept 591,578
  3. 3 aspirin 518,554
  4. 4 prednisone 482,856
  5. 5 acetaminophen 417,458

Most Recalled Drugs

Drugs with the highest number of FDA recall actions.

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  1. 1 testosterone 28
  2. 2 calcium carbonate 25
  3. 3 duloxetine 22
  4. 4 semaglutide 22
  5. 5 losartan 19

Most Death-Associated Reports

Drugs with the most FAERS reports where death was a reported outcome.

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  1. 1 furosemide 60,624
  2. 2 acetaminophen 58,910
  3. 3 oxycodone 51,490
  4. 4 prednisone 50,090
  5. 5 aspirin 47,820

Most Hospitalization Reports

Drugs with the most FAERS reports involving hospitalization.

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  1. 1 aspirin 203,341
  2. 2 furosemide 190,901
  3. 3 prednisone 166,315
  4. 4 acetaminophen 150,224
  5. 5 adalimumab 146,638

Longest Active Drug Shortages

Currently shorted drugs ranked by how long the shortage has persisted.

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  1. 1 atropine 15+ yrs
  2. 2 fentanyl 15+ yrs
  3. 3 epinephrine 14+ yrs
  4. 4 lidocaine topical 14+ yrs
  5. 5 hydromorphone 9+ yrs

Related Sections

Browse Drugs 682 medications A-Z All Recalls 1,000 enforcement actions Active Shortages FDA shortage tracker Original Research Editorial analysis

Rankings Methodology

Rankings pull from federal data sources: CMS NADAC pricing for cost leaderboards, FDA FAERS for adverse-event volume, death-associated reports, and hospitalizations, FDA Enforcement Reports for recall counts, and FDA Drug Shortages Database for shortage duration. Raw counts reflect exposure volume and reporting practices, they are signal-detection indicators, not per-patient risk measures. See full methodology for ranking logic, limitations, and data vintage.

Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - FAERS + recalls + NADAC openFDA aggregated drug data: FAERS, recalls, NADAC pricing, drug shortages · 2024 Rankings derived from FDA openFDA APIs across FAERS adverse events, drug recall enforcement reports, NADAC pricing, and drug shortages list.