HAY fever sufferers can save up to £4.50 by swapping branded medication for supermarket or budget own brands.
With much of the UK basking in sunshine and as temperatures soar, many will be feeling the effects of the high pollen count.
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To deal with the itchy eyes and running nose, many will be reaching for the allergy tablets from household brands.
But an investigation by The Sun found shoppers can actually save cash by opting for own brand tablets.
This is because they contain the same active ingredient, meaning they do the exact same job but for a wallet-friendly fee.
The most common active ingredients to treat hay fever symptoms are Cetirizine hydrochloride, which can be found in Piriteze and Benadryl, and Loratadine, which is found in Clarityn.
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We compared prices of the cheapest own brand 30-pack boxes with the branded counterparts and found that for the most part it works out cheaper.
Own brand products we looked at include pharmacies Superdrug and Boots, and supermarkets including Asda, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco, as well as Wilko.
It turns out, Wilko should be your go-to store for hay fever medication as we found it sells the cheapest tablets for both active ingredients.
A box of its own brand pills costs £1.50, which works out at only 5p per tablet.
Typically, a Benadryl pack of 30 costs £6, making it £4.50 more expensive per pack or 15p more expensive per pill.
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Wilko’s pills are £5 cheaper than a pack of Piriteze, which typically costs £6.50, and £3 cheaper than Clarityn, which costs £4.50.
The next best value you’ll find for your money will be from Asda’s £2.70 pack of hay fever tablets, it’s only 9p per pill and is £1.80 cheaper than Clarityn, £3.80 cheaper than Piriteze and £3.30 cheaper than Benadryl.
On the more expensive end of the scale, Superdrug stocks its own brand at £6.30, it’s cheaper than leading brand Piriteze, which costs £6.50 to buy, but only by 20p.
However, we found that it’s not always cheaper to opt for own brand medications.
A box of 30 own brand Cetirizine hydrochloride tablets from Boots will set you back £7.30 – that’s £2.80 more than a branded pack of Piriteze.
You may find that more retailers stock smaller packs of the tablets, but in general bigger boxes work out as better value for money.
We didn’t include smaller boxes of own brand hay fever medication in the price comparison, instead sticking to like-for-like products.
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