How much is a prescription in Austria?

Austria charges a flat prescription fee, the Rezeptgebühr, rather than a share of what the medicine costs. The federal information portal oesterreich.gv.at gives the value for 2026 as 7,55 Euro, and the Österreichische Gesundheitskasse (ÖGK) states the same figure as EUR 7,55 pro Packung. A €12 antibiotic and a €400 specialist medicine cost you the same at the till.

The fee is charged per package, not per prescription slip and not per appointment. A slip carrying three medicines costs three fees. The pharmacy collects the fee on behalf of your insurance carrier and settles the balance of the price with the carrier directly, so nothing else changes hands at the counter.

There is a floor as well as a ceiling. gesundheit.gv.at, the public health portal, states that where the cost of the prescribed medicine is below the prescription fee, only that lower cost is payable. You are never charged more than the medicine is worth.

One caution before you budget on any of this. The fee and the exemption thresholds are reset every year, so every number on this page is a 2026 value, read on the official pages named here on 8 August 2026. Check the current figure on oesterreich.gv.at or with your own carrier before you rely on it.

The flat fee applies to a public prescription, a Kassenrezept. gesundheit.gv.at describes the mechanics plainly: the pharmacy bills the health insurance fund directly and the patient pays only the prescription fee.

A private prescription, a Privatrezept, is a different transaction. The same page states that for private prescriptions the full private sale price of the medicine is payable at the pharmacy, and that patients can submit the invoice to their insurance carrier afterwards, with some carriers refunding 80 percent of the cost less the prescription fee. So a medicine on a private slip is not a €7.55 medicine, and the amount you get back depends on your carrier rather than on a single national rule.

Which slip you are handed usually follows from the doctor's contract status, not from the medicine. Doctors who hold a contract with your carrier write public prescriptions; a Wahlarzt working outside the contract system often does not. This is the most common way a new arrival in Austria ends up with an unexpected bill, because the first English-speaking practice a family finds is frequently a Wahlarzt. You can check which social insurance carriers a given doctor, pharmacy or institute actually holds a contract with using the official provider search at sozialversicherung.at before you book.

A further group of medicines carries an approval condition. gesundheit.gv.at describes a documentation model in which the prescribing doctor decides against clearly set rules whether a medicine subject to chief-medical-officer approval is prescribed, and records that decision, rather than seeking clearance in advance. If your regular medication falls into that group, ask the practice what the step involves at the first appointment rather than at the pharmacy counter.

Austria caps what one insured person pays in prescription fees across a calendar year. The ÖGK states the exemption applies once you have paid the higher of EUR 314,01 or 2 Prozent Ihres Jahres-Nettoeinkommens in prescription fees. At the 2026 fee that floor is just over forty packages in a single year.

You do not apply for this. The social insurance system keeps a prescription-fee account for every insured person, and sozialversicherung.at states that once the ceiling is reached in the running year, the exemption is displayed to the doctor or the practice assistant when the e-card is inserted in the reader. There is no form and no receipt-keeping.

For families the counting rule matters. The same page states that prescription fees paid by the insured person for co-insured dependants are included when working out whether that person has reached their 2% ceiling, while the income of co-insured dependants such as a spouse or children is not taken into account when the net income is calculated. In a single-earner household, in other words, the whole family's prescription fees run into one account measured against one income.

The income figure is not something you submit. sozialversicherung.at states that no new income data is collected and that the calculation uses the most recent annual contribution basis already known to the social insurance system, which in practice usually reflects the previous calendar year. If your current circumstances are substantially different, the page describes an application to have the annual net income newly assessed.

Two limits are worth holding on to. Only the prescription fee itself counts toward the ceiling; the page is explicit that the arrangement concerns the prescription fee alone, so other cost sharing does not accumulate toward it. And the count restarts on 1 January, which is a real consideration for a family arriving in the autumn with only a few months of the year left to run.

Some people never pay the fee and never apply. The ÖGK lists exemption without application for, among others, recipients of the equalisation supplement or pension bonus, people doing civil service, recipients of social assistance, asylum seekers, people self-insured while caring for a disabled child or a relative, participants in recognised voluntary service, war victims under the relevant veterans legislation, and people with a notifiable communicable disease, in that last case for the medicines connected with the illness.

Everyone else applies on income grounds. The thresholds are monthly net income figures and are reset annually. These are the 2026 values published on oesterreich.gv.at, last updated 1 January 2026:

Applications go to your own insurance carrier. If your income sits near these lines, it is worth applying rather than waiting for the automatic ceiling to catch you, because the ceiling only helps after you have already spent the money.

One point parents ask about directly. The exemption groups set out on the oesterreich.gv.at page and on the ÖGK page are defined by income or by status, and neither page lists an age-based exemption for children. That is a scoped observation about those two pages rather than a rule about your household, so confirm your children's position with ÖGK before you plan around it.

Austria has largely moved prescriptions off paper. With the e-Rezept the prescription is stored electronically, and gesundheit.gv.at states that redeeming it at the pharmacy is done with the e-card, with the e-Rezept code on your phone, or with a printout. There is no slip to lose and no trip back to the practice for a duplicate.

Timing catches people out more often than cost does. The same page, last updated 10 April 2025, states that a prescription is valid for twelve months from the issue date, but that the first dispensing of the medicine must take place within one month of the issue date shown on the prescription. Collect the first package promptly and use the remaining validity for the repeats.

All of this runs through the e-card, which is why getting yours in the first weeks matters more than it looks. gesundheit.gv.at states that if you arrive at an appointment without the card, the doctor can enter your insurance number manually to check your entitlement, and that some practices take a deposit which is refunded when you bring the card in.

Everything above assumes you are already inside the Austrian public system. Whether you are, and from what date, is what actually decides your prescription costs in year one. If you take a job, your employer registers you with the competent carrier before you start work and cover follows the employment. If you arrive self-employed, retired or not yet working, the route is self-insurance under §16 ASVG.

That route carries a waiting period. oesterreich.gv.at, last updated 31 March 2026, states that the contribution is 565,25 Euro per month for 2026, that the entitlement is to benefits in kind such as medical help, medicines and hospital care, with no entitlement to cash benefits like sick pay or maternity allowance, and that the entitlement to those benefits in kind generally only arises after six months. Medicines sit squarely in the benefits-in-kind category, so that waiting period is a prescription problem as much as anything else.

The page sets out how the wait falls away: prior cover of six weeks continuously immediately before the application, or 26 weeks in the preceding twelve months, with cover under ASVG or B-KUVG qualifying. A family arriving straight from the United States or the United Kingdom will usually not have that Austrian prior cover, and the page does not resolve whether cover held elsewhere counts in your particular case, so put that question to ÖGK directly rather than assuming either answer. Timing is also unforgiving: the same page states that where the application is made within six weeks of the previous insurance ending the cover runs on from that date, and otherwise it starts the day after the application. There is no backdating.

For a household in that window, every prescription is a full-price private purchase rather than a €7.55 one, on top of the monthly contribution. This is the gap private international cover is designed to sit across while public entitlement is still pending, and it is the cover most residence permit files already require at application stage. What a policy does with outpatient medicines varies a great deal between wordings, so read the certificate on prescription cover specifically, and keep the policy running until your public entitlement has actually begun rather than until you think it should have.

Once you are inside the system, Austrian prescription costs are unusually predictable. One long-term medication collected monthly is twelve packages at €7.55. A household managing several conditions pays per package each time, and because the fees an insured person pays for co-insured dependants count toward that person's own ceiling, a family reaches the cap faster than any individual would. After the higher of €314.01 or 2% of annual net income, prescriptions cost nothing for the rest of the calendar year.

Three habits keep the arithmetic on your side. Get the e-card early, since it is what carries both the e-Rezept and the automatic exemption display at the practice. Check a doctor's contract status on the sozialversicherung.at provider search before booking, so you leave with a public prescription rather than a private invoice. And if your monthly net income is anywhere near the limits in the table above, apply for exemption instead of waiting for the ceiling to be reached.