What does a prescription cost in Greece?

Three separate questions decide what you hand over at the counter in Greece, and mixing them up is why the answers online contradict each other.

• Is the medicine reimbursed at all? EOPYY's national contact point for cross-border healthcare states on its page on the reimbursement of medicinal costs that "only medicines that are included in the positive list of prescription medicines are reimbursed". Anything off that list is yours to pay in full, however ordinary it seems.
• What is the reimbursement based on? The same page states that reimbursement is "according to the insurance price valid in Greece, reduced by the amount of patient's co-payment". So the starting point is not the shelf price a private buyer would pay. It is the regulated insurance price for that product.
• Are you entitled? Reimbursement flows from being registered and insured in Greece, not from holding a prescription. Without that, none of the above applies to you and you are a retail customer.

Medical devices and products follow a different rule again. The EOPYY page states that only devices and products provided under the Unified Regulation of Health Benefits, the EKPY, are reimbursed. EOPYY publishes the current EKPY on its regulation page, where the base instrument is decision EALE/G.P. 4091 of 24 April 2025, published in Government Gazette 2106/B of 2 May 2025, with a first amendment published in Gazette 3541/B of 17 June 2026. If a doctor prescribes an appliance rather than a medicine, that is the document that decides the answer.

The date on the EOPYY reimbursement page is 2 June 2021. Treat everything on it as the framework rather than as this month's arithmetic.

You will find a confident table on plenty of expat sites saying Greek prescriptions cost 25 percent, or 10 percent for some conditions and nothing for others. We are not going to reproduce it, because we could not find it on an official page.

The EOPYY national contact point page that describes the reimbursement mechanism does not state the co-payment percentages. What it does instead is give you the people who can. It directs enquiries about medicines to d6@eopyy.gov.gr, the Department for Medicines, and enquiries about medical products and devices to d8.t7@eopyy.gov.gr.

That is a better answer than a number, for one practical reason. The rate is not a single national figure applied to everything. It depends on the medicine, on the condition being treated and on your own status, and a percentage copied from a 2019 blog post will not survive contact with your actual prescription.

So do this instead. Before you commit to a treatment plan in Greece, email d6@eopyy.gov.gr with the name of the specific medicine and ask what the patient participation is for it. Ask your prescriber the same question at the consultation. And ask the pharmacist to show you the breakdown on the till receipt, which itemises the insurance price and your share, so that you can see the rule being applied rather than infer it.

Checked on 7 August 2026: the EOPYY national contact point page on the reimbursement of medicinal costs does not carry the co-payment percentages, and the Greek Ministry of Health's positive list page publishes the Government Gazette instruments rather than a patient-facing rate table. Re-checked on 8 August 2026: EOPYY's own frequently-asked-questions page gives patient participation percentages for hospital services but states none for medicines. Verify the rate for a named medicine with EOPYY.

Greece does have a route to paying nothing at the pharmacy, and it runs on income rather than on how long you have been in the country.

The Greek Ministry of Health's page on access of uninsured persons to the public health system, dated 24 June 2016, sets out the framework introduced by Law 4368/2016 and the joint ministerial decision A3(g)/GP/oik.25132 of 4 April 2016. It describes free access to public health structures for uninsured people and vulnerable social groups, and it carries the income table for free pharmaceutical care.

The thresholds it publishes are annual income of 2,400 euros for a single person, and 3,600 euros for a family without dependent members or a single-parent family with one dependent member, increased by 1,200 euros for a spouse and for each dependent family member. The same page states that the charge of 1 euro per prescription is abolished for uninsured people entitled to zero participation.

Two caveats matter more than the numbers.

• These are 2016 figures on a 2016 page. Income thresholds set by ministerial decision move. Read the current version before you rely on the amounts (verify with the Ministry of Health).
• Whether a newly arrived foreign resident falls inside the definition of an uninsured person for these purposes is a separate question. The scheme was built around people in Greece who lost cover, and the page describes it in those terms. Do not assume it applies to you because you happen to have no insurance yet. Ask the health unit or EOPYY directly (verify with EOPYY).

There are also condition-based and disability-based exemptions in Greek practice, set by their own ministerial decisions rather than by a single list. If you or a family member have a long-term diagnosis, that is worth asking EOPYY about by name.

If your prescription is for something expensive, there is a step between the doctor writing it and EOPYY paying for it, and skipping that step is how people end up funding a course of treatment themselves.

The EOPYY national contact point states that medicines requiring pre-approval by the EOPYY Health Committees, giving high-cost medicines for chronic or rare diseases and IVF medicines as its examples, are reimbursed only where that approval has been obtained. EOPYY runs an electronic pre-approval system for this purpose.

What this means in practice for a family arriving with an existing diagnosis is a sequencing problem rather than a cost problem. The approval is tied to a Greek prescriber's assessment and to your Greek entitlement, so it cannot begin until both exist. If someone in your household takes a specialist medicine, the sensible order is to establish entitlement, register with a doctor, get the Greek prescription written, and start the approval process, all before your imported supply runs low.

Ask two questions at the first appointment. Does this medicine sit in the pre-approval category, and roughly how long does the committee decision take in this region. Neither answer is published in a form we could cite, and both are things the prescribing clinic deals with routinely (verify with EOPYY).

Some medicines are also not dispensed at a high street pharmacy at all. EOPYY operates its own pharmacies and publishes separate service points for the distribution of high-cost medicines, so ask where a given prescription is collected before walking to the corner shop.

Full retail. That is the short version, and it is the version most new arrivals are actually living in.

Greek entitlement is not created by arriving, and it is not created by getting an AMKA. The AMKA is the social security registration number that a prescription is filed against, and EOPYY's guidance describes entitlement being proved by a certificate from the body that insures you, naming the European Health Insurance Card for temporary stays, the S2 for planned treatment and the S1 for permanent residence. Until one of those routes is live, the pharmacy treats you as a private customer.

An EU-issued prescription is a partial exception, but not a financial one. The EOPYY national contact point page on cross-border prescriptions, last updated 3 July 2025, states that a prescription delivered by a doctor in your country is valid in all EU countries, and that you present a printed or handwritten cross-border prescription at a Greek pharmacy carrying the required details. On money it is explicit: "You will have to pay upfront and contact your statutory health insurance service back home to know whether you are entitled to reimbursement of costs."

A US prescription is not a cross-border prescription in that sense and that page does not address non-EU prescriptions. Plan on a Greek doctor re-prescribing locally, and bring the original prescription plus a prescriber's letter naming the active ingredient, strength and dose.

Three habits make this cheaper. Ask for the itemised receipt every single time, because a claim without one is much harder to make. Give the pharmacist the active ingredient rather than the brand you know from home, since brand names differ between countries and a cheaper equivalent may be on the shelf. And keep a written list of everything your household takes, by molecule and strength, in your phone rather than in a drawer at home.

The window that costs money is the one between arriving and being able to prove entitlement, and it is not short. EOPYY's own guidance shows entitlement resting on a certificate from an insuring body or on Greek contribution status, and neither of those is produced by the act of moving. Meanwhile the consultations, the diagnostics and the pharmacy bills carry on.

Private medical cover taken for a visa application or for a first period in Greece is designed to carry medical costs through that interval, before public entitlement is in place. It is not a substitute for EOPYY registration and it does not shortcut the AMKA process. It is the bridge across the months in between.

Outpatient medication is the benefit worth reading your own wording on, because that is where this page's costs actually sit and where policies differ most. Check whether prescribed medication is a listed benefit at all or only covered after an inpatient stay, whether repeat prescriptions for an ongoing condition are inside the benefit or excluded as maintenance, how pre-existing conditions are treated given that any medicine you already take is by definition pre-existing, and whether you claim on receipts or the insurer settles directly with a provider.

Then do the unglamorous part properly. Keep the itemised pharmacy receipt, the prescription record and the doctor's note together and dated for every purchase from week one. That is the difference between a claim that is paid and a claim that turns into a correspondence.