Guide for patients & caregivers
How to Check an Online Pharmacy Before Ordering
Check an online pharmacy's stated registration, separate the service, prescriber and dispenser, and understand the limits of a register match.
Prepared with AI assistance and checked against the cited sources. No independent clinician review has been completed. How we prepare articles
Before you order
Find the dispensing business, its location and claimed regulator. Open that regulator's official website.
Three separate checks
If consultation or prescribing is offered, identify the service and individual prescriber separately from the dispensing pharmacy. Different people or organizations may fill these roles. A registration entry for one does not establish the others.
Use the related doctor-verification guide for a doctor. Its medical-register directory is not a pharmacy or all-prescriber lookup.
Use the official route
FDA warns that fake storefronts can mimic licensed pharmacies. A familiar name or badge alone does not verify the site.
Compare only the business and any website or address details the authority actually publishes. Keep absent or conflicting details unresolved and ask the authority through independently obtained official contact details.
Examples depend on location
Jurisdiction examples:
- United States: FDA directs consumers to state-board licence checks and says to verify its other criteria, including whether a licensed pharmacist is available.
- EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein: click the retailer's common logo, check that it opens the corresponding official national register, and confirm that retailer is listed. The image alone is not verification.
- England: CQC regulates most England-based online doctor services treating people in England, but some fall outside its scope. Its service registration is separate from the individual doctor and dispensing-pharmacy checks.
What a match does not prove
Registration does not authenticate a delivered medicine, show that a prescription suits you or guarantee care. No seller is recommended here.
Do not label a site fraudulent solely because a search failed. Ask the authority to resolve the discrepancy before relying on the claimed registration.
Do not post prescriptions or identity documents on SameCase to check a seller. For a time-sensitive medicine-supply problem, contact your pharmacist or prescriber promptly; this page does not decide a dose.
Sources and further reading
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