Is It Safe to Split My Pills?

People split tablets for a variety of reasons, but experts say doing so comes with risks

Sarah Gleim,

AARP

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Published July 18, 2025

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If you’re 50 or older, chances are you take prescription medication. In fact, national data from 2019 shows that nearly 60 percent of U.S. adults ages 40 to 59 use at least one prescription drug; among adults 60 to 79, that share jumps to about 84 percent. A more recent report from 2024 found that almost 90 percent of adults 65 and older take at least one prescription medication. But research from AARP shows that nearly half (48 percent) of older adults either haven’t or know someone who hasn’t taken their medications as prescribed — or have skipped their medications altogether because they can’t afford them. And a separate survey by KFF, an independent organization that tracks health policy, shows that about 12 percent of adults cut or split their pills in half to save money.

Many pharmacists and health care providers, however, advise against the practice.

“I wouldn’t recommend that my patients [split pills] without letting me know as their pharmacist or medication expert, as well as their physician and other members of their health care team,” says Lucas Berenbrok, a pharmacist and associate professor and vice chair of education for pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy.

Splitting a dosage prescribed by your physician could mean that you’re not going to see the effects that your care team expects to see, Berenbrok says.

Why do adults split pills?

The most common reason people split pills is to save money on their prescription out-of-pocket costs. Even though some health care providers discourage the practice, splitting pills in half might be helpful to:

Save money. You can lower your prescription costs by splitting double-strength tablets into two equal, lower doses.
Adjust dosage. It might be necessary to split pills to lower your dosage. You should only do this if your doctor tells you to.
Swallow large pills. Some big pills are hard to swallow. Cutting them in half makes them easier to take, especially for older adults, who are more likely to experience swallowing difficulties.

Shalini Lynch, a pharmacist and a health sciences clinical professor in the department of clinical pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, says if her patients ask for advice about splitting pills, she wants to know why they’re considering it.

“If it’s a cost issue, then we can look into [other, similar] medications that would have a lower cost,” she says.

If your doctor or pharmacist can’t find a lower-priced medication, see if they can help you reduce the price with a copay card or a prescription drug card, Berenbrok says. “There are lots of safety-net programs that can help patients get access to the medications at low or no cost. I think those are the first things that I would try to do.”

What pills can be safely split?

Pills and tablets that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be split will say so in the “How Supplied” label insert and on the patient package insert included with some medications. If your medicine doesn’t have this on the label, the FDA hasn’t evaluated whether two equal halves will work the same way as the whole tablet.

“Another telltale sign of a medication that might be OK to split is if it’s scored,” Berenbrok says. “That’s the little split down a tablet, where you can see an indentation that [signifies] you can break the tablet in two.”

But Berenbrok reiterates that you should always check with your pharmacist or health care provider first. A score doesn’t always indicate that the table is safe to split, he says.

Pills you should never split

Because not all medications are formulated or manufactured the same way, not every pill can be crushed or split. If you have pills that aren’t scored down the center, that’s a good sign they’re not safe to split. Here are a few medications that should never be split.

Extended-release medications. “Because those are designed to release the medication over an extended period of time, by cutting it, you may have dumping of all the medication in the pill,” Lynch says. “So we advise people not to cut extended-release pills.” In some cases, splitting is recommended for extended-release meds, and in those cases the information will be printed in the “How Supplied” label and patient package insert. Those pills should also be scored, according to the FDA.
Pills with a polymer (enteric) coating. The coating allows the medicine to bypass your stomach so that it’s digested in your small intestine. If you split the pill, you break that protective coating.
Capsules. If you split or open a capsule, the medication is going to spill out, and you won’t have an exact amount in each dose.

How to safely cut pills in half

If you’ve discussed all the options with your pharmacist or health care provider and still must cut pills in half, there are safe ways to do it.

Use a quality pill cutter. You can find them in most pharmacies. They’re easy to use and split pills down the score lines.
Don’t use a knife because you can end up with uneven doses.
Split your pills right before you take them. Splitting the entire prescription at once exposes them to potential degradation.
Don’t split a pill into more than two pieces. You’ll likely get uneven pieces and crumbling, which will affect the dosage.
Clean your pill cutter after each use.

What are the risks of pill splitting?

Several studies have shown you can split certain pills safely. But there are risks, too.

One of the biggest is making a mistake in the dosage. Lynch says some patients may get confused about their dose and take the whole tablet instead of half.

There’s also a chance the electronic prescription (or e-Rx) for the pills you’re splitting won’t be clear to other health care professionals when they look at your medical records. If your doctor doesn’t write the electronic prescription to specifically say you must split the dosage in half, “that means it’s documented in an electronic health record in a different way,” Berenbrok says. In an emergency or in case of hospitalization, for instance, you could be given double the dosage you need. “I think it just offers too much uncertainty and error,” Berenbrok says.

And speaking of dosage, a study published in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy of 16 commonly used medications found that the amount of active ingredients in split tablet halves wasn’t always equal. Sixteen percent of the tablet halves in the study weighed less — and 15 percent had lower drug content — than recommended by United States Pharmacopeia guidelines. Carvedilol (brand name Coreg), a medication for high blood pressure, and digoxin (brand name Digitek), which treats atrial fibrillation (A-fib), had the most powder loss in the study.

Other risks of splitting tablets include:

Assuming the tablets are already split when they’re not.
Not being able to split pills because of vision or dexterity problems.
Splitting the wrong medication.
Splitting tablets that crumble easily.

The bottom line: Talk to your doctor or pharmacist first if you’re considering splitting your pills, whether it’s in an effort to save money or to make them easier to swallow. There might be a better solution.

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Sarah Gleim is a contributing writer at AARP based in Atlanta. She has also written for WebMD, Forbes, Time Inc., Discovery Communications, HowStuffWorks.com, Atlanta magazine, CNN and more.