The sales of high-priced pharmaceutical drugs on the Russian retail market have grown by more than 50% over the past two years. In Q1 2025, the sales of drugs priced above 500 rubles exceeded 297 billion rubles, accounting for over 63% of the retail sales, according to RNC Pharma’s Audit of Pharmaceutical Drug Retail Sales in Russia database. A year ago, drugs priced between 100 and 500 rubles dominated the market. Now, categories of expensive drugs account for around 32% of the sales each.

All categories, except for drugs priced below 100 rubles, saw positive growth rates. The sales of drugs of over 1,000 rubles went up 29% in monetary and 24.6% in physical terms. The growth rates of the category hit a three-year high—the sales rose 67.8% in rubles and 56.5% in packages from January–March 2023. Furthermore, the share of the category increased 6 percentage points, to 31.6% in monetary terms. The sales of medicines priced between 500 and 1,000 rubles grew by an average of 24% from Q1 2024, both in rubles and in packages.

Only the cheapest drugs, priced below 100 rubles, saw their share drop, to 27.5% (down 5.1 percentage points). This was a result of a large decrease in consumption (down 10.7% in rubles and 13.6% in packages). The share of the category has fallen by 11.1 percentage points in several years. It was 7.3% in Q1 2023 against 4.3% in Q1 2025. A significant portion of lower priced drugs on the retail market tend to grow in price, moving to a different category.

These pharmaceutical drugs include sodium chloride. The sales of the drug at a price below 100 rubles by various manufacturers went down 25% in packages, while the sales of the product at a price above 100 rubles doubled in monetary and went up 70% in physical terms.

Among high-priced pharmaceuticals, foreign-made drugs top the sales, including brands of such companies as Bayer, Abbott, Servier, etc. As for drugs priced below 500 or 100 rubles, the best-selling products are manufactured by Russian companies: Pharmstandard, Ozon, etc.