Methodology
How this works, and where it is wrong
There are no reviews or testimonials on this site because there are no users yet, and inventing them would be the fastest way to make everything else here untrustworthy. What follows is the substitute: exactly where the data comes from, and exactly what it cannot do.
Where the data comes from
The U.S. FDA publishes a drug shortage database through the openFDA API. We fetch all of it once a day — currently 1,623 listings from 132 manufacturers — and store a compressed copy. Every copy is content-addressed by a SHA-256 hash, so any page can name the exact snapshot it was built from. The feed’s own last update was 2026-08-25.
We add no availability data of our own, and we contact no pharmacy. Everything on this site is either a fact copied from that feed or a comparison between two days of it.
What happens each day
Five stages, in this order. Stage four is the only one that produces anything new.
Fetch
The whole openFDA shortage endpoint, once a day. Never a partial or filtered pull.
1,623 listingsReduce
Each listing is cut to the twelve fields that carry meaning, trimmed, with categories sorted so field order can never change the result.
12 fieldsHash
Every listing is hashed, and the sorted set of those hashes becomes the snapshot’s identity. Order-independent by construction.
sha-256Compare
Yesterday’s set against today’s, as whole listings. Appeared, disappeared, or a field moved.
48 duplicate codesClassify
Only a real status move is worth an email. A re-dated record that says the same thing is not.
917 reverificationsWhy some listings show no status
447 of the 1,623 listings report no availability at all — the grey segment on every supply bar here. That looks like a hole in the data, and it is worth saying plainly that it is not one. The FDA carries a second field alongside availability, and it explains almost all of them.
| FDA status | Listings | Why availability is blank |
|---|---|---|
| To Be Discontinued | 444 | The product is being withdrawn, so there is no ongoing supply position to report. |
| Resolved | 2 | The shortage is over but the entry has not yet dropped out of the feed. |
| Current | 1 | Genuinely blank, or wording our classifier will not guess at. |
The whole feed contains exactly one availability string we cannot read: “Next Delivery and Estimated Recovery: December 2028”. It is a delivery estimate rather than a status, so it stays in the unknown bucket instead of being forced into a category that would read as fact.
Because 444 listings in total carry To Be Discontinued, a shortage page showing grey is usually telling you something more permanent than a delay.
What we get wrong
The data is national, and your pharmacy is not. A manufacturer reporting that it is shipping says nothing about your store’s shelf. This is the single largest limitation and no amount of engineering fixes it. It is the reason fill reports exist at all.
It lags. Manufacturers report on their own schedule. A status can be days old before it reaches the feed, and days older before we see it. The median listing here was first posted 3.6 years ago.
514 listings have no strength we can read. The strength lives inside a free-text description, and where we cannot parse it confidently we leave the listing on the product overview and never guess. That is 32% of the feed sitting one level less specific than it could be.
The feed lists the same code twice. 48 package codes appear on more than one listing, usually the same product recorded as both current and to-be-discontinued. We compare whole listings rather than looking them up by code, because a code-keyed comparison invents changes that never happened.
How we decide something changed
Each day’s copy is compared against the previous one as a set of complete listings. A listing that appears is new; one that disappears is reported as no longer listed by FDA.
We never restate that as resolved, and the reason is more specific than caution. The feed does carry a Resolved status — 2 listings hold it today — but that is the FDA closing a record it still publishes. A listing that simply vanishes comes with no explanation at all: it may have been resolved, merged, corrected or withdrawn. Calling that resolved would be us supplying an ending the source never gave.
Of the 1,623 listings in today’s feed, 917 were last touched as a reverification — the manufacturer confirming the same state again. Those move a date and nothing else, and they never trigger an email.
If an unusual share of listings vanish at once, we store the snapshot but mark the comparison suspect and send nothing, because a truncated feed reading as hundreds of products disappearing is the one failure that would do real harm.
Questions
Does “available” mean my pharmacy has it?
No. Available means a manufacturer has told the FDA it is shipping that product nationally. Your pharmacy orders from a wholesaler, which may be out, on allocation, or simply may not stock that manufacturer. Always confirm with your pharmacist.
What is an NDC and why does it matter?
The National Drug Code identifies one product from one manufacturer in one package size. Two tablets with the same name and strength from different manufacturers have different NDCs. Naming the code removes any ambiguity about which product you are asking for.
Does the FDA ever mark a shortage “resolved”?
Rarely. 2 of the 1,623 listings we hold today carry the status “Resolved”, and we show that word when the FDA uses it. But it is not how a shortage usually ends: far more often the listing simply disappears from the database between one day's copy and the next, and we report that as no longer listed by FDA — which is exactly what we observed and no more. We never call a shortage over on our own judgement.
How current is this data?
We fetch the entire FDA shortage database once a day and compare it to the previous copy. The feed itself updates roughly every business day. The maximum age of anything shown here is 24 hours from our last check, and the check date is printed on every page.
Can you see what my local pharmacy has on the shelf?
No, and nobody can do so from public data. There is no lawful public feed of pharmacy shelf inventory. Everything here is national manufacturer reporting. This is the single biggest limitation of the site and we would rather say it plainly than imply otherwise.
What should I do when a pharmacy cannot fill my prescription?
Ask whether they can order a specific manufacturer's product, and give them the code. If they cannot, ask whether a different strength that adds up to the same dose is available, then contact your prescriber, since that substitution needs a new prescription and is their call.
Why can't my prescription be transferred to another pharmacy?
For Schedule II medications, most states do not permit transferring an unfilled prescription between pharmacies. In practice that means a new prescription sent to the new pharmacy, which is why knowing where to call before you move the script saves time.
How do you decide something changed?
We compare each day's full copy of the database against the previous one, treating every listing as a fact rather than looking it up by code. 48 package codes in today's feed appear on more than one listing, so a comparison keyed on codes alone would invent changes that never happened.
What do the status labels mean?
They are the manufacturer's own words, normalised into four buckets: available, limited, unavailable, and unknown. Unknown covers 447 listings today — 444 of them products being discontinued, which the FDA stops reporting availability for — plus any free-text note we will not guess at. Unknown never triggers an alert.
Is this medical advice?
No. This is a mirror of a public federal dataset with the dates and sources shown. Nothing here is a recommendation about your treatment. Never change how you take a medication without talking to your prescriber or pharmacist.
Everything above is checkable. The data page lists every snapshot we hold, its hash, and how complete each field in the feed actually is.
Built from the FDA drug shortage database, fetched 2026-08-26; the feed’s own last update was 2026-08-25. Snapshot 021d4dfd5d742d95. You can check us against the FDA source, and read what we get wrong.