Pakistan's medicines in numbers (2026): what 45,000 DRAP registrations show

How many medicines are registered in Pakistan? The answer changes the way a pharmacy works: how many brands a customer can be offered for one salt, how many companies a pharmacy buys from, and why typing a medicine list by hand is not realistic. We counted the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan's register of registered products, which is the medicine database built into MediPOS.

The figures below are original and free to quote with a link to this page.

The register at a glance

A "medicine" here is one registration: a brand in one strength and one dosage form. Panadol 500 mg tablets and Panadol syrup are two. Veterinary products and products registered only for export are left out.

Most medicines have one salt

• 77.0% contain a single active ingredient (34,715 products).
• 17.9% combine two (8,057).
• 5.2% combine three or more (2,330).

So roughly one medicine in four on a pharmacy shelf is a combination. That is why searching by salt has to find every product that contains it, not only the ones where it is the sole ingredient.

The salts with the most brands

These are single-ingredient medicines only, counting different brand names, the products registered under them (each strength and form), and the companies that make them.

Three things stand out:

• Antibiotics dominate. Seven of the fifteen are antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, cefixime, azithromycin, levofloxacin, ceftriaxone, clarithromycin and moxifloxacin), and an eighth, fluconazole, is an antifungal.
• Diclofenac has the most brands: 610 brand names from 346 companies. Ciprofloxacin is made by the most companies, 406, and has the most registered products, 1,285.
• Stomach acid and pain follow: esomeprazole and omeprazole, and diclofenac, paracetamol and ibuprofen.

The most common combinations

Blood pressure and diabetes lead. Five of the top ten combine medicines for one of the two: amlodipine with valsartan (with or without hydrochlorothiazide), and metformin with sitagliptin, vildagliptin or empagliflozin.

Tablets are half the register

Nearly two thirds are tablets and capsules, which a pharmacy sells by the box, the strip and the loose tablet.

A market of many small makers

The register is spread across 763 companies, and no company dominates it:

• The ten companies with the most registrations hold only 7.6% of all products, and the top fifty hold 27.4%.
• 231 companies have ten products or fewer.

Registrations are not sales. A company with fewer, larger brands can sell far more than one with many registrations, so read this table as breadth of range, not market share.

What this means at the counter

• A shortage is rarely a dead end. With hundreds of brands for the commonest salts, a pharmacist who searches by salt can almost always offer a substitute, often a cheaper one.
• The same salt, many prices. Hundreds of brands of one salt means very different prices for the same medicine. Knowing the alternatives helps a pharmacy serve a price-conscious customer without losing the sale.
• Nobody should type this in. A pharmacy stocks a few thousand of these 45,113 products. Typing names, salts, strengths and forms by hand takes days and invites spelling mistakes that break searching by salt later.
• Combinations need salt-aware search. One in four products is a combination, so searching "valsartan" should find amlodipine + valsartan tablets too.

MediPOS comes with this register built in, searchable by brand, salt or company, with box, strip and tablet units ready. You can search it on our website, or put the search on your own website for free.

How we counted

• Source: DRAP's export of registered products, as downloaded in September 2026, cleaned for the MediPOS medicine database: veterinary and export-only products removed, strength and form separated from the name, salts linked to generics, and duplicate rows merged.
• A medicine is one registration: one brand in one strength and one dosage form.
• Brands are counted by distinct brand name, ignoring capital letters.
• The salts table counts single-ingredient medicines only, so it is not inflated by combinations.
• Registered is not the same as on sale. Some registered products are not marketed at any given time, and company names are as DRAP lists them.

Quote these figures

You are welcome to use these figures in articles, research and presentations with a link to this page. Suggested credit: MediPOS Pakistan, "Pakistan's medicines in numbers (2026)", medipos.pk.

Common questions

How many medicines are registered in Pakistan?

About 45,000 human medicines: 45,113 registrations in DRAP's register of registered products (September 2026), counting each brand, strength and form once, after removing veterinary and export-only products. They carry 27,145 brand names and 3,321 generics.

Which medicine has the most brands in Pakistan?

Diclofenac sodium, with 610 brand names from 346 companies, followed by ciprofloxacin (579) and esomeprazole (541), counting single-ingredient medicines.

How many pharmaceutical companies are there in Pakistan?

The DRAP register lists 763 companies with registered human medicines. The ten with the most registrations hold 7.6% of all products.

What is the most common dosage form?

Tablets: 22,105 registrations, 49% of the register, followed by capsules (14%) and injections (11.8%).

Related reading

• Pakistan medicine database
• Batches, expiry and FEFO
• Best offline pharmacy software in Pakistan