Which healthcare businesses need ad certification, and what it actually costs
Published costs for LegitScript and Google's healthcare certifications, taken from the source rather than repeated. The figures you find elsewhere disagree because they quote three different products as one.
If you run an addiction treatment centre, an online pharmacy or a telehealth practice, you cannot advertise on Google, Meta or Microsoft until a third party has certified you. That has been true since 2018. What is surprisingly hard to establish is what it costs, because the figures published around the web disagree with each other by a factor of three.
They disagree for a reason worth knowing before you budget anything. LegitScript does not sell one certification. It sells several, at different prices, and most of the guides quoting a single number are quoting whichever one they happened to look at.
Who needs certification at all
Google requires LegitScript certification before it will serve ads for addiction treatment services in the US and Canada, for online pharmacies in markets including the US, Canada, Australia and India, and for telehealth providers in markets including the US, UK, Canada, France and Japan. US pharmacies can alternatively hold NABP accreditation, which Google recognises. Most other healthcare businesses, including clinics, dental practices and therapy providers, need no certification at all.
The published fees, from the source
| Certification | Application fee | Annual fee | Charged per |
|---|---|---|---|
| Addiction Treatment | $1,395 to $1,595 | $2,550 to $3,095 | Facility |
| Addiction Treatment, individual practitioner | $535 | $1,070 | Practitioner |
| Healthcare Merchant (pharmacy, telehealth) | $975 | $2,150 | Website |
| Expedited processing, optional add-on | +$2,500 | n/a | Application |
Read that table against the numbers circulating elsewhere and the contradiction resolves itself. A guide saying certification costs around two thousand a year is describing the individual practitioner tier. One saying three to six thousand is adding an application fee to an annual fee for a facility. One saying under a thousand is quoting the healthcare merchant application in isolation. None of them are wrong about their own figure. They are answering different questions and presenting it as one answer.
How long it takes, honestly
You will see two to four weeks quoted, and four to six weeks quoted, in guides that both sound confident. Neither is a published commitment. LegitScript does not state a standard review time anywhere in its certification pages. The only timeframe it commits to is the expedited option, which guarantees that review begins within two business days of submission for an additional fee. Everything else is somebody's average, and averages on a queue you do not control are planning assumptions rather than dates.
The practical consequence for a launch plan: do not schedule a paid campaign against an assumed certification date. Build the site, submit, and treat paid traffic as something that switches on when the certificate arrives rather than something the launch depends on.
What disqualifies you before you start
- Operating as a lead generator, or being co-owned with one. This is stated explicitly, and it reaches your marketing arrangements rather than your website.
- Running sober living homes without licensed clinical services alongside them.
- Advertising on a restricted platform before you hold the certificate. Doing it first and applying afterwards is itself a disqualifier.
- Missing licensure, business registration or liability insurance. These are checked, not asserted.
The certification reviews your website as part of the application. It is not a form you file alongside the build, it is a review of the thing you built.
That last point is the one that changes a build. Sixteen certification standards apply, and one whole group of them covers external practices: website disclosures, privacy compliance and how treatments are described. Those are decisions made while the site is being designed, and they are expensive to retrofit into a finished one. The specific website requirements are covered separately in what LegitScript actually requires on your website.
If you are not in one of these three categories
Then you need no certification, and the thing that will actually stop your ads is Google's healthcare and medicines policy rather than a missing certificate. Therapy practices, dental clinics, senior living communities and home care agencies all advertise without certification. What they still have to get right is what the site says and what the forms collect, which is a HIPAA question rather than an advertising one.
