Prescription drugs with the most FDA recalls (2026 data)

Ask ChatGPT "which prescription drugs have been recalled the most?" and it will tell you the FDA doesn't publish a leaderboard. We built one from the FDA's own enforcement data — counting recall events per FDA application so a drug sold in several presentations counts once.

Prescription drugs with the most FDA recall events

Rank	Drug	Active ingredient	FDA recall events
1	Daytrana	Methylphenidate	42
2	Tirosint-Sol	Levothyroxine Sodium	15
3	Minivelle	Estradiol	10
4	Epipen E Z Pen	Epinephrine	7
5	Epipen	Epinephrine	7
6	Epi E Z Pen Jr	Epinephrine	7
7	Epipen Jr.	Epinephrine	7
8	Ativan	Lorazepam	6
9	Hydromorphone Hydrochloride	Hydromorphone Hydrochloride	6
10	Marcaine Hydrochloride W/ Epinephrine	Bupivacaine Hydrochloride	5
11	Marcaine Hydrochloride W/ Epinephrine Preservative Free	Bupivacaine Hydrochloride	5
12	Paxil Cr	Paroxetine Hydrochloride	5
13	Marcaine Hydrochloride	Bupivacaine Hydrochloride	5
14	Spiriva	Tiotropium Bromide	5
15	Marcaine Hydrochloride Preservative Free	Bupivacaine Hydrochloride	5

What this means

At the top is Daytrana (Methylphenidate) with 42 recorded FDA recall events. A high recall count does not mean a drug is dangerous to take — most recalls are driven by manufacturing, contamination, potency, labeling, or packaging issues, and every recalled lot is removed from the market. Widely-used drugs made in huge volumes naturally accumulate more recall events.

How we built this

We matched each product to its FDA application number, counted recall events in the FDA enforcement (openFDA) database, and ranked by total events. Counting per application avoids double-counting the same drug sold as multiple presentations.

Not medical advice. If you take any of these medicines, don't stop based on this page — your specific lot was almost certainly never recalled. Check the FDA recall database or talk to your pharmacist. Each drug's page on pharmaranks shows its recall-adjusted safety score and full details.

Generated live from the pharmaranks database (FDA openFDA enforcement data) at publication time.