Butenafine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Butenafine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under 2 brand and generic names. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Topical
- Sold as
- 2 products — Mentax and Mentax-Tc
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- What the pharmacy pays
- about $0.41 per gm — not your price
Every butenafine product we track (2)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
| # | Drug | Rating | Type | Form | Generic? | Pharmacy pays | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Topical | Generic | $0 | View → | |
| 2 | Not yet rated | Prescription | Topical | Generic | $0 | View → |
Butenafine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for butenafine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadTopical butenafine has not been studied during breastfeeding. Because it is poorly absorbed after topical application, it is not likely to reach the bloodstream of the infant or cause any adverse effects in breastfed infants. Ensure that the infant's skin does not come into direct contact with the areas of skin that have been treated. Only water-miscible cream or gel products should be applied to the breast because ointments may expose the infant to high levels of mineral paraffins via licking.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised November 15, 2024. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about butenafine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 73 reports naming butenafine, and the FDA flagged 62% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- application site pain4 reports
- aspartate aminotransferase increased4 reports
- alanine aminotransferase increased3 reports
- blood creatinine increased3 reports
- cerebral infarction3 reports
- gait disturbance3 reports
- nausea3 reports
- pneumonia3 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean butenafine caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved August 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take butenafine with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run butenafine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What brand names is butenafine sold under?
We track 2 butenafine-containing products in the U.S.: Mentax and Mentax-Tc. They are the same active ingredient; they differ in form, manufacturer, price and FDA recall record.
What forms does butenafine come in?
Across the brands we track, butenafine is currently marketed as topical, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic butenafine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled butenafine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Butenafine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/butenafine
- MLA
- “Butenafine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/butenafine.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for butenafine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.