Zaleplon: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Zaleplon is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Capsule
- Sold as
- Sonata
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- What the pharmacy pays
- about $5 for a 30-count supply — not your price
Every zaleplon product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Sonata.
What zaleplon pills look like
Imprint codes, colour and shape from the FDA’s labelling data. Match the imprint on your pill — or search any imprint.
Zaleplon and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for zaleplon: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadLittle information is available on the use of zaleplon during breastfeeding. A safety scoring system finds zaleplon to be not recommended during breastfeeding. However, the low levels of zaleplon in breastmilk and its short half-life indicate that amounts ingested by the infant are small and would not be expected to cause any adverse effects in older breastfed infants. Other agents may be preferred in newborn and preterm infants. Monitor the infant for sedation, poor feeding and poor weight gain.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised February 15, 2023. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about zaleplon
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 1,634 reports naming zaleplon, and the FDA flagged 58% 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:
- nausea115 reports
- insomnia90 reports
- fall85 reports
- headache84 reports
- anxiety83 reports
- fatigue80 reports
- dizziness64 reports
- diarrhoea62 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean zaleplon 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 section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 26, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take zaleplon 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 zaleplon against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does zaleplon come in?
Across the brands we track, zaleplon is currently marketed as capsule, 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 zaleplon?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled zaleplon 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). Zaleplon: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/zaleplon
- MLA
- “Zaleplon: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/zaleplon.
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 zaleplon on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.