• Posted March 3, 2026

Effective Sunscreen Protection Can Cost $40 A Year

Protecting yourself against skin cancer can cost as little as $40 a year, a new study says.

Sunscreens with a sun protective factor of 50 can be purchased as for as little as 4 cents an application, researchers recently reported in JAMA Dermatology.

On the other hand, more expensive versions can cost 17 times as much – about $3.80 per application, amounting to as much as $1,400 a year, researchers discovered.

“Less expensive sunscreen, with the same active ingredients and same SPF, is as photoprotective as the more expensive, in terms of protection from UV radiation,” senior researcher Dr. Maria Wei said in a news release. She’s a professor of dermatology at the University of California-San Francisco.

Sunscreen protects the skin from sun damage, lowering the risk of skin cancer and melanoma. Experts promote daily use, but research has shown that people are likely to under apply sunscreen when its cost climbs.

To see how cheap sun protection can be, the research team compared three types of sunscreen with similar ingredients but very different costs.

Researchers calculated how much a year’s worth of sunscreen would cost if people applied it once a day during the week and twice daily on the weekend.

Each application should involve about an ounce of sunscreen to cover the entire body, researchers said. That’s about a shot glass full.

Sunscreen costs for a year at an indoor job ranged from $39.80 to $688.56, while working a year at an outdoor job would cost $81.53 to $1,429.42.

The team also considered how much wearing different types of clothing would affect that cost during a beach trip.

Results showed that using sunscreen for a week at the beach could cost between $6.57 to $115.12 for someone wearing shorts, and $7.75 to $135.82 for someone wearing a bikini.

“Encouraging the use of lower-priced sunscreens and other sun protective behavior like wearing hats, long sleeves and long pants could lead to better protection,” Wei said.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on sunscreen and your morning routine.

SOURCE: University of California-San Francisco, news release, Feb. 26, 2026