Method and sources

Every vaccine line, border rule and malaria area on this site comes from CDC's Travelers' Health pages, read on October 24, 2026; every price comes from a list a public body publishes, with its link and date. One script reads the sources, a second turns them into the data every page and calculator uses, and both run again each month.

Enter the countries of your trip in order: the list CDC gives for each one, the yellow fever certificate each border asks given where you arrive from, the latest date to start every series and what the shots and malaria tablets cost at published price lists, on one page, with no account and no form.

1. CDC destination pages

The 242 destination pages listed at wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/list were read one by one, with one request every 20 seconds as CDC's robots file asks. Two pages carry no vaccine table (Antarctica and the United States) and are left out. From each page we keep the vaccine lines word for word, the yellow fever recommendation and entry requirement, the malaria section (areas, resistance, species, drugs), the travel notices and the date CDC last reviewed the page. Each line is then given a level from its wording: most travelers when CDC recommends it for most travelers, some travelers when it lists who should get it, consider when it says the vaccine may be considered or should be discussed with a provider, routine for the routine vaccines line. The level only sorts the lines; the country pages quote CDC's full text in a separate block, so nothing is reworded.

CDC's material is in the public domain. Its conditions of reuse ask for attribution, no suggestion of endorsement and no change to the substantive content, and to say that the material is available free of charge on cdc.gov. This site follows them: it names CDC as the source on every line it takes, states that it is not endorsed by CDC, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Department of Health and Human Services or the US government, and links to the CDC page it quotes.

2. Yellow fever: the rule at each border

The entry requirement is read in the "Country entry requirements" part of each page and sorted into one of these rules:

When a rule names countries, each name is matched to a CDC destination; when it points to CDC's map of the African countries with risk throughout, as Costa Rica's does, those countries are added, and the build stops if their number no longer matches the rule. The minimum age and the clause on long airport transits are kept too. The calculator then walks the route: at each stop it checks the rule against the previous country (or the country where the trip starts), and it shows separately whether CDC recommends the vaccine for that destination. The two answers are never merged, since they often differ.

3. Dates: the latest day to start

Schedules come from the CDC Yellow Book 2026 chapters and, for hepatitis B, the CDC adult schedule notes. For each vaccine we keep the days of each dose, the age rules (Japanese encephalitis has a shorter schedule from 18 to 65) and the days after the last dose before protection or a valid certificate. The latest start date is the departure date minus that total. Where CDC states no protection date, as for hepatitis B or chikungunya, the calculator shows the dose dates without one.

4. Prices: public lists only

Few US clinics publish travel vaccine prices. County and city health departments do, and 9 lists were read for this site, each kept with its address, its date (or the day it was read when it has none), the price of each vaccine and the fees it states: consultation per visit or once, administration for the first shot and each additional one. The CDC adult vaccine price list of October 1, 2026 gives the manufacturer price to private buyers for the vaccines it covers. Malaria tablets are priced with the NADAC survey, which records what US pharmacies pay per tablet each week.

A trip total counts every dose of each series, the number of visits the schedule needs (doses given the same day share a visit), and the department's fees for those visits and injections. The range across departments uses only those that list every vaccine chosen; a department that does not list one is left out, never filled with an estimate.

5. A worked example

Hepatitis A, the typhoid shot and yellow fever at County of Orange Health Care Agency: the vaccines cost $532 for the full series (two hepatitis A doses), and the department's office visit and administration fees for two visits and four injections add $108, so $640 in all. Ten days in a malaria area with atovaquone-proguanil mean 19 tablets, about $28 at the NADAC price of October 21, 2026, before the pharmacy's margin.

6. Figures left out

• Private travel clinic and pharmacy prices: not published with a date, so not shown.
• Prices in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia: no dated official list was found; the UK pages say which jabs the NHS gives free, from the NHS travel vaccinations page.
• The WHO list of countries with yellow fever risk: its licence does not allow commercial reuse, so the site relies on CDC's own pages and maps.
• Tafenoquine and rabies immune globulin: no public price found.
• Covid-19 and mpox lines: shown in the CDC text, left out of the trip count and the cost.

7. Updates and limits

• CDC pages are reread on the first day of each month, NADAC every Monday, and health department lists by hand each quarter; every page shows the date of its data.
• Rules and outbreaks change between two readings. CDC asks travelers to confirm entry rules with the embassy or consulate of each country on the route.
• Nothing here is medical advice. A doctor, nurse or pharmacist decides, with your record and health in view.

Corrections: contact page. Publisher: about.