How to Coupon at Walgreens — And Earn Walgreens Cash Rewards

Learning how to use Walgreens coupons to save the most money possible at Walgreens requires patience and practice, but you can totally nail it. Even beginning couponers can score easy freebies at Walgreens.

You’re about to learn how to maximize Walgreens Cash and Register Rewards so you can get free money. Oh, and you’ll learn what kind of savings to expect (spoiler alert — it’s up to 90%!). There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you walk out of Walgreens with dirt-cheap laundry detergent, diapers, toilet paper, and more — all thanks to coupons!

To get started, download the KCL app and look through a few Walgreens deals to get familiar with how our boots-on-the-ground team writes deals.

I’ve included a lot of great tips below on how to coupon at Walgreens, but if you find yourself more than a beginner, check out tips 1 – 3, then skip to tip 15.

Walgreens Couponing Essentials

1. The Walgreens weekly ad is where you’ll find current Walgreens coupons and deals.

You can also see the weekly ad through the Walgreens app. The ad is interactive, not just a static picture, so you can tap any coupons you see and the coupon will be “clipped” to your account for use on a future purchase.

Related: Want to cut through the clutter? Jump to our roundup of the latest Walgreens digital coupons and Walgreens deals under $1 this week.

2. Sign up for myWalgreens (aka your Walgreens rewards card) to unlock exclusive savings.

Joining myWalgreens is your first step to unlocking the best savings at Walgreens, like being able to claim special bonus rewards during myW Days. MyWalgreens is a loyalty program that replaced Balance Rewards in November 2020.

You’ll earn “Walgreens Cash” based on how much you’ve spent. Your myWalgreens account is tied to your phone number, which acts like your Walgreens rewards card when you’re shopping in store.

We’ll dive deeper into Walgreens Cash rewards here in a bit, but first…

3. Bookmark the Walgreens coupon policy to help you troubleshoot any issues.

Walgreens’ coupon policy changes often, and no way does every employee you’ll interact with know it by heart. How could they?

So be sure to read over the policy yourself and then bookmark it on your phone in case you need to politely refer to it during checkout. If you have any trouble, just ask for a manager. I’ve found Walgreens employees to be super helpful and patient, but sometimes the coupons just don’t apply like they should at the register and you may need an override. Which is not fun if the line is long and hostile.

Knowing the policy will give you a lot of confidence in your new couponing skills. Bookmarking it will get you away from an angry mob faster.

If all else fails, you can call Walgreens customer service, and I’ve found them to be very helpful with applying missed Walgreens Cash rewards or coupons. The Walgreens phone number is 1-(800)-925-4733, or you can start a live chat with a representative here.

How to Coupon at Walgreens: Level 1

Now that you’ve dipped your toes in, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty of how to coupon at Walgreens.

4. Walgreens Cash and Register Rewards are two ways to earn and save at Walgreens.

Walgreens Cash:

As mentioned above, you’ll earn Walgreens Cash rewards for every purchase you make at Walgreens. Walgreens Cash is the new Walgreens Points.

You’ll earn 1% Walgreens Cash rewards storewide and 5% Walgreens Cash rewards on Walgreens branded products. So if you spend $100 on non-Walgreens brand items, that’ll give you $1 in Walgreens Cash to spend. Clearly, this isn’t the way to rack up Walgreens Cash. You’ll want to look for Walgreens Cash promotions to really bank.

You’ll see two types of Walgreens Cash promotions: purchase-quantity thresholds and purchase-spend thresholds.

• Purchase-quantity threshold: “Buy 2, Get $3 Walgreens Cash” — this just means the promotion is focused on how many items you buy in order to get the Walgreens Cash. With this promotion, you can get $3 back in Walgreens Cash, or store credit, if you buy two things. Much better than spending $3,000 to get those $3 back, I’d say.

• Purchase-spend threshold: Spend $15, Get $5 Walgreens Cash — this has to do with how much you spend to get the Walgreens Cash. The spend threshold is before manufacturer coupons but after store coupons. More on that in tip #8.

Walgreens Cash promotions are listed in the Walgreens weekly ad. You can also find them advertised on shelves in stores right next to the products.

Register Rewards:

These promotions combined with coupons and sales are your ticket to dirt-cheap household goods and groceries.

TIP: Did you know you can donate your Walgreens Cash to designated charities? Just head to your myWalgreens account either in the app or online and you’ll see “donate now” in the coupon section. You can choose to donate to charities locally or nationally.

5. Walgreens accepts manufacturer coupons, in-app digital coupons, and Walgreens store coupons.

Paper manufacturer coupons

Walgreens accepts manufacturer coupons from the Sunday paper and from printable coupon databases like TheKrazyCouponLady.com. You can only use one manufacturer coupon per item you’re buying. And you can only use four identical coupons per household, per day.

TIP: A manufacturer coupon is marked with the words “Manufacturer’s coupon” or the letters MFR (digital coupons).

Digital manufacturer coupons (in the Walgreens app)

You can also load manufacturer coupons to your myWalgreens account inside the Walgreens app. If you see a coupon in the weekly ad and it has a (◊) icon next to it, it’s a digital manufacturer coupon. It can only be redeemed once, no matter how many of the items you’re buying.

If you see a coupon with a (Ω) icon next to it, it means there is a newspaper version of the digital coupon available.

Walgreens Monthly Savings Booklet Coupons

These are store coupons that can be combined with manufacturer coupons, Register Rewards, Walgreens Cash, and sales. Some stores still offer this booklet in paper form in store (normally right where you walk in, alongside the weekly flyer). But it’s also available online digitally. Just clip them to your myWalgreens account.

When you see this (‡) icon next to a Walgreens coupon in the physical coupon book, it means it’s a paper store coupon and can be redeemed an unlimited amount of times. These coupons use wording like: “$X off with card” in the title and can only be used at Walgreens.

Walgreens digital store coupons

You’ll also find Walgreens digital store coupons in the weekly ad on Walgreens.com and in the Walgreens app. Often called “Load to Card” coupons (L2C), these are coupons meant to be loaded to your store loyalty account by tapping on them in the app or clicking on them on the website.

Catalina coupons

Catalinas are long, skinny coupons that look a little like a receipt. They spit out at the end of your transaction. They’re often manufacturer coupons, but they can also be another type of coupon, known as Register Rewards (RR). If it’s a RR, it’ll have a Walgreens logo on the top and say “$3 off” or “$6 off,” and if it’s a Catalina, it’ll be brand-specific like “$3 off Tide.”

6. Clip coupons inside the Walgreens app right when you see them.

Why? Because even if a coupon may not expire for a few weeks, you only get a small window of time to clip it and add it to your account.

Let’s say you clip a $3/1 Tide coupon that doesn’t expire for 30 days, and a week later, you tell a friend about the coupon so she can clip it, too. She tells you that the coupon isn’t there anymore. But you still see it in your Walgreens app coupons, and it’s not expired. What the heck, right?

That’s because the app doesn’t tell you how long you get to clip coupons or how many people get to clip them. You gotta lock those deals down ASAP.

7. Scan items with the app to find available Walgreens digital coupons.

If you want to check to see if items you’re interested in have available coupons, scanning items in store will take out all of the guesswork.

Open the Walgreens app, click the “Search” icon (or magnifying glass), and the barcode scanner will appear and help you find coupons by product.

To use it, just line up the scanner with the barcode of the item, and the available digital coupons and deals will appear in the app.

8. Three key rules for Walgreens Cash rewards:

1. Walgreens Cash promotions don’t have limits. That means if the promo is “Buy 2 Softsoap body washes, Receive $3 Walgreens Cash,” you can buy four Softsoap body washes and receive $6 Walgreens Cash.

2. Walgreens Cash is calculated before manufacturer coupon discounts but after store coupon discounts. This means if the promotion is “Spend $20, receive $5 Walgreens Cash” and your total is $20, but you also have coupons you want to apply, the cashier will apply your Walgreens store coupons first. If your total drops to $18.50 after Walgreens store coupons, you no longer qualify for the $5 Walgreens Cash because technically you didn’t spend $20. Plan ahead for this if you want to use store coupons! (Don’t worry about manufacturer coupons; they come off your total after you get your Walgreens Cash.)

3. Walgreens Cash expires one year from the date you earned it.

4. If you don’t use your Walgreens Cash for six consecutive months, you’ll lose it.

When you’re ready to pay with Walgreens Cash, your cashier will tap a button, prompting a redemption screen to pop up on the PIN pad. Then just select how much Cash you want to redeem. You’ll have to enter your ZIP code to confirm it’s you, but that’s it!

You have to redeem a minimum of $1 in Walgreens Cash and can redeem a maximum of $50 Walgreens Cash per transaction.

9. Will Walgreens price match?

Walgreens stores will price match regular prices on Walgreens.com. The item must be identical in brand name, description, size, weight, color, quantity, and model number. The store has the right to limit the number of price adjustments made in a single transaction. Walgreens won’t price match competitors.

How to Coupon at Walgreens: Level 2

10. Walgreens Register Rewards are credits you can spend on almost anything in store.

Now it’s time to talk about Register Rewards. Here we go:

When you shop at Walgreens, you’ll occasionally get a paper coupon with your receipt if you’ve purchased a certain promo item. These are called Register Rewards (RR), and you can spend them on whatever you want in the store. You can’t keep track of these in your myWalgreens account, so don’t lose them! Treat them like cash.

Each week, Walgreens advertises Register Rewards promos in their weekly ad. This is where you can earn $1 – $5 off and sometimes even $15 or more. These deals vary each sales week (Sunday – Saturday), with some lasting a few days (e.g., 4-day sales), while others last all month long.

TIP: If your Register Rewards don’t print, ask for a manager. If it’s an advertised deal and the Register Reward doesn’t print, your cashier or the store manager should be able to award you the value in Walgreens Cash.

11. Four key Register Rewards rules:

1. Register Rewards can only be redeemed for eligible items. You can use a Register Reward to buy anything except alcohol, lottery tickets, and other things listed in the Walgreens coupon policy.

2. Register Rewards are not infinite. This means that if you got an Oral-B RR after you bought that electric toothbrush, then tried to use it on another Oral-B product in a separate transaction, you’re not gonna get more RR from that purchase. One and done. (But don’t worry; I’ll show you a work-around.)

3. Register Reward coupons expire anywhere from three days to two weeks. Take note of the expiration date printed on the coupon.

4. Walgreens reserves the right to limit your deals. While you can do multiple transactions with different Register Rewards, the store manager can stop you at any point.

12. Register Rewards are treated like manufacturer coupons at Walgreens.

At Walgreens, Register Rewards are free money, but Walgreens counts them as manufacturer coupons. This is because they get reimbursed by the manufacturer of whatever product you have to buy to get the reward. Register Rewards are also subject to Walgreens coupon policy just like any other manufacturer coupon.

For example, if you have to buy an Oral-B electric toothbrush to get $15 in Register Rewards from Walgreens, Walgreens doesn’t sweat it because just like a normal manufacturer coupon, the store gets that $15 they gave you right back from Oral-B.

13 . Walgreens doesn’t pay overage or mark down the value of your coupon.

What’s overage? It’s that glorious instance when the total amount of savings from coupons exceeds the price of your item(s). If that happens to you often, then you should be writing this guide. You’re a couponing boss.

According to Walgreens policy, if your coupon’s value exceeds an item’s selling price, they won’t adjust the coupons down to match and give it to you for free. Meaning they’ll hand you back your coupon and you’ll lose out on the deal. So lame.

This also means Walgreens doesn’t pay overages (what we at KCL call a moneymaker). If a coupon is worth even a penny more than the item you’re using it on, it won’t be accepted.

14. Combine Walgreens sales (like BOGO offers) with manufacturer coupons, but watch out!

Walgreens allows you to use manufacturer coupons with BOGO sales, so long as the final price doesn’t go below zero.

Here are two things to watch out for when using MFR coupons with BOGO deals:

• You can’t use more coupons than there are items in the “Buy” portion of a BOGO offer (e.g., Buy 3, Get 1 Free, and you try to use four coupons); Walgreens will reject that fourth coupon, whatever it’s for.

• BOGO offers can’t be combined with percent-off total purchase store coupons or other customer discounts like Walgreens Senior Day, Friends and Family, and Military Day.

• You can only use one dollar-off coupon with a BOGO deal. Period.

How to Coupon at Walgreens: Level 3

15. “Filler” items are the work-around to Walgreens’ MFR coupon rule.

You can’t have more manufacturer coupons than items — remember the BOGO example in tip #14?

Let’s say you want to take advantage of a Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer which also earns you $3 in RR. You’ve got $3 in RR to spend from a previous purchase, and you also have two manufacturer coupons, one for each item in the “Buy” portion of the offer. That’s three manufacturer coupons in total.

One of your coupons, whichever you hand over last, will get kicked back out because you’re only buying two items.

Here’s the work-around:

Add another qualifying item to your transaction — it could be anything other than alcohol, lottery tickets, and other things listed in the Walgreens coupon policy. This is what I call a “filler.” It can be the cheapest thing you find — for example, a lollipop for $0.33. Now you’ve got three items and can use all three coupons (and you’ll get more RR).

Boom! Take that, Walgreens!

16. Separate your transactions to get more Register Rewards.

Here’s how it works:

If the promotion for Crest toothpaste is “Buy 3, receive $5 Register Rewards,” but you buy six toothpastes thinking you’re gonna get $10 in rewards, you’re wrong. You’ll sadly only receive one $5 Register Reward.

To work around this, you’ll want to separate your transactions. Buy three Crest toothpastes in the first transaction and another three in the second. That way you’ll earn two $5 Register Rewards coupons and get the most savings! Again, you can keep doing this until the manager stops you.

17. Roll Walgreens Cash to your next transaction and keep the savings going.

Here’s how it works:

You can pay for your Walgreens purchase with Walgreens Cash in your account, and earn it for your purchase at the same time. How a wormhole doesn’t open up in space and time when I do this, I do not know. All I know is that this is a thing.

However, this only works for purchase quantity thresholds like “Buy 2, Get $2 Walgreens Cash.” So if you bought two toothpastes and used $2 Walgreens Cash to pay for one (essentially getting it for free), you’d still earn $2 more Walgreens Cash on that purchase. Then you could roll that Cash you just earned on a separate identical transaction for another two toothpastes, (again getting another for free) and earn $2 more in Walgreens Cash and keep going until they kick you out. Follow me?

Okay, pay attention here so you’re not mad at me later. It’s technically possible to roll Walgreens Cash on a purchase spend threshold like “Spend $20, Get $5 Walgreens Cash,” but you have to be sure the extra Walgreens Cash doesn’t take you under the threshold amount. Like if you spent $26 and used $5 Walgreens Cash, you’d still earn the new cash for spending $20.

18. You can roll Register Rewards in the same visit, but it’s not easy.

Just like with Walgreens Cash as I explained above, you can roll Register Rewards. As a reminder, “rolling” is when you earn and redeem Register Rewards at the same time. The reason why this is tricky is that once you redeem your RR for the same item you purchased to earn them, they stop. I mentioned separating transactions above, but what happens when you want to take advantage of more than one RR promo? It gets complicated.

I recommend you use your RR on your next visit, but if you’re low on cash, you can do it on the same visit. It’s possible, but be warned — this is probably the single most confusing thing about couponing at Walgreens. Let’s jump in.

Let’s say Suave Hair Care has a “Buy 2, receive $4 Register Rewards” promo and Head & Shoulders has a “Buy 2, receive $4 Register Rewards” promo in the same week. Your plan is to roll both.

1. In the first transaction: Purchase two Suave Hair Care products, pay $4, and get your $4 RR.

2. In the second transaction: Use the $4 RR you just earned to purchase your two Head & Shoulders. You’ll use the $4 RR, pay $5, and earn another $4 RR.

3. In the third transaction: Use the $4 RR from Head & Shoulders to purchase more Suave and earn $4 more RR.

This could go on forever or until a manager stops you — and someone eventually will.

Basically: Use the RR from one product to pay for the other, rinse and repeat.

19. Use Ibotta, Fetch, and Checkout 51 apps for rebates at Walgreens.

The best part about rebate apps is that you can scan every receipt with each app — helping you save money after your purchase without having to clip coupons.

In couponing language, any time you layer more than one type of discount is called stacking coupons. Using rebate apps is one of the best ways to stack coupons at KCL.

These rebate apps can be used to help you save more after your Walgreens purchase(s):

• Ibotta

• Fetch Rewards

• Checkout 51

TIP: Just remember to ask for a printed receipt if you’re using Walgreens pickup. You may have to remind the associate before you get your pickup order.

20. Stack coupons and promotions for 50% – 90% savings.

One of the best ways to save 50% – 90% at Walgreens is by stacking Walgreens store coupons and manufacturer coupons. Walgreens’ coupon policy allows one each per item.

When you can stack a manufacturer coupon, a store coupon, and a Walgreens Cash promotion, the magic happens. This is where everything we’ve been talking about comes together.

21. Use manufacturer coupons on Walgreens clearance items.

You can use manufacturer coupons on clearance items at Walgreens — as long as the coupon value isn’t higher than the price of the item. But you can’t use Walgreens Cash or Register Rewards on clearance items.

22. Use coupons with Walgreens online pickup when you’re a myWalgreens member.

MyWalgreens members get another cool perk: You can place an order at Walgreens.com and pick it up at the store in as little as 30 minutes. When you place your order online, you have access to all the same digital coupons you’d typically use in store. As long as you’re not needing to use computer printed or insert coupons, you can snag the same deal online as you would in person!

Here’s how to use coupons for curbside orders:

1. Head to the Walgreens website and log in to your myWalgreens account.

2. From the Menu, click “Coupons.”

3. Clip all the digital coupons you wish to use now or in the future.

4. Add your items to your cart. You have to have at least $10 before coupons for pickup orders. (TIP: if there’s an eligible digital coupon, it’ll show you on the product page.)

5. Choose “Pickup” in the cart.

6. Boom! Head to the store and grab your items without having to go in the store.

Note that Register Rewards can’t be earned online, but Walgreens Cash can.