Your guide to buying contact lenses online

Ordering contact lenses online should be the easy part of wearing them. Between reading your prescription, keeping track of replacement schedules, and picking the right box out of a long list, there is more to it than most product pages admit. Vision Rescue carries soft lenses from Alcon, Bausch + Lomb, CooperVision and Johnson & Johnson, verifies every prescription as part of the order, and ships your boxes straight to your door. This guide walks through how to choose, order and care for your lenses.

Start with a current prescription

Every contact lens sold here is a prescription product. A contact lens prescription does more than state your power: it records the base curve and diameter your eye was fitted with, and a lens that does not match that fit can be uncomfortable or hard on your eyes. Your prescription also has an expiration date, and an expired one cannot be used to place an order. If the paperwork in front of you looks like alphabet soup, our guides on how to read your eye prescription and what the axis number means translate every field.

Choosing a replacement schedule

Soft lenses divide along how long each pair is worn before it is replaced. The right schedule for you is the one your eye doctor wrote on the prescription, and both the brand and the schedule have to match what you order.

Daily disposable lenses are worn once and discarded at night. They come in 90 count boxes here and include Dailies Total1, Dailies AquaComfort Plus, Biotrue ONEday, 1-Day Acuvue Moist, Infuse and SofLens Daily Disposable. Dailies skip solution and cases entirely, and starting each morning with a fresh, sterile lens keeps the daily buildup of proteins and allergens off the lens surface, which many wearers notice as better late-day comfort.

Bi-weekly and monthly lenses are worn during the day, removed at night, cleaned and stored in fresh solution, then replaced every two weeks or every month depending on the lens. They come in 6 count boxes and include families like Acuvue Oasys, Air Optix, Biofinity, PureVision, SofLens and Ultra. Reusables tend to cost less per day of wear, provided you keep up the nightly cleaning routine.

Extended wear lenses are FDA approved for overnight wear for a set number of nights. They are made from highly breathable materials, but sleeping in lenses still carries a higher risk of eye infection, so only wear lenses overnight if your eye doctor has specifically approved it for your eyes. We cover the details in can you sleep in contact lenses.

Toric, multifocal and colored lenses

Most lens families run wider than a single spherical lens. If you have astigmatism, versions labeled for astigmatism are toric lenses: they are weighted or shaped to resist rotating on the eye, and they carry cylinder and axis values in addition to power. Versions labeled multifocal or for presbyopia blend distance and near correction into one lens and carry an add power, which for many wearers means fewer reaches for reading glasses. Air Optix Colors and Dailies Colors are tinted lenses, and they are prescription products in exactly the same way as the clear ones. Which of these you wear is set by the fitting you had, not by the box.

Contact lenses and dry or sensitive eyes

Dry eye care is our specialty, and lens comfort is where dryness shows up first. Modern silicone hydrogel materials let substantially more oxygen through to the eye, and many wearers with sensitive eyes do best on daily disposables because each day starts deposit-free. If your lenses feel fine at noon and gritty by evening, our guides to the best contact lenses for dry eyes and which eye drops are safe to use with contacts are the place to start, and the rewetting drops and lens-care products themselves are stocked in their own categories.

How ordering works at Vision Rescue

You enter the values from your prescription as you add lenses to the cart: power, base curve and diameter, plus cylinder and axis on a toric lens or an add on a multifocal, and whether the box is for the right eye, the left eye or both. What you enter is what gets ordered and shipped, so it is worth reading each field back against the prescription in front of you before you check out. The prescription itself is then verified before the order is filled, which can mean confirming it with the prescribing office or asking you to upload a copy.

Boxes are sold per eye, and the two eyes are often not the same, so a full order is usually two boxes rather than one. Pack count is also what decides how long an order lasts. A 90 count box of daily disposables is about three months for one eye at everyday wear, while a 6 count box of a monthly lens is about six months for one eye. That arithmetic is what most reorder baskets are built on, and it is worth doing before you pick a quantity.

New to lenses, or ordering for someone who is? Our step-by-step guides on how to put in contact lenses and how to take them out safely make the first week much less fiddly.

What do contact lenses cost?

The price of contact lenses depends on your prescription, the brand your doctor selected, and the replacement schedule. Daily disposables cost more up front than reusables, but they need no solution or cases, which closes much of the gap over a year. Toric and multifocal lenses involve more complex manufacturing and sit a step higher than spherical lenses in the same family. Ordering a larger supply at once usually works out best per box, means fewer shipments to keep track of, and clears our free shipping threshold. Contact lenses are also FSA and HSA eligible, so pre-tax dollars can cover them.

Caring for your lenses

Good habits keep lens wear comfortable. If you wear bi-weekly or monthly lenses, wash your hands with mild, unscented soap and dry them with a lint-free towel before handling lenses. Never rinse or store lenses in water of any kind, tap or otherwise, because water exposure is linked to serious eye infections. Use only fresh contact lens solution, clean your lenses each night, and replace your lens case about every three months. Above all, stick to the replacement schedule you were prescribed: stretching a two week lens into a third week reduces oxygen flow to the eye and raises the chance of irritation and complications.

Expired, changed or unsure

Contact lens prescriptions run out, and an expired one cannot be used to place an order. We do not fit lenses and we cannot alter what a prescription says. If you want a different brand, a different schedule or a different power, that is a conversation with the optometrist or ophthalmologist who fits you. Bring the change back here once it is written down and the new details can go straight into your next order.

Systane PRO PF Multi-Dose Preservative free Lubricant Eye Drops – 10mL

Optase Intense 2-pack Preservative Free Eye Drops 2-Pack

Oasis Tears 2-pack Preservative-Free Eye Drops (Multi-drop Bottle) 2-Pack 600 drops

Optase Hylo Forte Dry Eye Therapy Preservative-Free Drops (10mL)

iVIZIA Sterile Lubricant Eye Drops, Preservative-Free, Contact Lens Friendly, 0.17 fl oz (5ml bottle)

Oasis Tears Plus Preservative-Free Eye Drops (10ml Multi-drop Bottle)

iVIZIA Sterile Lubricant Eye Drops, Preservative-Free, Dry Eye Relief, Contact Lens Friendly, 0.33 fl oz (10ml bottle)

Optase MGD 2-pack Advanced Eye Drops Preservative-Free 3+ Month Supply (600 drops) 2-pack

iVIZIA 2-pack Sterile Lubricant Eye Drops, Preservative-Free, (2 x 10ml bottle) 2-Pack

Optase Hylo Relief Preservative-Free Eye Drops (300 Drops)

Optase MGD Advanced Eye Drops Preservative-Free 2 Month Supply (300 drops) (1 Bottle)

Optase Intense Preservative Free Eye Drops (10mL) 300 drops