Health screening packages in Singapore: what is included and what it costs

Health screening in Singapore runs on two tracks that rarely meet: a subsidised national programme that tests for a short list of conditions with strong evidence, and a private market that sells bundles of tests priced in the hundreds. A citizen who is due for the subsidised tests pays between nothing and S$5 for the visit. The same tests bought à la carte at a public hospital’s screening centre run into the hundreds each. This entry sets out who qualifies for which, what each actually costs, and how to judge a package before you pay for it.

Singapore’s screening recommendations follow the evidence for tests that change outcomes when done at intervals in people without symptoms.

These are the tests the national programme will subsidise, and the ages and intervals that decide whether you are due for one.

Test	Who qualifies	When you are due again
Cardiovascular risk (diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure)	Men and women from 40	3 years since your last
Cervical cancer — Pap test	Women 25 to 29 who have had sex	3 years since your last Pap
Cervical cancer — HPV test	Women from 30 who have had sex	5 years since your last HPV test
Colorectal cancer (stool FIT test)	Men and women from 50	1 year since your last
Breast cancer (mammogram)	Women from 50	2 years since your last

Two things that table does not say, and that cost people money.

There is no upper age limit in the subsidy rules. An earlier version of this entry printed cut-offs at 69 and 75. The programme’s own eligibility pages set none, so they have been removed.

Between 40 and 49, a mammogram is recommended but not on this list. The published advice for that decade is a mammogram every year, which is more often than the every-two-years advice from 50 — yet the subsidised programme begins at 50. A woman of 45 following the recommendation is paying for it, and Singapore General Hospital’s own screening sheet prices a standalone mammogram at S$263.34 before GST. That gap between what is advised and what is subsidised is the single most expensive thing on this page.

A private package will offer far more than these five tests. The extras — tumour markers, full-body scans, dozens of blood indices — are either aimed at a specific known risk, or have no evidence of benefit in people without symptoms and a well-documented rate of false alarms.

The subsidised route: Healthier SG Screening

The national programme is published as Healthier SG Screening, run by the Health Promotion Board. If you are looking for Screen for Life, that is the name this programme used to carry; the current pages no longer use it.

For a Singapore Citizen it is one fixed fee, charged at a participating CHAS GP clinic, covering every eligible test done in that visit plus the first follow-up consultation if one is needed.

Who you are	Fee for the screening visit
Enrolled with Healthier SG, at your enrolled clinic	S$0
Pioneer Generation	S$0
Merdeka Generation	S$2
CHAS Blue or Orange	S$2
Other eligible citizens, including CHAS Green	S$5

One detail in that fee is worth more than it looks. It covers the tests done within the same visit. Come back another day for a test you skipped and the fixed fee is charged again, so it is worth turning up prepared to do everything you are due for at once.

Breast screening is the exception to the CHAS GP route: it runs at selected polyclinics instead, on its own scale.

Who you are	Mammogram at a participating polyclinic
Enrolled with Healthier SG, citizen	S$0
Pioneer Generation	S$25
Merdeka Generation	S$37.50
Other citizens	S$50
Permanent residents	S$75

Permanent residents, read this carefully. That S$75 mammogram rate is the only Healthier SG Screening figure published for permanent residents. For the cardiovascular, cervical and colorectal tests the programme does not print a PR rate at all — it says to ask the CHAS GP clinic, and that the clinic’s own consultation charge applies on top. An earlier version of this entry said permanent residents pay “a somewhat higher flat fee”. No source says that, so it has been removed rather than softened. Phone the clinic before you go.

Private packages: what the tiers usually contain

Private providers — hospital screening centres, group practices and standalone screening chains — sell tiered packages.

This entry used to print three market-wide price bands here. They were not traceable to any published list, so they are gone. What follows instead is one provider’s actual menu, read from its own price sheet, as a worked example of how the tiers are built.

Singapore General Hospital’s Health Assessment Centre sells exactly two packages: Classic at S$384 and Premium at S$820, both before prevailing GST. There is no referral and no subsidy — screening is sold at the unsubsidised rate to anyone who books.

Both include the consultation, a physical examination, a doctor’s review afterwards with a health plan, and the core blood work: fasting glucose, lipid profile, kidney and liver panels, full blood count, urine test and a stool occult blood test. The step up to Premium buys body composition analysis, a chest X-ray, an ECG, visual acuity, hepatitis A, B and C serology, thyroid function, HbA1c, vitamin D, uric acid and an abdominal ultrasound.

Read that list against the subsidised one. The tests the national programme pays for are almost entirely inside the cheaper package. Most of what the extra S$436 buys is not guideline screening for someone without symptoms — it is a wider net, and a wider net catches more things that turn out to be nothing.

What one test costs on its own

Packages are priced to be bought whole, which hides the thing most people actually want to know: what a single test costs if you just need that one. Singapore General Hospital publishes its à la carte rates, and they make the comparison with the subsidised route concrete.

Test	At SGH, before GST	Under the national programme
Pap smear	S$93.20	Inside the S$0–5 visit fee
HPV test	S$110.96	Inside the S$0–5 visit fee
Mammogram	S$263.34	S$0–50 at a polyclinic, citizens from 50
Mammogram with pelvic ultrasound	S$418.99	Not covered
Abdominal ultrasound	S$276.32	Not covered
Pelvic ultrasound	S$276.32	Not covered
Retinal photography	S$122.18	Not covered
Body composition analysis	S$48.29	Not covered
Anti-HIV test	S$56.70	Not covered

Non-residents pay more for three of these: the Pap smear is S$121.15, the HPV test S$144.25 and the anti-HIV test S$73.68.

The first two rows are the ones to sit with. A Pap smear costs S$93.20 at the hospital and is inside a S$5 visit at a CHAS GP clinic, for the same test on the same schedule. If you are an eligible citizen and you are due, the only reason to pay the hospital rate is that you want it done there.

Where the packages are sold

Public hospital screening centres sell packages at the unsubsidised rate. The advantage is not price but continuity: an abnormal result is referred inside the same hospital, to a department that can already see the films. Private hospital screening centres and the standalone screening chains sell their own tiers and refer out for anything they find.

This entry does not rank those sellers on price. Doing so honestly would mean holding every published list at once and re-reading them as promotions change, and only one of those lists has been read here. Ranking them from memory is how the price bands that used to sit on this page got written in the first place.

Reading a package before you pay

Check four things.

Does it include the guideline tests for your age and sex? If a package for a fifty-year-old woman omits a mammogram and a stool test but includes six tumour markers, it is built for revenue, not for you.

What does a positive result lead to? A CT scan of the chest finds small nodules in a large share of healthy adults. Ask what the follow-up pathway is and who pays for it.

Is the doctor’s review included? Some low-priced packages send results by post with no consultation.

Can MediSave be used? MediSave can pay for the screening tests inside the national programme and for certain listed screenings at approved providers, within an annual cap. It cannot pay for the rest of a private package.

Tests worth adding for specific risk

Family history of colorectal cancer moves the stool test to a colonoscopy and starts it earlier. A first-degree relative with breast cancer starts mammography earlier. Hepatitis B carriers need liver ultrasound and alpha-fetoprotein at intervals. Smokers over fifty-five with a heavy history may qualify for low-dose CT of the lungs. In each case a GP or specialist should be ordering the test, not a package menu.

Frequently asked questions

Is a full-body scan a good idea if I can afford it?

The evidence says no for people without symptoms. Whole-body CT finds incidental abnormalities in most adults, almost all harmless, and the work-up carries its own risk and cost. No national guideline recommends it.

How often should a healthy forty-year-old screen?

Blood pressure every two years, cholesterol and diabetes every three, cervical screening on schedule for women, and BMI yearly. Cancer screening starts at fifty for average risk.

Can I use MediSave for a private health screening package?

Only for the components that are on the approved screening list, at providers registered for MediSave use, within the yearly cap. The provider will tell you which lines qualify; the balance is cash.

Are tumour markers useful for screening?

Not in people without symptoms. Markers such as CEA, CA-125 and PSA are raised by many benign conditions and normal in early cancers. They are for monitoring known disease, not for finding it.

Check also

Hospitals in Singapore: the specialty index — where an abnormal result gets referred
Cardiology hospitals in Singapore — for what a stress test or heart CT leads to
Gastroenterology hospitals in Singapore — where a positive stool test goes next

Where this index comes from

The subsidised fees, the eligible tests and the age and interval rules were read on 23 September 2026 from the Health Promotion Board’s Healthier SG Screening programme pages, including its screening journey and FAQ sections. The package prices and the single-test rates are from Singapore General Hospital’s Health Assessment Centre price sheet, which dates itself 5 March 2026, and are stated before prevailing GST.

Those figures are kept as data alongside the entry rather than only in this text, so a later check can say which have moved. Screening prices change with promotions and with each financial year; the dates above are what they are for.

This round verified the fees and the eligibility rules. The guidance on reading a package, on MediSave use and on tests for specific risk was not re-sourced, so treat the dates as applying to the numbers and not to the advice around them.

What the national guidelines recommend