OBJECTIVES: As more innovative oncology agents become available, budget limitations are necessitating deeper value assessments of products. Previous research demonstrated that examining a variety of key survival metrics is required to fully define the value of an anti-neoplastic intervention.  Here we examine how various survival metrics compare across 3 major metastatic tumor types, chosen because of the introduction of new therapeutics in the past year:  melanoma, prostate and lung cancer. METHODS: We conducted a literature-based review of pivotal clinical trial data supporting new therapeutics in these tumor types from 2006-2012 and selected all products with demonstrated overall survival benefit in the metastatic setting: vemurafinib, ipilimumab for melanoma; cabazitaxel, abiraterone, sipuleucel-T for prostate cancer; pemetrexed, erlotinib, and bevacizumab for lung cancer. Crizotinib was excluded having not reached median overall survival (OS) at approval. We compared products on four survival metrics: median OS, mean OS, 1-year survival, and number needed to treat to avoid one event (NNT). RESULTS: Despite variations in patient tumor types , the products showed a narrow range of median OS improvement.  However, greater variability was seen across other metrics: in lung cancer, pemetrexed presented the greater mean OS improvement, while erlotinib demonstrated greater 1-year survival and lower NNT. In melanoma, vemurafenib and ipilimumab demonstrated the same number of months of median OS improvement in their respective clinical trials; however, ipilimumab demonstrated greater mean OS, 1-year survival, and  lower NNT. In prostate cancer, sipuleucel-T demonstrated better mean OS improvement, whereas abiraterone had better 1-year survival and lower NNT. CONCLUSIONS: Drugs are being evaluated with remarkably similar median OS benefits for metastatic patient populations. Side-by-side comparisons that take multiple endpoints into account can assist decision-makers to better understand total clinical benefit in context and contribute to thoughtful resource management, especially when median OS benefit may be so similar.