OBJECTIVES: Based on the work of Sicras-Mainar et al. 2011, evaluating real world data on the resource consumption of patients treated with pregabalin and gabapentin for neuropatic pain, an adaptation to the Brazilian public health care system was carried in order to compare both strategies. METHODS: A cost-minimization study was designed considering the length of treatment, daily dose strengths distributions, hospitalization days, medical visits, physiotherapy sessions and other concomitant medications used. Frequencies and resource use was obtained from the aforementioned study, and prices were retrieved from national databases (Banco de Preços em Saúde and SIGTAP - Sistema de Gerenciamento da Tabela de Procedimentos, Medicamentos e OPM do SUS). To best represent the values for the not-normal distribution of length of treatment frequencies reported in the study, a Monte Carlo simulation using 10.000 iterations was carried considering a triangular distribution. The time horizon was defined as 1 year. Values were expressed in 2011 USD. RESULTS: The overall costs of medications compared in this study per patient were 332.74 and 291.20 USD for pregabalin and gabapentin, respectively. Health care utilization costs were 89.12 and 128.76 USD for pregabalin and gabapentin treated patients respectively. Other concomitant medication costs were 56.29 and 94.78 USD for pregabalin and gabapentin per patient respectively. Total costs per treatment were 478.15 and 514.73 USD for pregabalin and gabapentin treatments respectively, representing a cost-saving per patient of 36.58 USD for pregabalin. CONCLUSIONS: Pregabalin is a cost-saving option compared to gabapentin, representing a treatment that diminishes the health care system resource utilization while shortening patient’s length of treatment and reducing the burden related to other concomitant medications used.