You can test your A1c at home using an FDA-cleared fingerstick kit available at most major pharmacies and online retailers. These kits cost between $44 and $100, give results in about five minutes, and don’t require a prescription. They measure the same thing a lab does: the percentage of your red blood cells that have sugar attached to them, reflecting your average blood sugar over the past two to three months.
FDA-Cleared Home A1c Kits
Only a handful of A1c test kits are cleared by the FDA for over-the-counter home use. The main options you’ll find on shelves are the A1C Now Self Check (sold under the TRUE+ brand), the ReliOn Fast A1C Test (available at Walmart), and the Walgreens At Home A1C Test Kit. All three are manufactured using the same core technology from Polymer Technology Systems and share the same FDA clearance.
These kits are not covered by insurance, since insurers require a professional lab result for clinical decisions. However, they are generally eligible for purchase with HSA or FSA funds. If cost is a concern, the ReliOn version at Walmart tends to sit at the lower end of the price range.
How to Take the Test
The entire process takes less than 10 minutes. Each kit contains a small black analyzer device, a test cartridge, a shaker pouch, and a lancet for the finger prick. Before you start, make sure the kit has been stored at room temperature (59 to 77°F) and kept out of direct sunlight. If you’ve been refrigerating the box, pull out the analyzer, one shaker pouch, and one test cartridge at least an hour before testing so everything reaches room temperature.
Start by activating the shaker pouch, which prepares the reagent. Then use the lancet to prick your finger and collect a blood sample. You need to apply the blood to the analyzer within two minutes of the prick, so have everything set up and ready before you lance your finger. Once the sample is in the device, set it on a flat surface and don’t move or pick it up until the result appears on screen.
One important detail: the analyzer does not save your result for long. Write down your number as soon as it appears, because the screen clears after about 15 minutes and the reading is gone for good.
How Accurate Are Home Kits?
Home A1c kits use a tiny drop of capillary blood from your fingertip, while labs draw venous blood from your arm. This difference introduces some variability. A study in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes found that capillary A1c readings underestimated venous lab results by an average of 0.19 percentage points, with a margin of error of about ±0.39 points. For context, a lab’s own margin of error against the gold standard is ±0.27 points.
In practical terms, this means a home reading of 6.2% could correspond to a true lab value anywhere from roughly 5.8% to 6.6%. That’s a meaningful spread when you’re trying to determine whether you fall in the normal, prediabetes, or diabetes range. Home kits are useful for tracking trends over time (is your number going up, down, or holding steady?) but not reliable enough to diagnose diabetes on their own.
What Your Results Mean
The American Diabetes Association uses these A1c thresholds:
- Below 5.7%: Normal range
- 5.7% to 6.4%: Prediabetes range
- 6.5% or higher: Diabetes range
If your home test puts you in the prediabetes or diabetes range, a lab test is the necessary next step. No clinical diagnosis is made from a home kit alone. If you’re already managing diabetes and testing at home to check your progress between appointments, look at the direction of your numbers over several tests rather than fixating on any single reading.
Conditions That Skew A1c Results
A1c measures sugar stuck to hemoglobin inside red blood cells, so anything that changes how long your red blood cells live or how your hemoglobin behaves will throw off the result, whether you test at home or in a lab.
Iron deficiency anemia pushes A1c readings artificially high. This is especially relevant during late pregnancy, when iron deficiency is common and can inflate A1c even in people without diabetes. On the other hand, conditions that shorten the lifespan of red blood cells, like hemolytic anemia or recovery from significant blood loss, pull A1c falsely low because the cells haven’t been circulating long enough to accumulate sugar.
Sickle cell disease and sickle cell trait present a particular challenge. The abnormal hemoglobin variants (HbSS, HbCC, HbSC) can interfere with the chemical method the test uses to measure glycated hemoglobin, and the accelerated red blood cell turnover in these conditions further distorts the number. People with these hemoglobin variants should rely on alternative tests like glycated albumin, which measures sugar attached to a blood protein rather than to hemoglobin.
Chronic kidney disease, particularly in people on dialysis, tends to make A1c underestimate actual blood sugar levels. If any of these conditions apply to you, a home A1c kit is especially unreliable, and even lab A1c results need careful interpretation.
Storing Your Kit Correctly
The test cartridges and sample pouches are stable for up to 36 months when stored at room temperature (59 to 77°F). Heat and direct sunlight degrade the reagents and can produce inaccurate results. If your home runs warm or you can’t find a cool, shaded spot, refrigeration is fine, but you must let the components sit at room temperature for at least an hour before testing. Using a cold cartridge is one of the most common causes of errors with these kits.
Check the expiration date on the box before each use. If the kit has been sitting in your medicine cabinet for a while, expired reagents will give you a number you can’t trust.