The strongest single oxycodone tablet currently available is the 80 mg extended-release formulation, sold as OxyContin. For immediate-release tablets, the highest strength reaches 30 mg. A 160 mg extended-release tablet once existed but was pulled from the market in 2001 due to safety concerns.
Extended-Release Tablets: Up to 80 mg
OxyContin, the brand-name extended-release version of oxycodone, comes in seven strengths: 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 60, and 80 mg. These tablets release the drug slowly over about 12 hours, so they’re typically taken once or twice a day rather than every few hours.
The 60 mg and 80 mg tablets carry a specific restriction from the FDA: they’re only approved for patients who have already built up tolerance to a comparable opioid. A person who hasn’t been taking opioids regularly cannot safely start at these doses. The threshold for the same restriction applies to any single dose above 40 mg or any total daily dose above 80 mg.
Purdue Pharma originally manufactured a 160 mg OxyContin tablet, but it was withdrawn in 2001 and is no longer available. The FDA later formally determined that all original OxyContin formulations were withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness. The reformulated version that replaced it tops out at 80 mg and includes abuse-deterrent properties that make the tablet harder to crush or dissolve.
Immediate-Release Tablets: Up to 30 mg
Immediate-release oxycodone tablets max out at 30 mg per pill. These are the shorter-acting versions, typically prescribed for breakthrough pain or for people just starting opioid therapy. They kick in faster but wear off in four to six hours, so they’re taken more frequently throughout the day than extended-release formulations.
The difference between a 30 mg immediate-release tablet and an 80 mg extended-release tablet isn’t just the number on the pill. The extended-release version meters out that larger dose gradually, while the immediate-release version delivers its full effect quickly. Taking an 80 mg dose all at once without tolerance could be fatal.
Combination Products Are Lower Strength
Oxycodone also comes combined with acetaminophen in products like Percocet. These contain much less oxycodone per tablet, typically 2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, or 10 mg, paired with 325 mg of acetaminophen. The acetaminophen creates a built-in ceiling because exceeding 4,000 mg of acetaminophen in a day risks serious liver damage, which effectively limits how many tablets can be taken.
Liquid Formulations: A Concentrated Option
Oxycodone also comes as an oral solution, and the concentrated version is remarkably potent. The standard liquid contains 1 mg per milliliter, but a high-concentration version delivers 20 mg per milliliter (100 mg per 5 mL). That concentrated solution is reserved exclusively for opioid-tolerant adults and is primarily used in situations where patients can’t swallow tablets or need precise dose adjustments.
How Oxycodone Compares to Other Opioids
Oxycodone is roughly 1.5 times as potent as morphine when taken by mouth. So an 80 mg OxyContin tablet delivers the equivalent of about 120 mg of oral morphine. That context matters because prescribing guidelines use morphine milligram equivalents (MME) as a common yardstick for comparing opioid doses regardless of which drug is being used.
The CDC’s 2022 prescribing guideline flags 50 MME per day as a threshold where risks start climbing without proportional benefits for pain relief. For oxycodone, 50 MME translates to roughly 33 mg per day. At the World Health Organization level, anything above 100 MME daily (about 67 mg of oxycodone) is considered a high prescribed dosage and a risk factor for overdose.
Why Higher Doses Are Dangerous
Opioids suppress the brain’s drive to breathe. At higher doses, this effect intensifies, and the gap between pain relief and respiratory depression narrows. Even patients who have developed tolerance and regularly take high doses still experience episodes where breathing slows dangerously, particularly during sleep.
The risk isn’t limited to people misusing the drug. Research in respiratory physiology has confirmed life-threatening breathing suppression in both opioid-tolerant and opioid-naive individuals at high doses. Tolerance to pain relief and tolerance to respiratory depression don’t develop at the same rate, which means a dose that no longer controls pain effectively can still be enough to stop someone’s breathing.
CDC guidelines note that many patients see no meaningful improvement in pain or physical function when doses climb above 50 MME per day, while the risk of harm continues to rise with each increase. The relationship between dose and benefit flattens out, but the relationship between dose and danger does not.