Advil vs Tylenol
The two most common painkillers in the world. One reduces inflammation, the other does not — and they carry entirely different risks, to the stomach and to the liver respectively.
At a glance
Key differences
- Different classes. Advil is an NSAID; Tylenol is an analgesic and antipyretic. They act on different targets in the body.
- Time on the market. Advil was first approved by the FDA in 1984, Tylenol in 1976. That gives Tylenol roughly 8 more years of real-world use and long-term safety data.
- Who markets them. Advil is marketed by Haleon; Tylenol by Johnson & Johnson.
- Same drug, more than one brand. Ibuprofen is sold as Advil / Motrin — the same active ingredient marketed under different brand names, typically for different approved uses or doses.
- Same drug, more than one brand. Acetaminophen is sold as Tylenol / Panadol — the same active ingredient marketed under different brand names, typically for different approved uses or doses.
What each one treats
Uses temporarily relieves minor aches and pains due to: headache toothache backache menstrual cramps the common cold muscular aches minor pain of arthritis temporarily reduces fever
An oral or rectal medication used to relieve mild-to-moderate pain and reduce fever.
Related comparisons
Read more
Which medicine is right for a given person depends on their diagnosis, other conditions, other medicines, kidney and liver function, pregnancy, and cost or reimbursement — none of which this page knows. Two drugs in the same class are not automatically interchangeable. Never start, stop or switch a prescription medicine on the basis of a web page; that decision belongs to you and your clinician or pharmacist.
How this page is built
The facts on this page are pulled directly from official U.S. FDA datasets — they are not written from memory. Each field below names the dataset it came from, so you can check it yourself.
- FDA Drug Label (openFDA) ↗ Indications, mechanism of action and pharmacologic class
- Drugs@FDA ↗ First FDA approval date and the company holding the application
- FDA Drug Shortage Database ↗ Current US supply / shortage status
Plain-English summaries and drug-class explainers are written and reviewed by Sreepriya Prasannan (MSc Digital Transformation of Life Sciences (Innopharma Education / Griffith College); MSc & BSc Botany). Data is retrieved automatically from the sources above and cross-checked with AI-assisted verification (Anthropic's Claude) — brand and generic names are matched against the exact FDA product record so that a combination product or a different formulation cannot be mistaken for the drug on this page. An editor reviews the result before publication. We describe this in full in our editorial standards and corrections policy. The FDA data on this page was last retrieved on 5 Oct 2026. How every register is built: methodology · fixes we have made: corrections log.