Objectives: Despite major advances in bioscience and medicine, acute upper respiratory infections (AURI) continue to be a huge burden on society in terms of human suffering. The purpose of this study is to find out whether there is any variation in the health care costs and to investigate which characteristics affect the variation. Methods: The data used the National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC) database. In order to find out the variation of the medical expenses of AURI, the ratio of extreme value (EQ) and coefficient of variation (CV) were presented. Multiple linear regression analysis were performed for difference of the health care costs and finding related factors. Results: The variation of medical expenses of AURI define as EQ was 10.4 and the CV was 0.4. In the characteristics of patients, people who were women, older age, high-income level group had high health care costs. In the characteristics of the medical institution, the health care costs of the subjects who received the antibiotic prescription or who visited the internal medicine were relatively high. In the region characteristics, the health care costs were high in the area where the number of clinics per 100000 population was high. Conclusion: The degree of variation in AURI’s health care costs is lower than that of the other Diagnosis-Related Groups, which can be interpreted as a result of government level policy efforts on antibiotics and prescription drugs. A government wide policy will also be needed to reduce the variation in the cost of health care for other diseases.