What a GLP-1 costs in cash, and why nobody can name the cheapest

What this comes down to

• Half the compounded GLP-1 prices we have read fall between $149 and $279 a month. The full record runs from $49 to $3497.
• Fifteen of the 1434 priced lines across the sellers we review advertise less than they charge in month two, across 8 of 387 sellers. A bottom-of-the-range figure is usually one of those.
• 89 more lines, across 52 sellers, are a "from" floor for a whole category rather than the price of any particular drug. A floor is not a price.
• Of the 387 sellers we have written up, 131 publish a month-to-month price for everything they sell, 75 publish one for nothing, and 181 do it for some drugs and not others.

The range, measured rather than asserted

Every figure in this section came off a seller's own page and carries the day we read it^[1]. Counted across that record right now: 869 compounded GLP-1 prices from 280 sellers, and 91 brand prices from 34. The compounded record starts at $49 a month and ends at $3497. The middle is $199. A quarter of it sits at or below $149 and a quarter at or above $279.

Those numbers move whenever a price does, because they're counted rather than written down. What they aren't is a shopping list. The calculator is where a single seller's medication price, its membership fee and the number of months you expect to take it get added up, which is the only arithmetic that answers what you will actually spend.

Why we will not name the cheapest

Because the bottom of a price list is almost never a price you can pay in month two. Fifteen of the 1434 priced lines here advertise one figure and recur at a higher one — that is 8 of 387 sellers doing it. The four mechanics behind that are worth knowing before you read any headline figure, including ours.

There's a second reason, and it's structural. 89 lines across the sellers we review are what we record as a category floor: a "from" number attached to a whole class of product rather than to a named drug at a named dose. A floor can't be compared with a price, and a comparison table that puts one beside the other is comparing nothing. A low membership fee does not establish the cost of medication. Check that a comparison names the drug, the supply period and any required fees before treating its headline as your monthly total.

Every category floor across the sellers we review: a "from" figure for a class of product, not a price for a drug.

What actually moves a cash price

Commitment length, more than anything else

88 seller-and-molecule groups across the sellers we review carry three or more different prices for what is nominally the same drug, across 57 sellers. On the compounded side that spread is almost entirely about how long you agree to stay: of 272 compounded price lines inside those groups, 215 name a plan term in the seller's own label and only 6 name a milligram dose. What the ladder costs as the dose climbs takes the other half of that apart.

Whether the fee is on the same line as the drug

61 priced lines here are a recurring fee rather than a medication, across 45 sellers, and a further 56 are a per-visit charge. A seller can advertise whichever half is smaller. What a membership actually buys is the companion to this page, and the two numbers have to be added before either means anything.

Compounded versus brand, which is not the gap people expect

Brand prices across the sellers we review run from $99 to $1899 a month with a middle of $399 — but 22 of the 91 brand lines we have read sit at or below the middle of the compounded range. The real spread between the two is narrower at the edges than the marketing on either side suggests. It is also no longer a shortage story: we read the FDA's shortage database in September 2026 and neither semaglutide injection nor tirzepatide injection appears on it^[4].

The figure that should worry you

The FDA publishes a short list of telehealth warning signs written for exactly this market, and the second item on it is a company that offers medicine at deep discounts or prices that seem too good to be true^[2]. That is an awkward sentence for a price comparison page to carry, and it is carried here on purpose: the bottom of this range is not automatically the best outcome, and the agency that regulates the product says so in its own words.

It matters more for compounded products than for brand ones, because a compounded drug was never reviewed for safety, effectiveness or quality before it went on sale^[3]. Nothing in the price tells you which pharmacy made it. What compounded actually means sets out the rules that let the cheap tier exist.

What has been tested about the cheap tier. A PubMed search finds 0 results; the same search for semaglutide finds 306.

Four questions that settle a cash price before you pay

1. What do I pay in month two if I cancel after month one? It's the only phrasing that survives all four headline mechanics.
2. Is this figure the medication, or the membership, or both? Across the sellers we review they are separate lines far more often than not.
3. Does the figure assume a plan term, and what is the term? Most of the spread in the compounded market is this.
4. What happens to money already paid if I stop? What these companies' own terms say about refunds is a harder read than the pricing page.

We publish the month-two number for every company we grade and show the advertised figure beside it rather than instead of it. The graded list is here, and how we grade sets out what moves a letter.

Questions people actually ask