What a GLP-1 costs in cash, and why nobody can name the cheapest
We've read 531 compounded GLP-1 prices off 160 sellers' own pages, and the honest answer to "what does this cost without insurance" is a range, not a number: the middle of that record sits at $199 a month, with half of everything falling between $149 and $269. We will not name a cheapest, and the reason is the whole article.
What this comes down to
- Half the compounded GLP-1 prices we have read fall between $149 and $269 a month. The full record runs from $54 to $947.
- 156 of the 887 priced lines on this roster advertise less than they charge in month two, across 69 of 190 sellers. A bottom-of-the-range figure is usually one of those.
- 40 more lines, across 21 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 190 sellers we have written up, 110 publish a month-to-month price for everything they sell, 41 publish one for nothing, and 39 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: 531 compounded GLP-1 prices from 160 sellers, and 71 brand prices from 26. The compounded record starts at $54 a month and ends at $947. The middle is $199. A quarter of it sits at or below $149 and a quarter at or above $269.
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.
A seller writes its own product labels, so "is this line a GLP-1" is a match against free text. Ours matched 602 of the 887 priced lines on the roster, across 169 of 190 sellers, and deliberately didn't match 135 other medication lines these same companies sell — peptides, testosterone, NAD+. Both numbers are printed because a matcher with no denominator beside it looks the same whether it found everything or nothing.
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. 156 of the 887 priced lines here advertise one figure and recur at a higher one — that is 69 of 190 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. 40 lines on this roster 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. The reference implementation this site was modeled against has a live version of that bug — its cheapest-price selector does not filter by what a row is, so a membership fee sits in the candidate pool for a medication headline.
| Seller | How the seller writes the line | A month |
|---|---|---|
| The Edit | estradiol, published floor | $69 |
| Ivim Health | medication floor | $75 |
| JumpstartMD | getting started rate | $79 |
| NuuVim | comparison chart disclaimer, all plans | $79 |
| TeleZen MD | glp-1 microdosing, prepay equivalent | $82 |
| Balanced Hormone Health | compounded semaglutide, advertised per-month floor | $85 |
| Trellis Vitality | glutathione protocol, published floor | $93 |
| Vigormeds | products marked coming soon | $98 |
| Zappy Health | weight loss menu headline | $99 |
| Woodwork | sermorelin peptide therapy, published floor | $116 |
| Zappy Health | anti-aging menu headline | $119 |
| Tyde Wellness | low-dose naltrexone tablets, published floor | $119 |
Every category floor on the roster: 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
60 seller-and-molecule groups on this roster carry three or more different prices for what is nominally the same drug, across 39 sellers. On the compounded side that spread is almost entirely about how long you agree to stay: of 184 compounded rungs inside those groups, 152 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
33 priced lines here are a recurring fee rather than a medication, across 22 sellers, and a further 16 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 on this roster run from $25 to $1899 a month with a middle of $399 — but 17 of the 71 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 on the day this page was updated 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.
PubMed, via the E-utilities API
compounded[tiab] AND (semaglutide[tiab] OR tirzepatide[tiab]) AND "randomized controlled trial"[pt] AND "humans"[mh]
Returned 0. Positive control — semaglutide, identical trial filter — returned 306 through the identical filter in the same session.
The control is the same drug through the same filter, so it tests whether the filter can find trials of this molecule at all. It can — 306 of them. What has never been run is a randomized trial of a compounded version. Cheaper is a fact about the invoice; it is not a finding about the product.
Four questions that settle a cash price before you pay
- What do I pay in month two if I cancel after month one? It's the only phrasing that survives all four headline mechanics.
- Is this figure the medication, or the membership, or both? On this roster they are separate lines far more often than not.
- Does the figure assume a plan term, and what is the term? Most of the spread in the compounded market is this.
- 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 roster is here, and how we grade sets out what moves a letter.
Questions people actually ask
What is the cheapest GLP-1 without insurance?
We do not publish a single cheapest, and the reason is measurable: 156 of the 887 priced lines on our roster advertise a figure lower than the one that recurs, and 40 more are a "from" floor for a whole category rather than a price for a drug. What we publish instead is the range and the middle, each read off the seller's own page.
How much does compounded semaglutide cost per month in cash?
Across the compounded GLP-1 prices we have read first-hand, the middle sits at $199 a month and half of everything falls between $149 and $269. The full record runs from $54 to $947, and a figure near either end usually has a condition attached.
Is a cheaper compounded GLP-1 the same drug for less money?
No. It contains the same molecule, but it's a different product made by a different party under different rules, and the FDA doesn't review a compounded drug for safety, effectiveness or quality before it is marketed. No randomized trial has compared a compounded version with the approved one.
Why do two sellers quote such different prices for the same drug?
Usually because they are not quoting the same thing. One figure may assume a prepaid year, or exclude a membership fee billed on a separate line, or be a starting-at floor for a category rather than a price for a named dose. Reading what the figure includes settles most of the gap.
Sources
Every source here was fetched and read for this article, with the identifier taken off the record that came back and the claim it supports written down beside it. All of it was read in September 2026, the same session the rest of this page draws on.
- 1.The Telehealth Graded price record. Telehealth Graded, 2026. SourceEvery count of priced lines, every range and every quartile in this article is computed at build time from the site's own price records, each of which carries the page the figure was read from, the sentence it came from, and the day we read it.
- 2.FDA's Concerns with Unapproved GLP-1 Drugs Used for Weight Loss. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2026. Source · Document dated September 2026The FDA's telehealth red flags for consumers include a company that offers medicine at deep discounts or prices that seem too good to be true, and a company that does not require a screening and prescription by a licensed doctor before providing medicine.
- 3.Compounding and the FDA: Questions and Answers. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2025. Source · Document dated September 2025Compounded drugs are not FDA approved: the agency does not verify their safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed, and consumers buying through telehealth platforms may not know the identity of the compounder that produced the drug.
- 4.FDA Drug Shortages: current and resolved drug shortages. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, accessdata, 2026. SourceThe current and resolved shortages table held 74 entries on the day it was read, 70 of them currently in shortage. Liraglutide injection appears; neither semaglutide injection nor tirzepatide injection does, which is what makes the compounded market a question about the copy rule rather than about supply.
Key figures