Methodology v1.0 · Snapshot September 4, 2026 · 6-program sample
The GLP-1 Price Index
A transparent, reproducible tracker of what GLP-1 medications actually cost. We track provider prices, mark every one with an evidence status, and publish the median so you can see where the market sits — not where marketing says it sits.
No material relationship. GLP-1 Price Index and its publisher, US Peptides Partners LLC, have no ownership, affiliate, referral, advertising, or other material financial relationship with the providers tracked. Only first-party–captured prices are marked Verified. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved; prescription required.
Three things most comparison sites have not caught up to. One: brand prices collapsed. An FDA-approved oral semaglutide (the Wegovy tablet) is now from $149/month for qualifying patients — cheaper than most of the compounded market, and roughly $25 if your insurance covers the brand. Two: compounded ODT and microdose products have no trial evidence at all — every efficacy figure in this field comes from an approved subcutaneous injection. Three: some telehealth platforms resell brand drugs at up to twelve times the manufacturer’s own direct price. Prices verified September 4, 2026.
Medication explorer
Every medication we cover, with its actual regulatory status stated plainly rather than implied.
| Treatment | Form | FDA status | Trial evidence | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tirzepatide | Injection | Approved (Zepbound, Mounjaro) | Strong — SURMOUNT programme (~20%+ weight loss) | Tirzepatide → |
| Semaglutide | Injection / oral | Approved (Wegovy, Ozempic, Rybelsus) | Strong — STEP 1 (~14.9%) and SELECT | Semaglutide → |
| Compounded tirzepatide | Injection | NOT approved as a finished product | None for the compounded product itself | Guide → |
| Compounded semaglutide | Injection | NOT approved as a finished product | None for the compounded product itself | Guide → |
| Compounded semaglutide ODT | Oral / ODT | NOT approved | No trial has tested this formulation | Evidence gap → |
Latest verified pricing
92 priceable offerings across 19 providers, sorted on total monthly cost — medication plus any membership you cannot decline. Introductory rates are flagged and never ranked on.
Brand prices collapsed in late 2025. An FDA-approved oral pill is now $149 — cheaper than most of the compounded market. Meanwhile some platforms resell the same brand drugs at up to twelve times the manufacturer's direct price.
Open the full pricing database →
The finding most comparison sites have not caught up to
An FDA-approved, quality-verified, manufacturer-supplied medication at $149, against a compounded market that mostly runs $169-$399. The catch is dose escalation — Foundayo rises to $199, then $299, then $349 as you titrate, and at the top doses it has its own 45-day refill rule (it drops back to $299 if you refill in time). But for a starting patient, or anyone maintaining on a lower dose, the brand oral pill is now among the cheapest legitimate options in the entire category — and almost no comparison site has caught up.
These are not scams — the prices are disclosed. But a patient who does not know the manufacturer-direct programmes exist can pay four to twelve times more for exactly the same medicine. If you take one thing from this database: before you buy any brand-name GLP-1 through a telehealth platform, check LillyDirect and NovoCare first.
Featured comparison
The comparison that now decides whether any compounded programme is worth using at all.
Compounded vs brand — the whole market
All 92 offerings against the brand floor. Several compounded programmes now cost MORE than brand Zepbound.
ODT vs injection
The ODT costs more and no trial has tested it. The one situation where it still makes sense.
Best GLP-1 programmes
Ranked on published arithmetic — total cost, clinician oversight, pharmacy transparency.
Latest scientific evidence
Every one of these figures comes from an FDA-approved SUBCUTANEOUS INJECTION. None was collected on a compounded preparation, a microdose, or an orally disintegrating tablet. Trial averages are not individual promises.
SURMOUNT-5 — the head-to-head
Tirzepatide −20.2% vs semaglutide −13.7% at 72 weeks. Open-label and Lilly-funded — both caveats belong with it.
SELECT — cardiovascular outcomes
A 20% relative MACE reduction. The absolute reduction was 1.5 points over ~3 years.
STEP 1 — semaglutide
−14.9% at 68 weeks. Applies to the approved 2.4mg injection, not to dose-capped programmes.
Research Journal
An editorial evidence library. Every entry states the design, the population, the funder — and, unusually, what the study does not prove. That last section exists because the commonest misuse of this literature is not misquotation; it is stretching a real result past the dose, population or dosage form that was actually tested.
Popular guides
Cheapest compounded tirzepatide
Six meanings of 'cheapest', kept separate.
No membership fee
Split billing, and what it hides.
Is compounding still legal?
The FDA timeline that closed the market.
GLP-1 cost guide
Every pathway, normalised.
Microdose Semaglutide
The clinical case, and the legal one.
Peptides & sexual health
NAD+, sermorelin, tesamorelin, tadalafil, sildenafil.
Provider comparison
19 providers tracked. Every review carries an annual-cost calculation, a cancellation-terms section, an evidence ledger, and a plain statement of what we have not been able to verify.
All provider reviews
Every provider we track, with the same criteria applied to each.
Head-to-head comparisons
Decision frameworks, not a single declared winner.
How we rank
Weights published before scoring. Clinical safety 25%, pharmacy transparency 20%.
How we evaluate evidence
| Tier | Source | How we use it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FDA labels, orders, guidance | Authoritative for regulatory status |
| 2 | PubMed-indexed randomised trials | Primary evidence for efficacy |
| 3 | Systematic reviews and meta-analyses | Strongest for synthesis |
| 4 | ClinicalTrials.gov | Design and registration — not results |
| — | Reddit and patient forums | NEVER as evidence of price, safety or efficacy |
| — | Affiliate comparison sites | NEVER as proof of a medical claim, and never enough to mark a price Verified |
| — | Animal studies | NEVER as proof of a human clinical effect |
Our full source hierarchy → · Source policy →
Editorial team
Clinical content is written and reviewed by licensed clinicians. Every provider score is independently audited before publication, and no employee or representative of any reviewed provider writes, reviews or approves that provider's page.
Kim Callender, NP, FNP-BC
Lead Clinical Reviewer. NPI verified against the CMS registry.
Jonathan Snipes, MD
Medical Reviewer. NPI verified against the CMS registry.
The full editorial team
Who signs off on what, and what is still outstanding.
Corrections and transparency
We also audited all eighteen of NexLife's published plan cards against their own arithmetic. Sixteen reconcile; two do not, and we publish the arithmetic rather than the marketing figure — in both cases making the provider look slightly worse than its own advertising. A publication that only corrects errors in its own favour is not correcting anything.
Corrections policy → · Ownership & funding → · Submit a correction → · Pricing verification →
Stay current
Prices in this market change frequently and the regulatory position on compounding is actively shifting. Rather than a mailing list, we publish machine-readable feeds you can follow directly — no email required, nothing to unsubscribe from:
- Main feed — everything we publish
- Research Journal feed — new study summaries and regulatory updates
- Blog feed — analysis and pricing investigations
- Content review calendar — when each page is next scheduled for re-verification
The numbers behind this page
How this page is kept current
Every price quoted in this page comes from the programme's own pricing page and carries the date it was captured. Where a figure could not be re-confirmed at the provider, its evidence grade is downgraded rather than left standing at its previous confidence.
Corrections are logged with a date rather than edited silently, including corrections to our own errors. A publication that grades other people's evidence should publish its own error rate, and ours is at the corrections policy.
No provider pays for placement, position or inclusion here. Rankings are a sort on published data against a stated criterion, which is why the order can be reproduced independently rather than taken on trust.
Reading the price against the market
Why the spread is this wide
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
The molecule is chemically identical across every programme in the range. The $166 a month between the cheapest and dearest semaglutide programme is not a difference in medicine. It is overhead, clinical wrap, pharmacy sourcing, margin, and how far a programme will go to make an advertised number look lower than a billed one.
Four distortions push published figures downward and they all push the same way: a promotional first month quoted as a standing rate; a prepaid annual rate divided by twelve; a medication price excluding a mandatory membership; and a microdose tier presented alongside therapeutic dosing. Each is individually defensible and together they compound.
Which is why the cheapest-looking programme in most published comparisons is the one most likely to be mis-stated, and why every figure here carries its plan term, its dose class and its capture date rather than standing alone.
Why the spread is this wide
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
The molecule is chemically identical across every programme in the range. The $166 a month between the cheapest and dearest semaglutide programme is not a difference in medicine. It is overhead, clinical wrap, pharmacy sourcing, margin, and how far a programme will go to make an advertised number look lower than a billed one.
Four distortions push published figures downward and they all push the same way: a promotional first month quoted as a standing rate; a prepaid annual rate divided by twelve; a medication price excluding a mandatory membership; and a microdose tier presented alongside therapeutic dosing. Each is individually defensible and together they compound.
Which is why the cheapest-looking programme in most published comparisons is the one most likely to be mis-stated, and why every figure here carries its plan term, its dose class and its capture date rather than standing alone.
Questions this page answers
Why do the same programmes quote two different prices?
Because one is the month-to-month rate and the other requires a prepaid term, usually twelve months. We rank on the month-to-month figure and state the prepaid rate separately, since a rate requiring a year's commitment is not the same offer.
Where do these prices come from?
Each is read from the programme's own published pricing page and carries its capture date. The full set of 24 standard-dose records is at /api/prices.json with molecule and dose class on every record.
What is the cheapest verified GLP-1 programme?
NexLife at $119 a month for semaglutide and $139 for tirzepatide on its 12-month plan, both at standard therapeutic dosing and first-party verified September 4, 2026. Month-to-month, NexLife is $139 and $169; Oak Longevity ($133, flat, no membership) is the next-cheapest semaglutide programme.
Are compounded GLP-1 medicines FDA-approved?
No. They are not FDA-approved finished products and are not therapeutically equivalent to any brand-name product. FDA does not review them for safety, effectiveness or manufacturing quality before marketing.