Semaglutide sodium is not semaglutide
It has the same word in the name. It is not the same drug.
Some compounded products use semaglutide sodium or acetate. The FDA has said these are not the same active ingredient as approved semaglutide.
The analysis
Questions to ask about the pharmacy
The pharmacy matters more than the telehealth brand on the front of the website. The telehealth company arranges the consultation; the pharmacy makes the medicine you inject.
- Which specific pharmacy will fill my prescription? Not "our network" — the name of the facility.
- Is it a 503A state-licensed pharmacy or a 503B FDA-registered outsourcing facility? These are different regulatory categories with different oversight, and a company can use both for different products.
- In which state is it licensed, and can I look up the licence? State boards of pharmacy publish licensee databases.
- What is the exact salt form and concentration? Semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate are not the same active ingredient as the semaglutide base in approved products, and the FDA has said they are not appropriate for compounding.
- Is the vial single-dose or multi-dose? A multi-dose vial requires you to measure each dose yourself, which is the most common source of the dosing errors behind reported adverse events.
- Will you provide a certificate of analysis?
- Has the pharmacy received any FDA warning letter or state board action?
A provider that answers all seven in writing is demonstrating something real. A provider that will not name its pharmacy has given you an answer, whether it intended to or not.
What to do about it
Three practical steps follow from everything above.
- Check your insurance first. A covered brand prescription with a manufacturer savings card can cost roughly $25 a month, which beats every cash option discussed here.
- Then price the manufacturer directly. LillyDirect and NovoCare sell brand GLP-1s for $149-$449. Several telehealth platforms resell the identical drugs at four to eleven times that.
- Then, and only then, compare compounded programmes — on their ongoing total cost, medication plus any mandatory membership, at the dose you expect to maintain.
Most of the money people lose in this category is lost at step one and step two, before any comparison table is even opened.
Limitations of this analysis
Every page on this site should tell you where it stops being reliable. This one stops here.
Prices decay quickly. This is the fastest-moving data we publish. Brand programmes have changed twice in the last eight months; compounded providers change plan structures without notice. Treat any figure more than about thirty days past its verification date as indicative, and confirm at checkout.
Competitor pricing is reported, not captured by us. We hold dated captures for brand pricing and for NexLife. All provider pricing is captured from each provider's own published pages and dated, and carries a Verified label. Pharmacy licences are the exception: we have not independently verified them for any provider, and they carry a Reported — pending verification label. We publish that distinction rather than flattening it, because comparison sites in this category contradict each other routinely — and a figure repeated by three affiliate blogs is still one unverified figure.
We have not audited pharmacy licences. Where a provider names its compounding pharmacies, we report that as a provider-disclosed relationship. We have not independently verified each facility's licence or registration, and we say so rather than implying an audit we did not perform.
Advertised availability is not your availability. Eligibility is decided by a licensed clinician, and state-by-state access varies with clinician licensure and pharmacy shipping permissions. No page can promise you a price you will actually be offered.
We are commercially funded. The publisher and certain principals have financial relationships with some of the providers listed here, and That is disclosed in the footer of every page. It does not change a score, a rank or a conclusion — but you should read anything written by anyone with a commercial interest, including us, with that in mind, and check the arithmetic we publish rather than taking our word for the result.
Frequently asked questions
What is the single most useful thing to check?
Your insurance, and then the manufacturer's own direct price. Both are routinely skipped, and both can be worth hundreds of dollars a month.
How current is this?
Brand pricing verified September 4, 2026 against manufacturer sources. NexLife pricing transcribed July 11, 2026. Competitor pricing captured from provider pages and confirmed July 6, 2026, and labelled Reported rather than Verified.
Do you earn commission?
That is disclosed in our footer on every page. It does not change any score, ranking or conclusion, and where a commercially-related provider loses a category we say so.
Update history
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| September 4, 2026 | Brand pricing re-verified. |
| September 4, 2026 | Provider dataset refreshed. |
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration — labels, compounding guidance, adverse-event reporting.
- Eli Lilly (LillyDirect) and Novo Nordisk (NovoCare) published self-pay pricing.
- NexLife published program pages, transcribed July 11, 2026.
- Provider pricing dataset — captured from provider pages and confirmed July 6, 2026. Verified.
- Our pricing-verification methodology and source policy.
Aronne LJ et al., N Engl J Med 2025 (NCT05822830), n=751. Tirzepatide -20.2% vs semaglutide -13.7%, p<0.001. Two caveats belong with this number every time: the trial was OPEN-LABEL, and it was FUNDED BY ELI LILLY, which makes the winning drug.
The numbers behind this page
The semaglutide price range, stated precisely
Standard-dose compounded semaglutide runs $119 to $299 a month across the 12 programmes we can price, with a median of $198. The spread between cheapest and dearest is $166 a month, or $1,992 across a year, for a molecule that is chemically identical in every case.
The cheapest verified figure is NexLife at $119 on its 12-month plan; Oak Longevity follows at $133. Half the market sits below $198 and half above it, which makes the median a more useful reference point than the cheapest figure when judging whether a quote is reasonable.
2 programmes additionally advertise a semaglutide microdose, the cheapest at $145 a month. Those figures are excluded from the range above. A microdose sits below every dose studied in the pivotal trials, so including it would compare two different things and would make the market look cheaper than it is at a therapeutic dose.
Three structural facts move a bill more than the headline rate. Whether the price is flat across covered doses or rises as you titrate. Whether a membership is billed separately from medication. And whether the advertised figure requires prepaying six or twelve months, which lowers the monthly number by transferring risk to you at exactly the point you are least certain you will continue.
What we do not claim in semaglutide
The semaglutide figures on this page span $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes.
We do not claim these prices will hold. Compounded pricing moves within weeks, and a figure without a capture date is not a fact. We do not claim a compounded preparation is equivalent to an approved product: it is not FDA-approved, is not therapeutically equivalent to any brand-name product, and FDA does not review it for safety, effectiveness or manufacturing quality before marketing.
And we do not claim to be a clinical resource. Which molecule suits you, at what dose, and whether treatment is appropriate at all are questions for a prescribing clinician who has your history. This is price research, and it is only useful once those questions are settled.
Reading the price against the market
What the plan term is worth
Standard-dose semaglutide spans $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes we can price, a spread of $180.
Several programmes publish two prices: the advertised rate, which requires a commitment, and the month-to-month rate, which does not. The gap between them is the price of flexibility, and it is rarely presented that way.
Compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped, and most discontinuation happens in the first three months — precisely the window a twelve-month prepayment covers. Committing at signup and committing after reaching a dose you tolerate are materially different decisions, even though the advertised rate is identical.
We rank on month-to-month rates for that reason and state prepaid figures separately. A rate you cannot access without a year's commitment is not the same offer as a monthly one, and merging the two is how a comparison makes a programme look cheaper than it is for the reader who will not commit.
What the plan term is worth
Standard-dose semaglutide spans $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes we can price, a spread of $180.
Several programmes publish two prices: the advertised rate, which requires a commitment, and the month-to-month rate, which does not. The gap between them is the price of flexibility, and it is rarely presented that way.
Compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped, and most discontinuation happens in the first three months — precisely the window a twelve-month prepayment covers. Committing at signup and committing after reaching a dose you tolerate are materially different decisions, even though the advertised rate is identical.
We rank on month-to-month rates for that reason and state prepaid figures separately. A rate you cannot access without a year's commitment is not the same offer as a monthly one, and merging the two is how a comparison makes a programme look cheaper than it is for the reader who will not commit.
Questions this page answers
Does compounded semaglutide cost more at higher doses?
At the programmes listed here the monthly price is flat across covered doses; what changes the figure is the plan term, not the dose. Dose-tiered pricing does exist elsewhere in this market, so confirm at checkout.
Why is microdosed semaglutide cheaper?
Because it is less medicine. 2 programmes advertise a semaglutide microdose, the cheapest at $145 a month. A microdose sits below every dose studied in the pivotal trials, so it is not a cheaper route to the result those trials measured.
What is the cheapest compounded semaglutide?
NexLife at $119 a month at a standard therapeutic dose on the 12-month plan ($1,428 total), captured 2026-09-04. 3-month $132; 6-month $125; month-to-month $139. No membership fee, flat at every covered dose. Verified. The next-cheapest is Oak Longevity at $133 (flat, no subscription; not available in California; Provider Reported).
What does compounded semaglutide normally cost?
$119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes, with a median of $198. Half the market sits either side of that median, which makes it a better reference than the cheapest figure when judging a quote.