Wegovy vs Mounjaro: how they compare
Wegovy is a glp-1 receptor agonist; Mounjaro is a dual gip / glp-1 receptor agonist. The right choice is a clinical decision based on your history, tolerance and goals — not a universal ranking. Trial averages differ, but individual response varies widely.
The Mounjaro trap — why this comparison is not close
Novo runs a self-pay programme for Wegovy: $349/month, or $149 for the oral tablet. Lilly runs no self-pay programme for Mounjaro at all. So cash-pay Mounjaro is sold at essentially retail — $2,048 at Hers, $1,199 at Found, $1,120 at PlushCare.
That is a 5-to-14-fold difference for drugs of broadly comparable efficacy. And here is the part that matters most: Mounjaro and Zepbound are the same molecule (tirzepatide). If you want tirzepatide and you are paying cash, you want Zepbound at $299-$449 through LillyDirect — not Mounjaro at $1,100+.
Mounjaro makes financial sense in exactly one situation: your insurance covers it, which generally requires a documented type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Outside that, choosing Mounjaro over Wegovy or Zepbound on cash-pay is the single most expensive mistake available in this category.
Side-by-side
Highest-dose trial averages, different trials and populations — a directional comparison, not a head-to-head. Individual results vary and are not guaranteed.
| Factor | Wegovy | Mounjaro |
|---|---|---|
| Drug class | GLP-1 receptor agonist | Dual GIP / GLP-1 receptor agonist |
| Brands | Ozempic and Rybelsus (type 2 diabetes), Wegovy (chronic weight management) | Mounjaro (type 2 diabetes), Zepbound (chronic weight management) |
| FDA status | FDA-approved as a finished drug under the brand names above. | FDA-approved as a finished drug under the brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound. |
Wegovy
Semaglutide is a GLP-1 receptor agonist that lowers blood sugar and reduces appetite by mimicking the incretin hormone GLP-1. It is FDA-approved as Ozempic and Rybelsus for type 2 diabetes and as Wegovy for chronic weight management. In trials, weight-management dosing produced roughly 15% average body-weight reduction over 68 weeks.
Mounjaro
Tirzepatide is a dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist — it activates two incretin receptors rather than one. It is FDA-approved as Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes and as Zepbound for chronic weight management. In the pivotal SURMOUNT-1 trial, the highest dose produced about 20.9% average body-weight reduction over 72 weeks.
Six different meanings of "cheapest" — and why we refuse to merge them
Almost every comparison page in this category gives you a single "cheapest" number. There are at least six honest answers to that question, and they point to different providers. A page that merges them has chosen which answer flatters its preferred provider.
- Lowest advertised starting price. Frequently an introductory rate. TrimRx and MEDVi both advertise $179; both charge $299 ongoing.
- Lowest introductory price. Noom Med at $79 for a first month, then $199. Useful only if you plan to leave.
- Lowest month-to-month price. No commitment, no prepayment — the honest comparison for anyone who is not certain they will stay a year.
- Lowest committed-plan monthly equivalent. The plan total divided by the plan months. Lower, but you are locked in.
- Lowest full-dose cost. Excludes microdose programmes, which sit below every dose studied in the trials and are therefore not the same product.
- Lowest FDA-approved option. Brand Foundayo (oral) at $149/month and oral Wegovy at $149 now undercut most of the compounded market — while actually being approved.
These are six different questions. We publish all six and let you take the one that matches your situation.
The cost of switching later
Most comparisons treat the choice as permanent. It rarely is, and the ability to switch has real value that a price table does not capture.
Three switching scenarios are common. Insurance approves a brand product — a provider with a brand pathway keeps you on one account; a cash-only compounded provider means starting over elsewhere. You cannot tolerate the dose — a provider with a microdose programme can step you down; one without cannot. The regulatory position changes — compounding of these molecules rests on a narrowed legal basis, and a provider forced to stop leaves you without continuity of supply, potentially mid-titration.
Ask any provider what its contingency plan is if its pharmacy receives an FDA or manufacturer notice. The answer tells you how seriously it has thought about the risk it is asking you to carry.
Providers differ enormously in what happens then. Some refund the unused portion. Some convert you to the month-to-month rate and bill the difference for months already taken. Some refund nothing. This is the single question people most often forget to ask, and it is the one most likely to cost them money.
Dose escalation and the real annual gap
Before you choose either: check your insurance
Coverage is most common through employer-sponsored commercial plans. Zepbound is excluded from Medicare Part D for weight loss and from most state Medicaid programmes. From 1 July 2026, eligible Medicare Part D members can obtain Wegovy at $50/month through the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, running to 31 December 2027. Expect prior-authorisation paperwork: typically a BMI of 30+, or 27+ with a weight-related condition.
PlushCare ($19.99/month), Found and Mochi will handle that paperwork for you. If you have coverage, that is worth more than any cash discount.
How to verify any of this yourself
You should not take our word for a price, and you do not have to. Every figure here can be checked in a few minutes.
- Go to the provider's own pricing page. Not a comparison site — the provider's. Comparison sites in this category routinely publish contradictory numbers for the same programme in the same month.
- Find the ongoing price, not the headline. Look for the words "first month", "intro", "starting at" or "new patients". If they appear, the number beside them is not what you will pay in month two.
- Add the membership. If the medication and the membership are billed separately, add them. That sum is your real monthly cost.
- Ask what the highest dose costs. By email or chat, so you have it in writing.
- Ask about early cancellation before you commit to a plan longer than a month.
- Check the manufacturer. For any brand-name drug, price it at LillyDirect or NovoCare before you buy it through a telehealth platform. Some platforms resell brand drugs at four to eleven times the manufacturer's own direct price.
If a provider will not answer questions 4 or 5 in writing, that is itself information.
How to read our labels
We do not mark a price Verified merely because another comparison site published it. Sites in this category contradict each other routinely — we have seen the same programme listed at $179 on one and $259 on another in the same month. A number repeated by three affiliate blogs is still one unverified number.
A decision framework, rather than a winner
A comparison that declares one provider the winner for everybody is not a comparison — it is an advertisement with a table attached. Different patients are optimising for genuinely different things, and the honest structure is to name those things and say which provider serves each.
| If your priority is… | The thing to compare | What usually decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest possible cost, and you are confident you will stay a year | Committed-plan monthly equivalent, and the prepayment required | Whether you can prepay. NexLife's $139 (12-month plan, $1,668) and Found's $169 (12-month prepaid, ~$2,028) both assume a year's commitment; month-to-month NexLife is $169 |
| Lowest cost with no lock-in | Month-to-month rate only | Ignore every committed-plan headline. Compare the no-commitment numbers to each other |
| Clinical support and someone to call | What the membership actually buys | Mochi's $79 buys unlimited physician and dietitian access. That is a service, not a fee |
| Using your insurance | Prior-authorisation support | PlushCare at $19.99/month. If your plan covers the brand, this beats every cash option |
| An FDA-approved product | Manufacturer-direct pricing | LillyDirect and NovoCare. Foundayo and oral Wegovy are $149 — cheaper than most compounded |
| Not injecting | ODT availability, and its evidence status | ODT costs more and no trial has tested it. Valid only if you genuinely will not inject |
| Predictable cost as your dose rises | Whether price is flat across doses | Flat-rate providers vs escalating ones. The annual gap can exceed $3,000 |
The things a price table cannot show you
Four factors routinely matter more than the fifteen-dollar difference people agonise over, and none of them appear in a pricing column.
Continuity of supply. Compounding of these molecules rests on a legal basis the FDA narrowed sharply in 2025. A provider whose pharmacy is forced to stop leaves you without medication, potentially mid-titration. Ask what the contingency is.
Who you actually see. Some programmes give you a named clinician; others route you to whoever is available, which makes continuity of clinical judgement difficult across dose escalations.
What happens at the top of the ladder. A programme that is cheapest at 2.5mg and most expensive at 15mg is not cheap. Model your cost at the dose you expect to maintain.
Whether they will put it in writing. A provider that answers questions about its pharmacy, its salt form and its cancellation terms by email is telling you something. So is one that will not.
The same question, asked of both
Rather than trusting either provider's marketing, ask both the identical set of questions and compare the answers rather than the advertising. We would ask these seven, in writing:
- What will I pay per month at the highest dose you cover?
- Is there any fee — membership, consultation, laboratory, shipping — that is not in the price you quoted me?
- Which specific pharmacy fills my prescription, and is it a 503A or a 503B facility?
- What is the exact salt form and concentration, and is the vial single-dose or multi-dose?
- If I cancel in month three of a twelve-month plan, what exactly happens to my money?
- If your pharmacy is forced to stop compounding, what happens to my supply?
- Will I see the same clinician at each follow-up?
The provider that answers all seven plainly is demonstrating something that no price table can. In our experience the answers, rather than the prices, are what actually separate these companies.
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
Is Wegovy or Mounjaro more effective for weight loss?
Trial averages differ by molecule and dose, but head-to-head results do not translate to any one person's outcome. Effectiveness, tolerability and eligibility are individual. See the wegovy and mounjaro guides.
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration — labels for both molecules.
- Pivotal trials as cited in each drug guide.
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.
Three questions to ask before acting on semaglutide
The semaglutide figures on this page span $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes.
Ask in writing, before enrolling anywhere. Is the quoted figure the month-to-month rate, or does it require a prepaid term? Does it include every mandatory recurring fee, or is a membership billed separately? And which pharmacy fills the prescription — a 503A compounding pharmacy or a 503B outsourcing facility, and is it licensed to ship to your state?
A programme answering all three plainly has given you what you need to verify it without us. One answering none has also told you something. Neither outcome requires trusting a comparison site.
Reading the price against the market
What a longer horizon costs
Standard-dose semaglutide spans $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes we can price, a spread of $180.
At the cheapest verified semaglutide rate of $119 a month (NexLife, 12-month plan), medication alone runs $1,428 a year, $4,284 over three and $7,140 over five. At the dearest, $299 a month, the same horizons are $3,588, $10,764 and $17,940.
Those are the numbers worth weighing, because the withdrawal evidence for this drug class is consistent: weight returns when treatment stops. The relevant question is what a sustainable course costs, not what a first year costs.
A programme you can afford for five years is a better clinical bet than one you can afford for eight months at a lower rate. Discontinuation is the expensive outcome here, and price is only one of the reasons people discontinue — tolerability, supply interruption and administrative friction account for the rest.
What a longer horizon costs
Standard-dose semaglutide spans $119 to $299 a month across 12 programmes we can price, a spread of $180.
At the cheapest verified semaglutide rate of $119 a month (NexLife, 12-month plan), medication alone runs $1,428 a year, $4,284 over three and $7,140 over five. At the dearest, $299 a month, the same horizons are $3,588, $10,764 and $17,940.
Those are the numbers worth weighing, because the withdrawal evidence for this drug class is consistent: weight returns when treatment stops. The relevant question is what a sustainable course costs, not what a first year costs.
A programme you can afford for five years is a better clinical bet than one you can afford for eight months at a lower rate. Discontinuation is the expensive outcome here, and price is only one of the reasons people discontinue — tolerability, supply interruption and administrative friction account for the rest.
Questions this page answers
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.
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).