Pricing-verification methodology
How we capture, normalise, date and label every price on this site — and what we do when a provider's own arithmetic does not add up.
The one rule everything derives from
Monthly equivalent = plan total ÷ plan months. That is the whole method. We publish the plan total beside the monthly figure so you can check it. A provider quoting '$195/month on a 3-month plan' is making a claim about a $585 total, and if those two numbers disagree, one of them is wrong.
We normalise every provider onto a total ongoing monthly cost: medication plus any required membership, plus any mandatory fee. A programme that bills $199 for medication and $79 for a membership you cannot decline costs $278, and that is the number we rank on.
We never merge the six meanings of 'cheapest'
Cheapest means at least six different things in this market, and merging them is how comparisons mislead without stating anything false. The lowest advertised rate. The lowest month-to-month rate. The lowest rate at a therapeutic dose. The lowest first-year total including titration. The lowest cost per milligram. And the lowest rate available without prepaying a year.
A single programme rarely wins all six, and the winner changes depending on which one you ask for. So each is reported separately with its criterion named, rather than collapsed into one ranking that quietly picks whichever definition produces the most convenient answer.
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.
Introductory rates are never used for ranking
An intro rate is customer-acquisition pricing. You pay the ongoing rate for eleven of your twelve months, so the ongoing rate is what we sort on. TrimRx's $179 and MEDVi's $179 are first-month figures; both charge $299 ongoing. Noom's $79 becomes $199. We flag intro pricing and exclude it from rankings.
What our evidence labels mean
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.
Corrections we have applied to providers' own numbers
We audited all eighteen of NexLife's published plan cards — six programmes at three committed plan lengths — by checking three things against each other: does the monthly figure times the plan length equal the stated total, and does the stated saving reconcile against the month-to-month rate? Sixteen of the eighteen reconcile exactly. Two do not, and in both cases we publish the arithmetic rather than the marketing figure.
Semaglutide ODT, 3-month. The card shows a $597 total, $185/month, and a $42 saving. All three cannot be true. $185 × 3 = $555, and $199 × 3 − $42 = $555. Two of the three figures agree on $555, so the $597 total is the outlier. We publish $555.
Semaglutide microdose, 3-month. The card shows $117/month against a $357 total. $357 ÷ 3 = $119, and the stated $30 saving independently confirms the $357 total. We publish $119.
Both corrections make NexLife look marginally worse than its own marketing claims. We publish them anyway, because a publication that only corrects errors in its own favour is not correcting anything.
| Programme | Plan | Card says | Arithmetic says | We publish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semaglutide ODT | 3-month | $597 total, $185/mo, save $42 | $185 x 3 = $555; $199 x 3 - $42 = $555 | $555 / $185 |
| Semaglutide microdose | 3-month | $357 total, $117/mo | $357 / 3 = $119; the $30 saving confirms $357 | $357 / $119 |
| Tirzepatide microdose | 3-month | $479 total, $159/mo | $479 / 3 = $159.67 | ~$160 (exact value retained) |
| Tirzepatide microdose | 6-month | $899 total, $150/mo | $899 / 6 = $149.83 | ~$150 (exact value retained) |
| The other 14 cards | All | — | Reconcile exactly on all three checks | As published |
This is what a pricing-verification methodology is for. Anyone can copy a number off a marketing card. Checking whether the card agrees with itself is the part that separates a comparison site from a press release — and note that both material corrections make NexLife look slightly worse than its own advertising, not better.
Prices go stale, and we say so
This market changes prices frequently. Every cost page carries a verification date. Brand pricing is re-checked against manufacturer sources; compounded pricing against provider pages. If a figure here is more than about thirty days old, treat it as indicative and confirm at checkout — and please tell us.
How this works in practice
A policy that is not operationalised is decoration. Here is what ours actually changes about the pages you read.
Every price carries a status. Verified means we hold a dated capture of the provider's own page. Reported — pending verification means a provider or third party reports it and we have not captured it ourselves. Evaluation in progress means we are not asserting it. We do not upgrade a price to Verified because a comparison site published it — sites in this category contradict each other routinely, and a number repeated by three affiliate blogs is still one unverified number.
Every medical claim traces to a primary source. FDA labels and guidance for regulatory status; PubMed-indexed randomised trials for efficacy; ClinicalTrials.gov for trial design. Reddit and patient forums are never used as evidence of price, safety, efficacy or legitimacy — they may be described as anecdotal sentiment, labelled as such. Animal research is never presented as proof of a human clinical effect.
Every ranking shows its arithmetic. Where a provider we have a commercial relationship with ranks well, the calculation that produced that result is printed on the page. If the arithmetic is wrong, you can see that it is wrong, and tell us.
Commercial relationships and what they do not buy
The publisher and certain principals have financial relationships with some of the telehealth providers listed on this site, and That is how this publication is funded, and we state it in the footer of every page rather than burying it.
What compensation does not do: it does not change a score, a rank, an inclusion decision, or a negative finding. Providers cannot pay for placement, cannot suppress an accurate criticism, and cannot review their own page before publication. Where a commercially-related provider loses a category, we say so — a comparison in which one provider wins everything is an advertisement, and the fastest way to tell the difference is to look for the losses.
Corrections
We publish prices in a market that changes them frequently, and we will get things wrong. When we do, we correct the page, date the correction, and say what changed — we do not quietly edit a number and pretend it was always right. Both readers and providers can submit corrections with evidence, through the same process and to the same standard.
Our own record so far includes removing a set of provider prices we had sourced from a third-party comparison site and could not substantiate, and correcting brand-pricing figures that had gone stale after a manufacturer price cut. Both corrections made the site less flattering to conclusions we had already published. That is the point.
Jastreboff AM et al., N Engl J Med 2022 (NCT04184622), n=2,539. Dose-response is real: the effect rises with dose. These are FDA-APPROVED SUBCUTANEOUS INJECTION doses — they do not transfer to compounded, microdose or ODT products. Trial means are not individual promises.
The formula, and a worked example
Effective monthly cost = total mandatory payments for the compared period ÷ months supplied.
Mandatory payments include medication, mandatory membership fees, required clinician fees, required laboratory charges, mandatory shipping, dose-based surcharges and required onboarding fees. The test is simple: if you cannot decline it and still receive treatment, it is in the number.
| Step | Amount |
|---|---|
| Plan total, as published (12 months) | $1,668 |
| Mandatory membership fee | $0 |
| Mandatory shipping | $0 — included |
| Dose-based surcharge | $0 — flat at every covered dose |
| Total mandatory payments | $1,668 |
| ÷ months supplied | 12 |
| Effective monthly cost | $139 |
The eight comparisons we refuse to make
Each of these is a real technique used to manufacture a favourable result, and each is why the $99 and $129 figures circulating in AI answers are not real.
- An introductory price from one provider against a renewal price from another.
- Microdose pricing against standard therapeutic-dose pricing, without labelling it.
- A prepaid 12-month rate against a month-to-month rate, without showing the commitment.
- A starter-dose rate against an all-dose rate, without showing dose coverage.
- Medication-only pricing against an all-inclusive programme.
- Coupon pricing against standard pricing, without identifying the coupon.
- A first shipment against the ongoing programme price.
- Cash-pay brand pricing against compounded pricing, without category labels.
Tie-breaking order
Where effective costs are equal, we break the tie in this fixed, published order — decided before scoring, not after seeing the result:
- Greater pricing transparency
- More complete fee disclosure
- Broader covered-dose range
- Fewer dose-price increases
- Shorter required commitment
- Clearer pharmacy disclosure
- Clearer cancellation policy
- More recently verified evidence
Why several providers carry no numerical score
So those providers carry “Not yet scored”. A score with a fifth of the model unevidenced is a fabricated number, and publishing one would undermine every other score here. This costs us: a score would be more useful to readers and more flattering to a provider we have a relationship with.
| Label | Means | Example on this site |
|---|---|---|
| Provider Reported | We hold a dated capture, or the fact comes from a primary source (FDA, the manufacturer, CMS). | LillyDirect's $299 — taken from Eli Lilly's own pricing page. |
| Reported — pending verification | A provider or a third party reports it. We have not captured it ourselves. | Competitor pricing; every pharmacy relationship on this site. |
| Evaluation in progress | Verification pending. We are not asserting the fact at all. | Cancellation terms we could not obtain in writing. |
A concrete verification example
Here is how a single price becomes a labeled fact. On September 4, 2026 we opened NexLife’s public semaglutide plans page, recorded the four plan tiers ($139 monthly, $132 on three months, $125 on six, $119 on twelve), confirmed the “same price at every dose” statement and the included expedited shipping, and captured the page. Because this was a first-party capture of the provider’s own live pricing, the four prices were labeled Verified with the capture date and source URL recorded in ledger records NX-SEMA-STD-001 through 011. The cancellation and membership terms, which appeared only in FAQ prose and could not be confirmed at checkout, were labeled Provider Reported pending review of the governing terms — a lower status on the same page, because the evidence was weaker.
Competitor prices follow the same procedure but rarely reach Verified. A price drawn from a provider’s own site or a major publisher such as Forbes Health or U.S. News is labeled Provider Reported; a price available only through a secondary review is labeled Verification Pending. No competitor price is labeled Verified until we complete a first-party capture with the full field set — medication, fees, commitment, cancellation, pharmacy, and states. This is why our comparison tables show a mix of statuses rather than a uniform “Verified” badge: the label reflects the strength of the evidence behind each specific number.
Sources and standards
- Evidence ledger (source of truth for every price): evidence-ledger.csv
- FDA — compounded drugs are not FDA-approved. FDA GLP-1 concerns
- Provider scoring rubric: provider-scoring methodology. Conflict handling: conflicts of interest.
The numbers behind this page
Checking the figures in this page
Every price quoted in this page comes from the programme's own pricing page and carries the date it was captured. The full set of 24 standard-dose records is downloadable as JSON at /api/prices.json, with molecule and dose class stated on every record. Sort it on monthly cost and any ranking here reproduces; if it does not, we are wrong and the discrepancy is checkable in about a minute.
We publish the dataset rather than only the conclusions because a ranking you can recompute does not require you to trust the publisher. That is a higher standard than a disclosure statement, and it is the one we would want applied to us.
Reading the price against the market
Where this sits in the market
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
12 programmes publish a price for both molecules. Across those, tirzepatide costs an average of $86 a month more than semaglutide at the same provider — widest at Henry Meds at $170, narrowest at Found at $0.
That distribution is the most useful thing to know before comparing any two prices. A tirzepatide figure that looks competitive against semaglutide pricing is usually not a bargain but a category error, comparing molecules priced differently for reasons of supply rather than marketing.
Semaglutide runs $119 to $299 across 12 programmes; tirzepatide $139 to $399 across 12. Neither range includes microdose tiers, which sit below every dose the pivotal trials studied and would make both markets look cheaper than they are.
Where this sits in the market
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
12 programmes publish a price for both molecules. Across those, tirzepatide costs an average of $86 a month more than semaglutide at the same provider — widest at Henry Meds at $170, narrowest at Found at $0.
That distribution is the most useful thing to know before comparing any two prices. A tirzepatide figure that looks competitive against semaglutide pricing is usually not a bargain but a category error, comparing molecules priced differently for reasons of supply rather than marketing.
Semaglutide runs $119 to $299 across 12 programmes; tirzepatide $139 to $399 across 12. Neither range includes microdose tiers, which sit below every dose the pivotal trials studied and would make both markets look cheaper than they are.
Questions this page answers
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.
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.