The cheapest semaglutide, and what the word "cheapest" is hiding

Searching for the cheapest semaglutide returns a wall of numbers that mostly are not prices. Some are first months. Some are floors that no actual dose costs. Some are membership fees with the medication billed separately. A few are the real thing.

We read the pricing pages and the terms of 28 GLP-1 providers, record every figure with its source and the date we read it, and re-check them nightly. This is what the cheapest end of that table looks like, and what each of those figures asks for in return.

The short answer

The lowest verified price we hold for compounded semaglutide is $69 a month at SnagRx, with no commitment attached to it. The rest of the table is every verified compounded semaglutide price, month-to-month and commitment side by side.

Below that there is nothing we could verify. Several providers advertise less — Embody's homepage leads with "STARTING AT $79/month" — but those figures name no dose, plan or strength anywhere on the sites that show them, so we do not record them as prices.

After SnagRx, the next verified figures are $99 a month at Trimi, $119 at bmiMD and $125 at Yucca Health.

Read those three again, because they share something SnagRx's figure does not.

The cheapest price almost always buys a commitment

Trimi's figure is its twelve-month plan. bmiMD's is its twelve-month plan. Yucca's is a six-month plan. The month-to-month equivalents at the same providers are materially higher: Trimi goes to $175, and Yucca to $146.

That is the most common shape in this market. The number in the advertisement is the annual rate; the number you pay if you stop after two months is a different one, usually printed smaller or on another page.

It matters more here than in most subscription categories, because of what the terms say when you try to leave. At Maximus, a participant who cancels mid-term "will remain responsible for fulfilling the payment obligations for the remainder of the commitment term" — cancelling ends the treatment, not the bill.

At SnagRx, multi-month plans are sold "AS A SINGLE, INDIVISIBLE PURCHASE" and are "NON-REFUNDABLE IN WHOLE AND IN PART". That sentence is not unique to SnagRx. Embody's terms carry it word for word, along with an identical "All payments for the Subscription Services are final and non-refundable at the time of purchase." Two separately branded companies, the same boilerplate, the same clause deciding what happens to your money — which is worth knowing before you treat shopping around as risk-spreading.

So the cheapest monthly figure and the cheapest way to try semaglutide are rarely the same decision. If you are not sure the medication suits you, an annual rate is not a discount — it is a bet, and several of these providers have written the terms so that losing it costs the full amount.

A few do better. Sprout Health prorates: cancel a prepaid plan early and it will "look at the exact total amount you actually paid at checkout (including any discounts applied) and divide it by the number of months in your plan", refunding the months it has not shipped. That is worth more than a slightly lower headline.

One number, four different things

Take one number and follow it across the site.

At Ro, $149 a month buys the starting dose of the Wegovy pill — the medication itself, passed through at the manufacturer's price.

At Ro, $149 a month also buys the Ro Body membership, which includes no medication at all. Same company, same number, two entirely different things.

At LifeMD, $149 a month is the Weight Management Program fee, and its terms state that "the cost of any prescribed medication is not included in the LifeMD Weight Management Program Fee" unless you are on a medication-included sub-programme. At Hims & Hers, $149 a month is the membership, with medication billed on top of it.

And at Embody, $69 a month is compounded semaglutide with the drug included, on a twelve-month bundle.

Four figures, one number, and the difference between them is whether you still have to buy the medicine. A comparison that ranks them together — which is what most "cheapest GLP-1" pages do — is not comparing anything.

This is why our price tables are split in two: figures that include the medication, and figures that are a membership with the drug billed separately. They are never sorted against each other. The providers that charge no membership at all are sorted out in which GLP-1 providers charge no membership fee.

"Without insurance" changes less than you would think

"Cheapest semaglutide without insurance" is one of the most searched versions of this question, and for compounded semaglutide the honest answer is that insurance was mostly never in the picture. Compounded medication is generally not covered, and of the 28 providers we track, six state that they accept insurance and seven state that they do not. The other fifteen do not say clearly enough for us to record an answer — which is itself a finding, on a purchase this size. The per-provider answers, each with the sentence the company wrote, are on one page: which providers let insurance pay for the medication, and which rule out Medicare.

Where insurance does change the arithmetic is on the brand-name drugs. But the more reliable lesson from our data is what happens to an advertised cash figure once you look for the actual one. Found advertises "$169/mo with cash pay*", asterisk included. The cash-pay price we could verify against a plan is $289 a month, month to month. Neither number is a lie; they are answers to different questions, and only one of them is what you get billed.

The cheapest brand-name semaglutide is a different question

If you want Wegovy rather than a compounded preparation, the cheapest route is generally not a telehealth reseller. It is the manufacturer.

NovoCare Pharmacy, Novo Nordisk's own cash pharmacy, sells Wegovy tablets from $149 a month and the Wegovy pen at $349. Ro passes the same manufacturer pricing straight through at $349 for the pen, with its membership charged separately on top. Side by side, that is what Wegovy costs at each provider we could verify.

The gap that opens up elsewhere is the reason to check. Fridays lists Zepbound at $1,828 a month. Eli Lilly's own pharmacy, LillyDirect, lists the same drug from $299 at the starting dose to $449 at the top one.

That difference is not a consultation fee. If you have settled on a brand-name drug, checking the manufacturer's own pharmacy first is the single highest-value thing in this article. For that drug on its own, dose by dose, see what tirzepatide costs per month everywhere we track it.

The figures that are not prices at all

Three patterns account for most of the misleadingly low numbers you will find.

Floors. "Starting at" and "as low as" figures, tied to no dose and no plan. Maximus prices its medications this way — "Starting at $116/28-day supply". Embody's homepage says "STARTING AT $79/month" while the cheapest figure in its own terms is $69 a month on a twelve-month commitment. We record floors separately from prices, labelled as what they are, and never rank them.

First months. SkinnyRx prices all four of its products as a first month — "$99 first month" for the semaglutide injection, "$149 first month" for the tablets — and publishes no ongoing rate anywhere on its site. Embody prices its semaglutide flat instead, with no first-month rate to fall off: $79 a month, or $69 on its twelve-month bundle.

Memberships dressed as medication prices. Mochi advertises "$39", and its terms finish the sentence: "After that, the standard rate is $79 per month." That $79 is a membership fee — the medication is a separate bill.

How to check any of this yourself

Every figure above links to the provider's review page, which carries the source URL we read it from and the date we read it. If a number here looks wrong, click it: the review page holds the evidence, and it updates when the provider's page does.

Three questions answer most of it:

1. Does this price include the medication, or only the consultation? If the page does not say, assume it does not.
2. What does it cost in month two? If the site publishes only a first month, that is the finding.
3. What happens if I stop? Look for the notice period and whether a prepaid term is refundable. Several providers here require 72 hours' notice, and at least one requires cancellation within eight hours of the renewal date.

And one question before the three: does the provider treat patients in your state? A price from a company that cannot prescribe to you is not a price.

What this article does not tell you

Which medication is right for you, which dose is right for you, or whether compounded semaglutide is a reasonable substitute for a brand-name drug. Those are clinical questions and this site does not answer them — we report what things cost, with sources and dates.

Compounded medications are not FDA-approved and are not evaluated by the FDA for safety, effectiveness or quality. That is not our opinion; it is the disclosure most of the providers above carry on their own pages. What you do with it is a conversation for a prescriber.