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View all Learn articlesWhat compounded and branded semaglutide and tirzepatide actually cost, from each provider's own published pricing.
The number on a telehealth weight-loss page is almost never the number you keep paying. Six specific things move it — and all six are disclosed, in the seller's own words, somewhere other than the card you first see.
Put two telehealth weight-loss sites side by side and you will find one advertising $179 a month and another advertising $199. Read their own terms and the first charges $299 for every month after the first, and the second charges $348 once the membership it requires is added.
Neither is hiding anything. Both figures are published, both conditions are written down, and in each case the sentence that changes the number sits on a different page from the sentence that advertises it. That gap is the subject of this article.
We read these pages every morning for the price tracker, which means we have watched exactly which sentences do the work. There are six of them. Once you know what to look for, checking a seller's real price takes about five minutes.
The most common gap between the headline and the bill is a membership fee that the headline does not include but the prescription requires.
Hims prices its Wegovy pen at "Starts at $199/mo billed monthly, membership required" [1]. The Weight Loss Membership is $149 a month. The medication is $199 and the month is $348.
Mochi Health is more explicit than most: its compounded semaglutide page reads "Starting at $60 + Mochi Health membership" [2], and the company states plainly that medication is not included in the membership. The membership is $79. The month is $139.
Neither of these is a trick — Hims writes "membership required" in the same sentence as the price, and Mochi puts a plus sign in it. But a comparison built by reading the large type gives you $199 against $60, which is not a comparison of anything.
What to check: whether the sentence containing the price also contains the words membership, plan, subscription or consultation, and what that costs per month on its own.
The second gap is time. A first-month rate is a real price — you will really pay it, once — but it is not the price of treatment.
TrimRx advertises $179 on the card on its homepage. Its terms page prices the thing you actually keep buying: "Follow-Up Consultation - GLP-1: Priced at $299" [3]. The same page prices the initial consultation at $199. So there are three numbers for one product — $179 advertised, $199 to start, $299 a month thereafter — and only the third describes month four.
Memberships do this too. Mochi's membership is $39 for a new subscriber and $79 ongoing [2]. Hims runs the same structure [1].
What to check: whether the price is attached to the words first month, initial, to start, or new patients, and what the page says the follow-up or renewal costs.
The third gap is dose. A headline can be a genuine, ongoing, all-in price that applies only to part of the dose range — and usually the part you leave within a month or two.
Ro advertises $199 for a Wegovy pen. Ro's own ladder limits that figure to the 0.25 mg and 0.5 mg starting doses, and attaches a sign-up deadline to it. Across 1 mg to 2.4 mg — the therapeutic range, where treatment actually lands — the pen is $349, and the one-month membership adds $149 [4].
This one matters more than the arithmetic suggests, because it is the gap most likely to close on you in week five rather than in month twelve.
What to check: whether the advertised number appears in the seller's dose table at all, and against which doses.
Related but distinct: sellers who publish a full ladder are being more honest than sellers who publish one number, and their pages still need reading twice.
Ro prices Zepbound at 2.5 mg for $299, 5 mg for $399, and 7.5 through 15 mg for $449 — on a page that also says treatment usually starts at 2.5 mg and increases each month [4]. Read together, those two facts say the second month costs $100 more than the first, before the membership. LillyDirect publishes the same ladder [5].
Sellers who publish no ladder are not necessarily cheaper; they are quieter. Hims names the doses it offers and prints no price against any of them [1]. Henry Meds publishes a single figure — "starts at $179/month", stated to include visits, medication, supplies and support — and no per-dose breakdown at all [6].
What to check: find the dose table. If there isn't one, note that the headline is a starting price with nothing published behind it.
The fourth gap is the calendar, and it is the one almost nobody notices.
Maximus prices its compounded semaglutide at "Starting at $116 /28-day supply" [7]. Twenty-eight days is not a calendar month. Over a year you buy thirteen of those supplies, not twelve, so $116 per 28 days is $126.10 a month — about 8.7% more than the number suggests. LillyDirect also counts a month as 28 days [5].
Both sellers say so in their own copy. The figure is simply not comparable with a per-calendar-month price until it is scaled, and nobody scales it for you on the page.
What to check: the unit beside the price. If it says 28 days, multiply by 1.087 before comparing.
The last gap is the one that costs the most when it bites, because it is a condition rather than a number.
LillyDirect's Zepbound pricing carries a refill requirement: at 7.5 mg and above, you have to reorder within 45 days to keep the price. Miss the window and the same doses are $499 to $699 [5]. Henry Meds notes that multi-month plans may require paying out the remaining balance if you cancel [6]. Ro's membership falls from $149 to $74 a month on a twelve-month prepay [4] — a real saving, and also a twelve-month commitment made before you know how you tolerate the drug.
None of these is a hidden charge. All of them are the difference between the price of a product and the price of your particular year.
What to check: search the page and the terms for refill, cancel, prepay, and commitment.
A pattern runs through all six: the advertised figure lives on the marketing page and the operative figure lives in the terms.
TrimRx is the clearest case — the homepage card says $179, the terms and conditions page says $299 for the follow-up consultation, and the terms page is correct [3]. Mochi splits it differently: the medication price is on the drug page and the membership price is elsewhere on the site [2], so a reader who only opens the page they landed on sees half the price.
This is why our own rule for the tracker is that a figure must come from the seller's own pricing page or its own terms, and nowhere else. If you want the full rule, it is on how we measure a price.
Applying all six adjustments to the sellers we track, the all-in cost of one ongoing month of compounded semaglutide currently runs from about $126 to $299, and branded semaglutide through a telehealth platform from $348 to $498 — against $349 a month buying the same Wegovy pen directly from the manufacturer's self-pay programme [8].
That last comparison is the one the headline prices hide most effectively. Ro advertises $199 and, at the doses treatment actually uses, charges $498 a month all in [4] — for the same Wegovy pen the manufacturer sells at $349 [8], because the manufacturer charges no membership. Hims, advertising the same $199, lands at $348 [1], which is level with buying direct.
Those figures move. The dated, per-seller version is on the price tracker, and every change we have recorded is in the price history.
Price is not quality, and a cheaper month is not a better one. Compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide are not FDA-approved finished products; they are prepared by a pharmacy, they are not available in every state, and the regulatory position has moved through 2026 — compounded versus branded covers what that actually means.
A price far below the rest of the market is also information of a different kind. Legitimate cost comes from real active ingredient, sterility and testing, and a figure well under everyone else usually means one of those was cut — with an injectable, those are the wrong corners to cut.
And none of this is medical advice. It is about what you will be charged, not about what you should take.
Usually because one of them bundles a mandatory membership into the quoted figure and the other charges it separately, or because one figure is a first-month rate. Once both are expressed as an ongoing month with everything required to keep the prescription, the spread narrows considerably — though it does not close.
Sometimes, and the page will tell you what is inside it. Henry Meds states that its single figure includes visits, medication, supplies and support [6]. A membership that covers provider visits and refills is a different product from one that only unlocks the right to buy. Compare what each includes, not just what each costs.
For branded semaglutide it currently can be, because manufacturer self-pay programmes carry no membership [8]. They also do not include the telehealth consultation, so the comparison is only fair if you already have a prescriber.
Because we publish one ongoing month with everything required included, and we exclude first-month and time-limited rates. Each row on the tracker shows the seller's own wording beside our arithmetic, so you can see exactly which adjustment applied.
Less than you would expect. Across the first eight months of daily collection, two figures moved for reasons the sellers chose. The rest of the movement in this market is in what gets advertised, not in what gets charged.