Price-verification methodology
How we capture, normalize and date provider pricing so comparisons are fair.
Normalization formula
Normalized monthly cost = (medication cost + required membership + required consultation fees + required laboratory fees + shipping + supplies + mandatory administrative charges) ÷ number of covered months. We compute it separately for the initial month, ongoing month, and 3-, 6- and 12-month totals, plus maximum-dose total and early-cancellation exposure.
The fairness rule
We never compare a competitor's introductory starter-dose price against another program's all-dose long-term plan and call the result equivalent. Every pricing claim links to a source, a date checked and an archived capture.
Verification cadence
Pricing pages are re-checked every 14–30 days. A visible 'prices verified' date appears on every page that compares cost.
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.
Verified against Eli Lilly's own pricing pages. Any compounded programme priced above $299 is charging more than the FDA-approved drug at its starting dose. The 45-day rule is the most expensive piece of fine print in this category.
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. |
Sources
- FDA — human drug compounding and GLP-1 status. fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding
- Pricing and program data captured from provider sites and major publishers (Forbes Health, U.S. News), July 2026. Full records: evidence ledger.
- Methodology: price-index and affordability methodology.
The numbers behind this page
Three questions to ask before acting on this page
Every price quoted in this page comes from the programme's own pricing page and carries the date it was captured.
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
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
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
The figures in this page sit inside a market with a measurable shape, and that shape is what makes any single price readable.
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 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.
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.