Salt Forms and Base Semaglutide
Acetate and sodium salt forms are not the same as the base peptide, and FDA has said so.
Acetate and sodium salt forms are not the same as the base peptide, and FDA has said so.
Across the 20 programmes we price, all-in cost runs from $145 a month at the starter dose, with the cheapest first year at about $1,740 (NexLife, $145 a month at a 2.4 mg maintenance dose). Every figure on this page is on that same all-in basis.
All-in monthly cost = medication + any recurring fee, at a named dose, before tax and before prepaid discounts. Captured 2026-08-05. How we verify a price.
Where every tracked programme sits at 2.4 mg
Why this is the check that matters
A compounded preparation is not FDA-approved and is not reviewed by FDA for safety, effectiveness or quality before marketing. Its assurance comes from the pharmacy, the state board that licenses it and, at good operations, batch sterility and potency testing. That puts more of the verification burden on the patient, which is the honest reason the compounded price is lower.
What you can check yourself, free
State boards of pharmacy publish licensee lookups. FDA publishes outsourcing-facility registrations and its warning letters, searchable by company name. Between them you can establish in minutes whether a named pharmacy exists, holds a current licence and has been the subject of public enforcement. The check is only impossible when the programme refuses to name it — which is itself the answer.
What good disclosure looks like
A name and a state licence number. Not a category like ‘a licensed 503A partner’, and not a deflection about proprietary partnerships. You do not need to know pharmacy law to notice which of the three you received.
Where this sits against price
Disclosure and price are close to independent in this market. Some of the cheapest programmes publish the most and some of the dearest publish almost nothing. Verify separately from comparing cost, and let a failure on verification disqualify a programme regardless of the number.
What you can establish yourself, free, in about ten minutes
State boards of pharmacy publish licensee lookups. FDA publishes outsourcing-facility registrations and its warning letters, searchable by company name. Accreditation bodies publish directories. Between them you can establish whether a named pharmacy exists, holds a current licence, is registered where relevant and has been the subject of public enforcement.
The check is only impossible when the programme refuses to name the pharmacy — which is itself the answer, and the reason pharmacy disclosure carries the weight it does in our scoring.
What accreditation does and does not prove
Accreditation tests processes at a point in time. It does not certify any particular batch, and it is not a substitute for the state licence, which is the legal permission to operate. A commerce credential such as a payment-processing certification is weaker still: it establishes that a seller met a merchant standard, not that a preparation was made correctly.
Treat accreditation as a positive signal rather than a guarantee, and treat its absence as a question rather than a verdict.
The questions that actually separate operations
Is each batch tested for sterility and potency, and will you release the certificate of analysis for the lot I received? What is the beyond-use date on my vial and how was it determined? What concentration is my vial, and does it change between refills? Who do I contact if a shipment arrives warm, and who pays for the replacement?
Those four are answerable by any operation that is doing the work, and unanswerable by one that is not.
How this connects to what you will actually pay
Everything in this section resolves to one number: the all-in monthly cost at the dose you end up holding. Across the 20 programmes we price, that runs from $145 at the cheapest tracked route to several times that at the most expensive, for the identical molecule from the same category of licensed pharmacy.
4 of those programmes charge a recurring platform fee on top of medication and 19 hold one price at every strength. Those two facts explain most of the spread between advertised prices and real ones.
What we could verify and what we could not
4 of 32 tracked programmes have a price we read at the provider or manufacturer. The rest carry third-party figures we have not confirmed, or publish nothing we can interpret. Every table on this site marks which is which, and the comparison matrix lets you filter to verified prices only.
Where we have checked a third-party figure against a provider's own page, it has almost always moved — and it has moved upward. Promotional first months, prepaid bundle rates and medication-only figures that exclude memberships are all published as ongoing all-in prices. Assume an unverified figure is optimistic.
The regulatory distinction that sits under all of this
Compounded semaglutide is not FDA-approved. FDA does not review compounded preparations for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed. The active molecule is the same as the branded product; the pre-market review is not, and the assurance comes instead from the pharmacy, the state board that licenses it and, at good operations, batch sterility and potency testing.
That is a legitimate framework rather than a loophole, and it is also why the price is lower. It puts more of the verification burden on the patient, which is the honest trade being made.
Why this check exists at all
An FDA-approved product has been reviewed before marketing and is made under a federal quality system with supply-chain traceability. A compounded preparation has not been through that review. Its assurance comes from the pharmacy, the state board that licenses it and, at good operations, batch testing for sterility and potency.
That is a legitimate framework rather than a loophole, and it moves verification work onto the patient. This page is one part of that work.
What a programme's answer tells you
Fewer than a fifth of the 20 priced programmes name a dispensing pharmacy before purchase. The ones that do are not systematically more expensive, which undercuts the usual explanation that disclosure costs money.
A name and a licence number is the good answer. A category is incomplete but honest about what it withholds. A deflection about proprietary partnerships is itself the answer.
Where this sits against price
Disclosure and price are close to independent in this market. Some of the cheapest programmes publish the most and some of the dearest publish almost nothing.
Verify separately from comparing cost, and let a failure here disqualify a programme regardless of the number attached to it. A saving of a few hundred dollars a year does not compensate for not knowing who made what you are injecting weekly.
Reading this against the rest of the decision
This sits inside a decision with three parts: what you pay at the dose you hold, who makes what you are injecting, and what happens if you stop. Most published guidance covers the first and treats the other two as footnotes.
They are not footnotes. A price advantage of a few hundred dollars a year is erased by one interrupted month, and an interruption is a clinical event rather than an inconvenience — semaglutide takes sixteen weeks to re-titrate from the starter dose.
Which is why this section exists separately from the pricing pages, and why the verification steps on it are worth completing even when the programme you are considering is the cheapest on the site.
What to do with this before you enrol
Turn it into two or three questions you can send in an email. Anything here that cannot be converted into a question a programme could answer in writing is context rather than a check, and context does not protect you.
The programmes that answer promptly and specifically are, in our reading of the public record, rarely the ones patients later write about. That is a weak signal rather than evidence, but it costs nothing to collect and it arrives before your money does.
If a programme declines to answer, that is an answer. The market currently offers 20 priced alternatives, the cheapest verified at $145 a month all-in at a maintenance dose.
Reading this alongside the rest of the site
Pricing pages isolate one component. Provider reviews carry the whole record for one programme. Comparisons run two side by side at every dose. The rankings sort the same dataset on different questions. None is the whole picture and none is meant to be.
If you read one other page, make it how to verify a pharmacy. Price is the easiest thing to compare and rarely the thing that goes wrong.
What we would need to change our mind
A programme publishing a figure at a dose tier currently blank. A named dispensing pharmacy with a checkable licence. A pricing model changing in either direction. A regulatory action. Or a correction from a reader with a source we can open.
All five are logged with the date they landed, on the change log and in the dataset. Prices here were captured 2026-08-05.
What this site will not do
Publish an estimated price for a programme that does not publish one. Rank a programme higher because it pays. Present a compounded preparation as equivalent to an approved product. Or carry a figure without the date it was captured.
Those four rules cost us pages, rankings and revenue, and they are the only reason a reader has to prefer this to a round-up assembled in an afternoon. A price without its date is not a fact, and a comparison built from undated prices is not a comparison.
Who this site is not for
Anyone with coverage under a documented indication, who should use it rather than read a cash comparison. Anyone looking for a source without a prescription, which this site will not help with. And anyone wanting a single confident recommendation, because the honest answer depends on your dose, your coverage and your tolerance for commitment.
If you want the short version anyway: price the dose you will hold, add every fee, verify the pharmacy, and avoid long prepaid terms until you have tolerated a maintenance dose for a cycle.
Where salt forms and base semaglutide sits in the sequence
Order matters more than most guidance admits. Establish coverage first, because a covered prescription under a documented indication beats every cash route here. Then establish the dose you expect to hold. Only then compare prices.
Most people do this backwards — compare prices, enrol, then discover an indication they already qualified for. Semaglutide has more of those routes than most weight-management drugs: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular risk reduction, and a liver indication for a narrow population.
The check that costs nothing
Ask which pharmacy fills the prescription and search your state board's licensee register for it. Two minutes, free, and possible for only 6 of the 20 priced programmes because the rest do not name one.
A name and a licence number is the good answer. A category is incomplete but honest. A deflection about proprietary partnerships is the answer.
Why this matters more here than for approved medicines
An approved product has been reviewed before marketing and is made under a federal quality system with supply-chain traceability. A compounded preparation has not been through that review. Its assurance comes from the pharmacy, the state board licensing it, and at good operations batch testing for sterility and potency.
That is a legitimate framework rather than a loophole, and it moves verification work onto you. It is the honest reason the compounded price is lower.
Open these rather than taking our word for it. Every one is a regulator, a trial registry, a label, an accreditor or the manufacturer.
Compare every programme on one screen
The matrix carries all-in price at every dose, fee structure, commitment terms, pharmacy disclosure and verification status for every programme we track.