How to read a GLP-1 price

The monthly figure a company puts on its homepage is rarely the amount that leaves your account in the first month. Across the 831 entries where both numbers could be computed, 169 charge more up front than the rate they advertise. The gap is usually structural rather than sly, and it sits in four predictable places.

Computed from the register, as of September 13, 2026

1. The headline figure is a starting point
2. Per month and charged today are different numbers
3. Sometimes the cheapest number is available once
4. What sits outside the medication price
5. The same molecule, very different money
6. What to ask before you commit

The headline figure is a starting point

Almost every company in this market leads with one number and a word like from or starting at. That number is real. It is also the cheapest arrangement the company offers, which usually means the longest commitment, the lowest dose, or a first month priced below the rate that follows.

Comparing each program’s advertised rate against what its own pages say the first month costs, 169 of 831 priced entries come out higher than advertised. The median difference is $80. Nothing here is hidden — each figure was read from the company’s own page — but the two numbers are printed in different places, and only one of them is in the headline.

169 matched · 831 priced entries assessed · 27 not yet checked · 858 entries in the register

Per month and charged today are different numbers

A plan quoted at a lower monthly rate is often a plan paid for in advance. The register records both figures for every rung of every price ladder, because they answer different questions: one is what the treatment costs you over time, the other is what your card is charged on the day you sign up.

The saving is genuine. So is the fact that you have paid for the whole term before your second appointment, and that this market changes its prices often enough for the register to keep a running log of the changes. Whether that trade is worth taking depends on how confident you are that you will still be on the same medication, at the same dose, with the same company, in 3 months.

Sometimes the cheapest number is available once

For 2 2 programs, the lowest figure on the page is an introductory rate for the first month rather than a plan. Committing to a longer term does not lower it, and the ongoing rate is what applies from month two. Those entries are deliberately left out of any comparison of what a commitment saves, because treating a first-month price as a monthly plan produces a percentage that is arithmetic rather than fact.

It is worth knowing which kind of number you are looking at before you compare two companies, because an introductory rate and a plan rate will sit side by side in any list sorted by price, including the register’s own.

What sits outside the medication price

Two charges commonly sit beside the medication rather than inside it: a membership that must be held to buy at all, and a one-time charge for the consultation. Both are disclosed by the companies that levy them, and neither usually appears in the headline figure.

Of the 339 entries whose membership terms have been read, 154 require one to be held separately. Of the 257 whose consultation terms have been read, 81 disclose a charge for the visit. Those denominators matter more than the counts. Membership and consultation terms are the thinnest fields in the register, so these figures describe the entries that have been checked and say nothing about the 519 that have not.

154 matched · 339 entries assessed · 519 not yet checked · 858 entries in the register

The charge that most changes the arithmetic is the one where a company sells a membership and the manufacturer bills for the drug. A low monthly figure in that arrangement is the price of the service, not of the treatment, and the two are easy to read as one. Where the register has found it, the entry says so in its own words.

The same molecule, very different money

The widest spreads in this market are not between molecules. They are between companies selling the same molecule.

Of the 6 6 molecules with at least five priced programs, every one of them carry a highest price at least twice the lowest.

The widest of these is Brand semaglutide, where 63 programs run from $25 to $1,999 a month. A spread that size is not explained by the medication, which is the same compound. It is explained by dose, by what the program includes, by whether the figure is a plan or a first month, and by what the company has decided the market will bear.

What to ask before you commit

None of this is an argument for or against any company, and this record names no preference among them. It is an argument for reading four things off the page before you enter a card number.

1. Is this figure per month, or the whole term? If it is a term, what is charged today?
2. Does this rate continue, or is it a first month? If it is a first month, what is the rate from month two?
3. Does the price include the medication? A membership plus a separately-billed drug is a different product from an all-in monthly rate.
4. Does the price change with the dose? Some programs hold one rate at every dose and say so; others step up as the dose does.

Every figure above is computed from the 858 entries in this register when this page is built, across 363 companies. Each entry carries the company’s own sentence, the address it was read from, and the date, so any of it can be checked without taking our word for it. The full data set is downloadable.

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