Independent review

Updated 2026-08-14

Same drug.
Ten times the price.

The same brand-name semaglutide appears in our research at $149 a month and at $1,599 a month. We traced every price back to the company that published it, and wrote down what each one refuses to say.

Services researched
77

Services researched

Search queries run
150

Search queries run

Blocked our checks
2

Blocked our checks

Affiliate deals
0

Affiliate deals

  • Same molecule · Mounjaro $1,899/mo · Zepbound from $299/mo
  • Saxenda being discontinued · last shipments late January 2027
  • Zepbound via LillyDirect · $299–$449/mo self-pay
  • Wegovy pill via NovoCare · from $149/mo, no insurance needed
  • Cheapest verified total · Mochi Health · ~$139/mo all-in
  • Ozempic via a telehealth platform · $1,199/mo
  • SURMOUNT-1 · tirzepatide 15 mg · −20.9% at 72 weeks
  • STEP 1 · semaglutide 2.4 mg · −14.9% at 68 weeks
  • Boxed warning · medullary thyroid carcinoma · MEN 2
  • No affiliate commissions · no paid placement

What we actually measure

Three things the landing pages never mention.

01

The prescription is the easy part

Every service here can get you a prescription. What separates them is the twelve weeks afterwards: who answers when the nausea starts, whether the escalation is supervised, and whether anyone checks your bloods — 67 of 77 never mention lab work at all. We record what each one publishes, and what it does not.

02

The headline price is not the price

Alloy advertises $70 a month; the real entry cost is $169 once its mandatory membership is added. Mochi advertises $60; it is $139. Every compounded service we researched prices the medication and the membership separately, and only one of the two numbers makes it onto the landing page.

03

Leaving should be as easy as joining

Sign-up takes minutes everywhere. Of the 77 services we researched, 42 say nothing about cancellation at all and 65 publish no refund terms. Exactly one states concrete refund mechanics — and it keeps $50 if you cancel after the provider review.

The research

77 real services, every price sourced.

Discovered across four search sweeps, then checked against each company’s own pages — 77 services across the US and UK. No stars, just what they publish, what they leave out, and what the total actually comes to.

All 77 reviews

25 of 77 publish most of our thirteen-item checklist. 2 more services surfaced repeatedly in the search sweep but blocked our checks entirely — those are listed, unreviewed, at the bottom of the reviews index.

Start here

The six pages worth reading first.

The medications

What the trials actually showed.

Four approved molecules, four different trials, four different answers — and one of them is now a once-daily pill. The gap between them is larger than the gap between most of the services selling them.

Head to head

Mean body-weight change, by trial

Trial endpoints are as published: SURMOUNT-1 (tirzepatide 15 mg, 72 weeks), STEP 1 (semaglutide 2.4 mg, 68 weeks), Lilly’s 72-week study of orforglipron 17.2 mg in adults without diabetes, and SCALE (liraglutide 3.0 mg, 56 weeks). The path between week 0 and each endpoint is a modelled saturating curve, not reported interim data, and the trials differ in population, duration and design — this is a shape comparison, not a head-to-head result.
Approved GLP-1 medications compared
MedicationBrandsLicensed forDosingHeadline result
TirzepatideMounjaro, ZepboundWeight managementOnce weekly-20.9% · 72 wkDetail
SemaglutideOzempic, WegovyWeight managementOnce weekly-14.9% · 68 wkDetail
OrforglipronFoundayoWeight managementOnce daily-11.1% · 72 wkDetail
LiraglutideSaxenda, VictozaSaxenda being discontinuedWeight managementOnce daily-8% · 56 wkDetail
DulaglutideTrulicityType 2 diabetesOnce weeklyNo weight indicationDetail

The other half of the story

Side effects, ranked by what to do.

Grouped by the action they call for rather than by how often they appear in a footnote. Severity is carried by an icon and a label as well as by colour.

CommonVery common

Nausea

Concentrated in the weeks after each dose increase. Usually settles; the standard response is to hold the dose rather than push through.

CommonVery common

Constipation and diarrhoea

Often both, in sequence. Fibre and fluid help; a stalled bowel that is not improving is a reason to call someone, not to wait.

Watch closelyCommon

Vomiting

Repeated vomiting risks dehydration and, with it, kidney injury. This is the most common route to a hospital visit in this class.

Watch closelyExpected without countermeasures

Loss of lean mass

A meaningful share of the weight lost is not fat. Protein intake and resistance training are the countermeasure, and most subscription services do not mention them.

UrgentUncommon

Gallbladder disease

Rapid weight loss raises gallstone risk. Persistent upper-right abdominal pain needs assessment rather than reassurance.

UrgentRare

Pancreatitis

Severe, persistent abdominal pain, often radiating to the back. Stop the medication and seek urgent care.

UrgentBoxed warning — rodent data

Thyroid C-cell tumours

These drugs carry a boxed warning based on rodent studies. They are contraindicated with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or MEN 2. Any intake that does not ask about this is a red flag.

Severe, persistent abdominal pain, repeated vomiting, or signs of dehydration are reasons to seek urgent care rather than to wait for a portal reply.

Sample data · scoring demonstration

How the rubric would score a service.

The five services below are invented, and their scores are not real assessments. They exist to show how the weighted rubric behaves once someone has done the fieldwork that a marketing page cannot substitute for. The real, source-checked companies are in the reviews.

See the weights
01
4.6

Meridian Health

Best overall

The only service in this group where a named clinician stays with you through the whole titration, and the one that is most honest about what it cannot get you.

Consult fee
$199/mo
To prescription
2–4 days
Medication
Billed separately
Reports
412
  • Same clinician across the full dose escalation
  • Total monthly cost shown before payment details are collected
  • Medication is billed separately and is not capped
Read the full review
Clinical
4.8
Pricing
4.7
Access
4.4
Cancellation
4.6
Privacy
4.2
02
4.2

Northbeam Care

Best for insurance appeals

Built around getting a claim approved rather than around selling a subscription. Slower, more paperwork, materially cheaper if it works.

Consult fee
$129/mo
To prescription
5–12 days
Medication
Billed separately
Reports
287
  • Handles prior authorisation and first-level appeals in-house
  • Flat fee, no upsell tiers
  • Slowest start of the five
Read the full review
Clinical
4.4
Pricing
4.5
Access
3.4
Cancellation
4.3
Privacy
4.0
03
3.9

Vero Metabolic

Best low entry price

The cheapest credible way in. Clinical contact is real but brief, and the low headline price does more work in the marketing than in the invoice.

Consult fee
$95/mo
To prescription
1–3 days
Medication
Billed separately
Reports
356
  • Fastest path to a first prescription
  • No minimum term
  • Intake is asynchronous — you may never speak to anyone
Read the full review
Clinical
3.2
Pricing
4.0
Access
4.7
Cancellation
3.9
Privacy
3.8
04
3.9

Corva Clinic

Best coaching and follow-through

A weight-management programme that happens to prescribe, rather than a prescriber that happens to have an app. Strong on the parts that decide whether the result lasts.

Consult fee
$249/mo
To prescription
3–7 days
Medication
Billed separately
Reports
198
  • Structured resistance-training and protein guidance
  • Dietitian sessions included at every tier
  • Most expensive consultation fee here
Read the full review
Clinical
4.6
Pricing
3.5
Access
3.8
Cancellation
3.2
Privacy
4.1
05
3.2

Halden Direct

Cheapest, with caveats

A thin layer between a questionnaire and a pharmacy. It is the lowest price in this group and the least support, and the trade is not disclosed clearly enough.

Consult fee
$79/mo
To prescription
1–2 days
Medication
Billed separately
Reports
233
  • Lowest monthly fee in this group
  • Same-week start in most states
  • Shared-inbox support with multi-day replies
Read the full review
Clinical
2.4
Pricing
3.4
Access
4.6
Cancellation
3.0
Privacy
2.9

Methodology

Every score here is arithmetic you can check.

Five criteria, fixed weights, applied to every service in the same order. No editorial thumb on the scale, no undisclosed commercial relationship, and the component scores published alongside the total.

Read the full method
  • Clinical support30%
  • Price transparency25%
  • Access and wait time20%
  • Cancellation and lock-in15%
  • Data privacy10%

Questions

The ones worth asking first.

Do you take money from the services you review?

No affiliate commissions and no paid placement on this build. Where a link earns a commission on a live site, that has to be stated on the page it appears on, not buried in a footer — and the ranking has to be reproducible from the published rubric either way.

What happens when I stop taking it?

Most people regain a substantial share of the weight after stopping, which is what the extension data consistently shows. That is a property of the treatment, not a personal failure — but it does mean the price you are quoted is closer to an ongoing cost than a course of treatment, and a service that will not discuss this is selling rather than treating.

Is compounded semaglutide a reasonable way to save money?

It is a materially different risk. Large-scale compounding of these molecules was permitted while the branded products were in shortage, and that permission narrowed once the shortages resolved. Compounded products are not FDA-approved, dosing errors have caused documented harm, and salt forms sold as equivalents are not. If a service leads with the price of a compounded product, read the fine print about what exactly is in the vial.

How is the overall score calculated?

It is a weighted mean of five published criteria, applied identically to every service. Nothing is adjusted by hand. The weights and each provider’s component scores are shown in full on the methodology page and on every provider page.

Can these be prescribed without a real consultation?

They are prescription medicines with a boxed warning and real contraindications. An intake that never asks about thyroid cancer history, pancreatitis, pregnancy, or your other medications is not screening you — it is processing you. That is scored directly in the clinical support criterion.