Generic liraglutide in 2026: every approved Victoza and Saxenda generic, what it costs, and how it compares

Generic liraglutide exists, there is a lot of it, and it is no longer the cheap GLP-1. FDA has approved eight generics that reference Victoza, the diabetes brand, and three that reference Saxenda, the weight-loss brand, and Teva sells an authorized generic of Victoza on top.³⁴⁶ Medicaid's survey of what pharmacies actually pay puts 30 days of generic liraglutide at the Saxenda dose (3 mg a day) at $738.72, against $1,306.89 for Saxenda itself, as of 14 October 2026.¹⁸¹⁹ That is 43% off the brand, and still more than a pharmacy pays for 28 days of a Zepbound KwikPen at 15 mg.²²

Two dates matter more than any coupon. Novo Nordisk is discontinuing Saxenda in the US, with last shipments to wholesalers in late January 2027.² And FDA still lists liraglutide injection as a drug in shortage, a listing first posted on 18 July 2023.¹ So if you take Saxenda today, the generic is where your prescription is heading whether you shop for it or not. If you are choosing a GLP-1 from scratch, the trial data below says to compare it with the weekly drugs first.

One thing this page cannot do is rank liraglutide sellers. No program live on our board sells liraglutide at a price we can verify, so there is no liraglutide ranking here. What we can show is the weekly GLP-1s you would compare it against, priced today:

Is there a generic liraglutide? Yes: twelve products, two families

Liraglutide is one molecule sold by Novo Nordisk under two brand names that are not interchangeable. Victoza is labeled to improve blood sugar control in people 10 and older with type 2 diabetes, and its pen delivers 0.6, 1.2 or 1.8 mg.²⁶ Saxenda is labeled for chronic weight management in adults, and in children 12 and older who weigh more than 60 kg and have obesity, and its pen delivers 0.6 to 3 mg.²⁵ Both pens hold 18 mg in 3 mL.

FDA keeps the two generic families apart with therapeutic-equivalence codes. Every Victoza equivalent is coded AP1; every Saxenda equivalent is coded AP2.³⁴ A pharmacist fills a Victoza prescription from the AP1 list and a Saxenda prescription from the AP2 list. That is why "generic Victoza" and "generic Saxenda" are separate searches with separate answers.

Here is the full register, read at Drugs@FDA on 15 October 2026. We found no other register that lists all of them.

Three points the table makes that the pages ranking for this query miss.

Generic Victoza came first, and it came in two steps. Teva's June 2024 product was an authorized generic: Novo's own drug under a generic label, which Teva called the first generic GLP-1 on the US market.⁶ FDA's first approval of an independently developed liraglutide generic went to Hikma on 23 December 2024, and FDA said it prioritizes generic applications for drugs in shortage.⁵

Generic Saxenda is newer and thinner. Teva won the first approval on 27 August 2025 and launched the same week, describing it as the first generic GLP-1 indicated for weight loss in the US.⁴⁷ Cipla and Biocon followed on 24 February 2026.¹⁵¹⁶ Then, on 14 May 2026, Teva reported to FDA that it is discontinuing its five-pen liraglutide carton, the Saxenda generic.¹⁷ That leaves two companies' Saxenda generics in Medicaid's price survey: Cipla's and Biocon's five-pen cartons.¹⁸

Approval is not the same as a pharmacy shelf. FDA's shortage database lists Hikma's, Meitheal's and Teva's Victoza-type cartons as available, while brand Victoza shows limited availability from a shipping delay and brand Saxenda shows limited availability until its January 2027 discontinuation.¹ If your pharmacy says it is out, ask it to order a different manufacturer's carton with the same FDA code.

What generic liraglutide costs: the pharmacy's price, per pen and per month

Most pages quote a discount-card price from one ZIP code on one day. We used a different number: NADAC, the National Average Drug Acquisition Cost, which CMS publishes weekly from a national survey of what retail pharmacies pay for each drug. It is the floor under any cash price. A pharmacy that sells below it loses money, so your price at the counter, with or without a discount card, sits above it.

Method. NADAC prices liraglutide per mL. Every pen holds 3 mL containing 18 mg, so 1 mL is 6 mg. A 3 mg daily dose uses 0.5 mL a day, or 15 mL in 30 days (exactly one five-pen carton). A 1.8 mg daily dose uses 0.3 mL a day, or 9 mL in 30 days (one three-pen carton). We multiplied each NADAC rate by those volumes. These are the label's maintenance doses, used here only to price a month; your prescriber sets yours.²⁵²⁶

Read across the generic rows and one oddity jumps out. The identical drug, in an identical 18 mg pen, costs a pharmacy $30.63 per mL in the Victoza-type carton and $49.25 per mL in the Saxenda-type carton.¹⁸ The diabetes generic has eight approved makers competing on it;³ the weight-loss generic has three, one of which is leaving.⁴¹⁷ That is what competition does to a price, and it is why "liraglutide cost" has no single answer. The two are not swappable at the pharmacy counter: they carry different FDA codes and different pens.³⁴²⁵²⁶

Novo's own list price for Saxenda is $1,349.02.²³ NADAC for the Saxenda carton works out to $1,306.89, so pharmacies pay close to list for it.¹⁹ That gap between brand and generic is the saving you are shopping for.

What you will actually pay at the counter

• With insurance that covers it: your plan's generic copay or coinsurance. For type 2 diabetes most plans cover liraglutide; for weight loss many plans exclude the whole class (see the coverage section below).
• Cash, with a discount card: above NADAC, by however much the pharmacy marks up. Price it at several pharmacies with the exact carton (two, three or five pens), because the per-mL rate differs by carton.
• Through a telehealth program: none of the programs on our board lists liraglutide at a price we can verify today.

Is there a liraglutide coupon card?

Not for new patients, as far as Novo's own pages show. Novo's savings page says the Saxenda Savings Offer was discontinued for new enrollees as of 30 June 2023, and that existing cards ran until 31 December 2023.²⁴ Novo's list-price page still carries an older "pay as little as $25" offer line next to the $1,349.02 list price,²³ which is where most of the confusion online comes from. The savings page is the dated one.

Generic drugs rarely come with a manufacturer card at all. For a generic, the discount is the generic price. The useful tools are a pharmacy discount card, a 90-day fill if your plan allows it, and comparing the five-pen carton across pharmacies. For how the brand-name cards for the newer GLP-1s work, see our guide to GLP-1 savings cards.

Daily liraglutide versus the weekly GLP-1s

The practical difference is the needle count. Liraglutide is injected once a day; semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound) are injected once a week. The label's instructions for Saxenda: start at 0.6 mg a day for one week and increase weekly until reaching 3 mg.²⁵

Those weekly-drug figures use the same method as above: semaglutide 2.4 mg is 0.75 mL a week, so four weeks is 3 mL at $435.52629 per mL;²¹ the 15 mg tirzepatide KwikPen holds four 0.6 mL doses, 2.4 mL at $281.42838 per mL.²² They are pharmacy acquisition costs for the brand, not what a cash buyer pays. For the makers' own self-pay prices, our Wegovy and Zepbound pages keep the current ladders.

Liraglutide vs semaglutide: what the head-to-head trial found

There is one direct comparison, and it is not close. STEP 8 randomized 338 adults with overweight or obesity and without diabetes to weekly semaglutide 2.4 mg or daily liraglutide 3 mg for 68 weeks. Mean weight change was -15.8% with semaglutide and -6.4% with liraglutide, a difference of 9.4 percentage points; pooled placebo was -1.9%.²⁸

The mean weight change from baseline was -15.8% with semaglutide vs -6.4% with liraglutide (difference, -9.4 percentage points [95% CI, -12.0 to -6.8]; P < .001)

STEP 8, JAMA, January 2022

Two other STEP 8 numbers matter for a daily drug. More people stopped liraglutide for any reason (27.6%) than stopped semaglutide (13.5%). Gastrointestinal side effects were about equally common: 82.7% on liraglutide, 84.1% on semaglutide.²⁸

Every trial in one table

Different trials enrolled different people for different lengths of time, so compare within a row before you compare across rows. These are the published mean results; individual results vary widely.

The SCALE paper and the Saxenda label report the same trial differently: the paper gives kilograms with one statistical method, the label gives percent with another. In SCALE, 63.2% of people on liraglutide lost at least 5% of their weight, against 27.1% on placebo.²⁷ In the label's three 56-week trials, 27% of people on Saxenda stopped the drug, against 35% on placebo.²⁵

For the full semaglutide versus tirzepatide comparison, including their own head-to-head trial, read tirzepatide vs semaglutide.

Cost per percentage point of weight lost

Price alone misleads when the drugs do different amounts of work. So we divided a year of each drug's cost by the mean percent weight loss in its trial. The answer is a rough price per percentage point of body weight, the closest thing to a like-for-like number the public data allows.

Method. Annual cost: the 30-day or 28-day cost above, scaled to 365 days (182.5 mL a year of liraglutide at 3 mg; 52.14 weekly doses of the weekly drugs). Divided by the trial's mean percent change. Three cautions: trials ran 56 to 72 weeks, not 52; trial means are not your result; and the live program rows use entry prices, which are often the starting dose and often a compounded drug, which no trial in this table tested.

The two weekly rows are the Wegovy pen and the Zepbound KwikPen, the FDA-approved products. The ranking is plain. At pharmacy cost, generic liraglutide buys a percentage point of weight loss for more than branded Wegovy does and close to three times what the Zepbound KwikPen does. Going generic halves liraglutide's price but does not close the gap, because the trial gap is roughly two to three times. The telehealth rows are cheaper again by an order of magnitude, with the important caveat in their middle column.

The chart above is every program we track, priced all in today. None of them is liraglutide. Most of the cheapest bars are compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide, which are not FDA-approved; read whether compounded semaglutide is safe before choosing one.

Saxenda vs Mounjaro and Zepbound: the cost question people actually ask

"Saxenda vs Mounjaro cost" usually means: is the old daily drug cheaper than the new weekly one? Brand against brand, no longer. A pharmacy pays $1,306.89 for 30 days of Saxenda and $675.43 for 28 days of a 15 mg tirzepatide KwikPen.¹⁹²² That KwikPen is Zepbound, and Zepbound is tirzepatide, the molecule in Mounjaro, so it is the fair weight-loss comparison. Even generic liraglutide at $738.72 costs a pharmacy more per month than that KwikPen.¹⁸²²

Against the cash programs on our board the comparison is starker. The cheapest Zepbound program we track charges $348 a month all in, and the cheapest Wegovy $208. Set generic liraglutide's 30-day pharmacy cost against that Zepbound floor and it is higher than the program price. Those program prices are entry prices and some rise with the dose; each program's page shows its dose ladder.

For the full tirzepatide pricing picture see whether there is a generic tirzepatide, and for semaglutide whether there is a generic Ozempic.

Does insurance cover generic liraglutide?

For type 2 diabetes, usually yes, and plans moved to the generic fast. CMS's Part D spending data shows how fast: drug plans spent $1,004.6 million on the Victoza three-pen carton in 2023 and $203.1 million in 2024, as claims for it dropped by more than two thirds, to 181,068. Generic liraglutide, in its first year in the data, logged 62,254 claims and $48.1 million.³¹

Source: CMS Medicare Part D Spending by Drug, data year 2024, the latest CMS has published.³¹

For weight loss, often not. Many plans exclude weight-loss drugs as a class, and Saxenda is named in the exclusions. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan phased out coverage of weight-loss GLP-1s including Saxenda for its large-group fully insured members,³³ and North Carolina's State Health Plan voted to end coverage of Wegovy and Saxenda for weight loss from 1 April 2024, citing cost.³⁴ A plan that excludes Saxenda will usually exclude its generic too, because the exclusion is written around the use, not the brand. Where a plan does cover weight-loss drugs, ask whether it prefers the generic; many plans require the generic once one exists.

Medicare and weight loss. The Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, which started on 1 July 2026, covers Foundayo, Wegovy (injection or tablet) and the Zepbound KwikPen. Saxenda and generic liraglutide are not on its list.³² Our guide to Medicare GLP-1 coverage explains who qualifies and what it costs. To check a named insurer's current rules, use our coverage tracker, and for the steps to get a weight-loss GLP-1 approved, see how to get a GLP-1 covered by insurance.

What Saxenda's discontinuation means if you take it now

Novo says the decision is a portfolio choice, not a safety or quality problem, and that last shipments to wholesalers happen in late January 2027.² Plan the switch before your pharmacy runs out, not after.

• Ask your prescriber now whether to move to a Saxenda generic or to a different drug. A generic Saxenda (AP2) is the same molecule, dose and indication.⁴²⁵
• Ask your pharmacy which AP2 generic it can stock. With Teva's carton being discontinued, Cipla and Biocon are the makers in Medicaid's current price survey.¹⁷¹⁸
• Check your plan's formulary for "liraglutide" as well as "Saxenda". A plan may cover the generic on a lower tier, or require it.
• If you are considering a weekly drug instead, the STEP 8 numbers above are the evidence to bring to that conversation, and the switch itself is a clinical decision for your prescriber.

Compounded liraglutide

Some telehealth programs have offered compounded liraglutide. It is not an FDA-approved product, and now that eleven approved generics exist, the reason compounders gave for making it is weaker. FDA has also proposed excluding liraglutide, along with semaglutide and tirzepatide, from the 503B bulks list, finding no clinical need for outsourcing facilities to compound it from bulk substances.³⁵ We do not currently track a live compounded liraglutide offer on our board. For how the two kinds of compounding pharmacy differ, read 503A vs 503B pharmacies.

Who generic liraglutide still makes sense for

• People with type 2 diabetes whose plan covers it. The Victoza-type generic is the most competitive GLP-1 on price: eight approved makers and a pharmacy cost of $275.69 for 30 days at 1.8 mg.³¹⁸
• People already doing well on Saxenda. Switching to an AP2 generic keeps the same drug at a lower price, before the brand leaves.
• People whose plan covers generic liraglutide but excludes the weekly brands. Coverage beats list price; check the formulary for both.
• Adolescents. Saxenda's label, and so its generics', includes children 12 and older above 60 kg with obesity.²⁵ Ask the prescriber which options are labeled for your child's age.

For almost everyone else paying cash for weight loss, the numbers above point to a weekly drug. For every route away from Wegovy and Zepbound side by side, see Wegovy alternatives, and for paying without insurance, GLP-1s without insurance.

How GLP-1 cash prices have moved

The weekly drugs keep getting cheaper to buy for cash, which is the other half of why a generic daily drug has lost its price edge. This is the median all-in monthly price across every program we track, since we started recording it:

And here is today's full ranking, every program priced all in and re-checked weekly. If a program starts selling liraglutide at a price we can verify, it will appear here.