How much semaglutide costs: $69 compounded, $149 to $499 from Novo, $25 or $50 covered, by dose and by year

Semaglutide costs anywhere from $69 to $1,349.02 a month, and which end you pay depends on four things: whose semaglutide it is, whether it is a pen or a pill, whether anyone else is paying, and how many weeks a "month" holds. The cheapest is compounded semaglutide at $69 a month on our board today. The cheapest FDA-approved semaglutide is Novo's Wegovy tablet at $149 for the starting strength. The most anyone pays is the list price, which almost nobody pays on purpose.

Every semaglutide price in one table

Semaglutide is one molecule sold under three names (Wegovy for weight, Ozempic for type 2 diabetes, and compounded versions sold by telehealth programs) in two forms, an injection and a tablet. This is every way a US buyer can pay for it as of 8 October 2026, cheapest first within each group.

Sources: NovoCare Pharmacy for every Novo self-pay figure,¹⁵ Novo's savings terms for the card,² NovoCare's list-price pages,³⁴ CMS and Wegovy.com for the Bridge.⁸⁹ Compounded prices are read from each program's own page and refresh with the board.

Compounded semaglutide injection: from $69 a month

Compounded semaglutide is the same active molecule mixed by a licensed pharmacy, usually shipped as a multi-dose vial with syringes and sold through a telehealth program that bundles the prescriber visit. It is the price floor of this market. FDA's own wording on what that floor buys: "compounded drugs are not FDA approved. This means the agency does not review compounded drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed."¹⁰ The compounded semaglutide page covers what is in the vial and how programs source it; is compounded semaglutide safe covers the risk side.

On price, the spread inside this one product is wider than most buyers expect. Today the board runs from $69 to $299 a month all-in, with the middle program at $147. That is a spread of $230 a month for the same molecule, from one program to the next. Every row below is verified on the seller's own page, with the date:

Three things move a compounded price, and the board accounts for all three. The plan length: Embody charges $79 a month on a monthly plan and $69 a month on its 12-month plan, billed $828 up front; BMIMD runs from $159 monthly to $119 on 12 months. The membership fee: a program can quote a low drug price and add a monthly fee, so the board ranks on the all-in number, never the sticker. And the dose: some programs charge one price at every dose, others step the price up as the dose climbs, which matters most in months four to six, when the label's ladder reaches its higher steps. The cheapest semaglutide board keeps the whole ranking with every plan length.

Compounded oral semaglutide: from $147

Several programs sell semaglutide by mouth: compounded tablets, sublingual drops and buccal lozenges. The cheapest on our board today is $147 a month and the dearest is $299. None of these is the Wegovy tablet. Novo's tablet is an FDA-approved product with its own dose ladder; a compounded oral form is a pharmacy preparation that, like the injection, FDA has not reviewed.¹⁰ Price the two separately. This board mixes both, so the brand tablet sold through partner programs sits alongside the compounded ones:

One comparison worth making with the brand tablet on the table: compounded oral semaglutide at the board floor comes in under the $149 Novo charges for a month of its own Wegovy tablet at the starting strength.¹

Wegovy from Novo: the pen at $349, the pill at $149 to $299

Novo sells Wegovy direct to self-pay patients through NovoCare Pharmacy, which ships it or sends the offer to a local pharmacy. These are Novo's own figures, read on 8 October 2026:¹

Two features of Novo's pricing decide your bill. The pen price is flat: a box of 0.25 mg costs the same $349 as a box of 2.4 mg, so climbing the label's ladder costs a pen patient nothing extra until the 7.2 mg HD pen. The tablet price is stepped, and it tops out at $299 for both 9 mg and 25 mg. The label starts the tablet at 1.5 mg once daily and the injection at 0.25 mg once weekly; the doses in between are your prescriber's call, and the semaglutide dosage chart lays out the label's schedule.⁶ The full Wegovy picture, insured and uninsured, is in how much Wegovy costs.

Ozempic from Novo: $349 or $499 a pen, and a tablet from $149

Ozempic is the same semaglutide approved for type 2 diabetes, and Novo prices its pen by dose: $199 for each of a new patient's first two months at 0.25 or 0.5 mg, then "$349 per month for Ozempic 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg or 1 mg and $499 per month for Ozempic 2 mg".¹ A "month" is one pen, and the label says a 1 mg pen holds "4 doses of 1 mg" and a 2 mg pen "4 doses of 2 mg",⁷ so an Ozempic pen is also a four-week supply. The Ozempic tablet comes in 1.5, 4 and 9 mg, and NovoCare lists self-pay "starting at $149/month".⁴⁵

If the reason you are buying semaglutide is weight rather than diabetes, the Wegovy box is the better buy from the same company: $349 at every standard pen dose against Ozempic's $499 at 2 mg, and coverable by plans with a weight benefit, which Ozempic for weight never is. How much Ozempic costs works through the diabetes side, including the card and Part D.

List price: what $1,349.02 means and who pays it

Novo publishes one list price for every Wegovy package and another for every Ozempic pen. The Wegovy pill, the Wegovy pen and the Wegovy HD pen each list at $1,349.02 a package; an Ozempic pen, 1 mg or 2 mg, lists at $1,027.51.³⁴ Novo's own definition: "the original price set for a medication by a manufacturer before any discounts or rebates are applied".³ It is the starting point an insurer's negotiated price and a pharmacy's counter price are built on, not a price anyone needs to pay. Novo's own self-pay pen at $349 is about a quarter of the Wegovy list price, and the tablet at $149 is about a ninth of it.

Where list price still bites: a high-deductible plan that covers Wegovy can charge you the plan's negotiated rate until the deductible is met, and that rate is anchored on list. If your plan covers it but your deductible is untouched, ask the pharmacy for both numbers, the plan price and Novo's self-pay price, before you fill.

With insurance: $25, with a $100 cap

When a commercial plan covers Wegovy or Ozempic, Novo's savings offer brings the copay down to "as little as" $25, with a limit written into the same sentence of its terms: "a maximum savings of $100 per 1-month prescription", $200 per 2-month prescription and $300 per 3-month prescription.² The cap is the part that sets your real price. The card takes up to $100 off your plan's copay each month, and $25 is the floor, not the promise:

The card is closed to anyone "enrolled in any federal or state health care program with prescription drug coverage, such as Medicaid, Medicare, VA, DOD, TRICARE".² Coverage for Wegovy for weight is plan by plan; for Ozempic it is the type 2 diabetes indication that opens the door. Every other manufacturer card is compared in the GLP-1 copay card guide.

On Medicare: $50 a month through the GLP-1 Bridge

Since 1 July 2026, CMS's Medicare GLP-1 Bridge gives eligible Part D members certain GLP-1 drugs for weight for "a $50 copay", running to 31 December 2027.⁸ Novo's Wegovy site puts it in capitals, "ELIGIBLE PARTICIPANTS PAY ONLY $50/MONTH", and says an approved patient will "pay your $50 copay" and receive the "Wegovy pen or pill prescription".⁹ Three details from CMS's own FAQ change the arithmetic: "the Part D deductible will not apply", "no part of the $50 copay counts towards the beneficiary's TrOOP costs", and "there is no low-income subsidy (LIS) provided for LIS beneficiaries".⁸ So a member with Extra Help still pays $50, and the copay does not move them toward the Part D out-of-pocket cap.

Ozempic for type 2 diabetes is outside the Bridge; it sits on ordinary Part D formularies at each plan's own copay. Does Medicare cover GLP-1s has the eligibility criteria and how a prescriber files.

Generic semaglutide: sold abroad, not in the US

There is no FDA-approved generic semaglutide. The FDA Orange Book lists Novo's semaglutide compound patent, 8,129,343, against Ozempic until 12/05/2031.¹¹ Outside the US the patents have already run out in some markets, and the prices show what competition does to this molecule:

• India, March 2026. CNBC reported the first launches the week Novo's patent there expired, at roughly a third of Novo's own price in rupees, with a vial version lower still.¹⁴

  launched a generic semaglutide for as low as 750 rupees ($8) for a weekly injection, or about 3,400 rupees per month. That compares with Novo’s retail price of between 8,800 and 10,000 rupees in India

  CNBC, 23 March 2026

• Canada, June 2026. Health Canada "authorized a first generic semaglutide injection for weight loss", Apotex's Sevmia, "a generic version of the brand name drug Wegovy".¹³

A US buyer cannot use either. FDA is plain about it: "If a drug is approved for use in another country but is an unapproved new drug in the U.S. it is illegal to import."¹² The patent timeline, the US tentative approvals already granted, and what to buy while you wait are in generic Ozempic.

Cost per dose and per mg, at every step

Semaglutide is the rare drug where a higher dose can cost the same as a lower one, so the price per mg falls as you climb. Here is that arithmetic on Novo's self-pay prices: the Wegovy pen box at $199 (intro) or $349, the Wegovy HD box at $399, the 2 mg Ozempic pen at $499 and the Wegovy tablet bottle at $149 to $299, counting four weekly doses per box or pen and 30 daily tablets per bottle.¹⁷ The dose steps are the label's; which step is yours is your prescriber's decision.⁶

Do not compare the per-mg column across the pen and the tablet. A swallowed mg and an injected mg are not the same dose: the label moves a patient from "WEGOVY tablets 25 mg once daily" to "WEGOVY 2.4 mg subcutaneous injection once weekly".⁶ Compare by the week at equivalent doses instead. The 25 mg tablet works out at about $69.77 a week, the 2.4 mg pen at $87.25.

For compounded semaglutide, the cheapest board price of $69 a month spread over four weekly doses is $17.25 a dose. If a program holds that price up to a 2.4 mg weekly dose, that is $7.19 per mg; check the program's dose terms first, because not all of them do.

A year of semaglutide, by route

Most cost pages multiply a monthly price by 12. A weekly pen does not run on calendar months: Novo's box is a 28-day supply,² and so is an Ozempic pen,⁷ so a year of weekly injections is 13 fills. Tablets come 30 to a bottle, so 12 bottles cover 360 days. Here is the year counted that way:

The 13th box is the line most budgets miss. At $349 a box, counting 12 fills gives $4,188 for a year; the real 52-week figure is $4,537, because the 13th box costs the same as the others. The tablet's first year is lower than its later years because the label's first three bottles are the 1.5, 4 and 9 mg strengths.⁶ Compounded rows use the program's monthly billing, so 12 payments is right for them.

What moves your price

The same molecule can cost you three times as much as it costs the next buyer. These are the levers, in the order they move the most money:

• Brand or compounded. The gap between the board floor and Novo's $349 pen is $280 a month, about $3,360 over 12 months. That gap is what you are deciding about first.
• Coverage. A plan that covers Wegovy plus Novo's card, or the Medicare Bridge, beats every cash route. Check it before you price anything else; the coverage guide sets out the order.
• Pen or tablet. Direct from Novo, the 25 mg tablet at $299 a bottle sits $50 a month under the pen at $349 a box. Across 52 weeks the gap is roughly $900, because the pen needs that 13th box.
• Dose. Flat at Novo for the pen to 2.4 mg, stepped for the tablet, and stepped at some compounding programs. Ask what month five costs, not month one.
• Plan length. Compounded programs discount a 6- or 12-month commitment, and most bill it up front. A 12-month plan that you stop in month three can cost more than three monthly payments would have.
• Membership fees. A low drug price with a monthly membership on top is not a low price. Sesame, for one, adds a $59 monthly membership; its all-in Wegovy tablet price is $208 a month. Our board ranks every program on the all-in figure.
• Intro offers. Novo's $199 lasts two fills and ends 31 December 2026. A compounded program's first-month price can do the same. Price the steady month.
• The extras. Before paying, ask whether the price includes the prescriber visit, follow-up messages, shipping, syringes and any lab work the prescriber orders. Any of these can be billed on top, and none of them appears in a headline price.

The short answer

If a commercial plan covers it, semaglutide can be $25 a month with Novo's card. The card gets there whenever your copay is $125 or less. On Medicare Part D it is $50 through the Bridge until the end of 2027. Paying cash for FDA-approved semaglutide, the cheapest route is Novo's Wegovy tablet at $149 rising to $299, then the Wegovy pen at $349 a box. Over a real 52-week year that pen costs $4,537. Compounded semaglutide costs $69 a month and up on our board, without FDA review of the finished product. Generic semaglutide exists, in India and Canada, and not legally for you.