Manufacturer direct-pay program
Both Lilly and Novo Nordisk run self-pay programs for people without coverage. Pricing tiers change frequently — check the official program page for current rates.
Willow GLP-1
You are trying to work out what this will cost you per month.
Reference and calculator, not medical advice. Dosing figures below are transcribed from FDA-approved prescribing information and link back to it. Last reviewed August 2026.
Willow prescribes compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide on a monthly subscription, and offers them in both injectable and oral form. The compounded part is the fact that matters most: compounded preparations are not FDA-approved products and have not been evaluated for safety, efficacy or quality in the way the approved medications have. That is a product-category distinction, not a warning — but it is the distinction that explains the price gap, so it belongs at the top rather than in the footnotes.
Comparing Willow against other routes
What to establish before the number means anything.
- What Willow is
- Telehealth service. An online weight-management practice charging a monthly subscription. It prescribes compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide, which are not FDA-approved products, and offers both injectable and oral forms.
- What the fee includesMembership models usually bundle the prescriber consultation, ongoing check-ins and the medication. A pharmacy quote covers the drug only, so the two are not directly comparable until the visit cost is added in.
- Brand or compoundedThese are structurally different products at structurally different prices, and availability of compounded preparations has narrowed sharply. Confirm which one a quote refers to.
- Which dose the price assumesIntroductory pricing is often quoted at the starting step. Monthly consumption rises with each escalation, so ask what the figure becomes at maintenance.
- Commitment lengthQuarterly or annual prepayment lowers the headline monthly figure but removes the option to leave if the medication does not suit you.
I do not publish Willow’s prices here because telehealth pricing changes faster than any page can track. Get the current figure from them, then put it into the calculator to see what it works out to per milligram at your dose.
The oral option introduces a second complication that injectable-only services do not have. The approved oral semaglutide products — Rybelsus for diabetes and Wegovy tablets for weight management — each run on their own milligram scale, and neither maps onto the injectable schedule for the same molecule. The gap is roughly tenfold, because most of a swallowed peptide does not survive to reach circulation. A compounded oral preparation is not either of those products, so there is no published schedule to check its numbers against at all.
Side-by-side
Structural facts from each product’s prescribing information.
| Product | Active ingredient | Indication | Frequency | Start | Max labelled | Steps to max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wegovy Novo Nordisk | Semaglutide | Weight management | Weekly | 0.25 mg | 2.4 mg | 5 |
| Wegovy tablets Novo Nordisk | Semaglutide (oral) | Weight management | Daily | 1.5 mg | 25 mg | 4 |
Compounded vs brand-name: what actually differs
Current as of August 2026.
- Prepared by a pharmacy, not the original manufacturer — so there is no FDA-approved label for the exact preparation you receive.
- Much more restricted than during the 2024–25 shortages. Supply is smaller and less predictable than it was.
- Brand-name self-pay programmes have narrowed the price gap that made compounding attractive.
Compounded is usually cheaper but can change with the rules; brand-name costs more and is more predictable. Worth raising with whoever writes your prescription. FDA’s compounding pages have the detail if you want it.
Where the price comes from
The routes people actually pay through, and what determines the number in each.
Through insurance (copay)
If your plan covers the drug for your indication, your cost is the plan copay. Coverage for weight-loss indications is far less common than for type 2 diabetes.
Telehealth platform (brand drug)
Online clinics bundle a prescriber visit with brand-name medication. Membership fee is usually separate from drug cost.
Compounded semaglutide / tirzepatide
Compounded versions are prepared by pharmacies rather than the original manufacturer. Availability and legality depend on FDA shortage status, which has changed several times — verify current status before relying on this route.
Retail pharmacy cash price
List price without insurance, sometimes reduced by discount cards.
Cost comparison calculator
Enter the quotes you have actually been given. Everything is normalised to cost per month and cost per milligram so the options are comparable.
Monthly requirement21.65 mg4.33 doses/month × 5 mg
| Option | Per month | Per year | Per mg | One unit lasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option A | — | — | — | — |
| Option B | — | — | — | 2.0 weeks |
Common questions
- Is compounded the same drug as the brand?
- It contains the same active ingredient but is not the same product. Approved products go through FDA review of safety and efficacy and carry prescribing information; compounded preparations do not, which is why they cannot be assumed to behave identically.
- Why is the oral version priced differently?
- Route changes the whole economics, and the milligram scales are not comparable between oral and injectable forms of the same molecule. Comparing the two on price per milligram without accounting for that gives a meaningless ratio.
- Does the subscription price rise as the dose rises?
- Ask directly. Flat pricing across doses and dose-linked pricing produce very different totals across a titration schedule, and at the starting dose the two look identical.
Common questions
- Why do quoted GLP-1 prices vary so much?
- Because the quotes are not measuring the same thing. A membership fee, a per-vial price, and a per-pen price all describe different quantities, and the dose you are on determines how long that quantity lasts. Converting everything to cost per milligram is the only way to compare them directly.
- Does insurance usually cover this?
- Coverage is far more common for type 2 diabetes indications than for weight management. Whether your specific plan covers your specific indication is something only your plan documents can answer.
Sources and last review
Every dosing figure on this page is transcribed from an FDA-approved label and links back to it. Conversions are arithmetic you can repeat by hand. Nothing here is reviewed by a clinician, and this site does not employ one — which is exactly why what I do publish stays traceable to its source.
- Wegovy (Semaglutide) prescribing information — Novo Nordisk, label revised 30 June 2026, checked 7 August 2026
Transcribed from the labels above and checked by me — Gavin, who builds this site, takes a GLP-1, and is not a clinician. Last reviewed August 2026. Found an error? [email protected] — I treat corrections as bugs. How this site is built and funded.