What GLP-1 Therapy Actually Costs Per Month (And What the Ads Leave Out)

Ask what GLP-1 therapy costs and you will get answers from $99 a month to $1,300 a month — sometimes from the same company. The confusion is not an accident. The honest answer has two parts: what the medication costs, and what the care costs. Every offer you see is some arrangement of those two numbers, and the fine print is where they hide.

Part one: the medication

Brand-name GLP-1 medications — Wegovy (semaglutide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide) — carry U.S. list prices north of $1,000 per month. Almost nobody should pay list. With commercial insurance coverage and prior authorization, copays vary widely by plan. Without coverage, both manufacturers now run direct self-pay programs — as of this writing, typically in the several-hundred-dollars-per-month range depending on dose and format. Check the manufacturers’ current pricing directly; it has changed more than once and may change again.

Compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide are cheaper — often $150 to $400 per month — but compounded products are not FDA-approved, and quality varies by pharmacy. We prescribe brand-name first when insurance or budget supports it, and use vetted compounding partners when appropriate. Our compounded-versus-brand article walks through how to evaluate that trade-off.

Part two: the care

Prescribing is the easy part. The care around it — an in-depth intake, baseline and quarterly labs, monthly visits, dose titration, side-effect management, muscle preservation, and an exit strategy — is what determines whether the money you spend on medication buys a lasting result or a rental.

This is where the $99 offers earn their price. Read them closely and you will usually find per-visit fees, per-message fees, lab panels billed separately or skipped entirely, rotating clinicians, and no plan for what happens when you stop. The advertised number is a door price, not a monthly cost.

The all-in math

A realistic self-pay monthly total in 2026 looks like: medication (several hundred dollars via manufacturer programs, or less compounded) plus care (anywhere from $0 bundled-and-hidden to $300+ at concierge practices). Elysiv’s membership is one number — $295/month — and it includes the labs, the visits, the titration, the messaging, and the off-ramp. Medication is billed separately at pharmacy cost, processed through your insurance like any other prescription. No tiers, no per-message fees, no surprise lab bills.

The cost nobody advertises

About 60% of weight lost on GLP-1 is regained within a year of stopping without a structured plan. Pay for twelve months of medication with no off-ramp and the true cost of the therapy was the medication plus doing it again. The cheapest version of GLP-1 therapy is the one that ends with a maintenance plan and weight that stays off. That is the entire reason our program is built the way it is.

Before you commit to any offer — ours included — ask three questions: What exactly is in the monthly fee? Who orders and reviews my labs? And what is the plan for stopping? The answers tell you everything.