MEDVi vs SkinnyRx

MEDVi vs SkinnyRx at every dose

A single headline figure assumes a maintenance dose neither you nor your prescriber has chosen yet. This is the same comparison at all six strengths.

What differs beyond price

Price is the easiest thing to compare and rarely the thing that decides satisfaction. These are the attributes each programme publishes.

Which one, for whom

If you want the lowest total cost: SkinnyRx at about $3,588 for a first year.

If you want budget certainty: neither has an advantage — both use the same pricing model.

If you want to verify the supply chain: neither names a dispensing pharmacy in a way we could verify — ask both directly.

If you may need to stop early: compare the cancellation rows above before prepaying. Compounded medication is generally not refundable once it has shipped, so a multi-month term is the wrong structure during titration, when intolerance is the most likely reason to stop.

Switching between them

Usually possible after a clinical review, and the two real risks are a supply gap while a new intake is processed and a new prescriber restarting titration rather than continuing your dose. Confirm dose continuity in writing before cancelling anything, because a month back at 2.5 mg is a month of lost progress no price difference recovers.

If you are already on one of them

Moving from MEDVi to SkinnyRx is worth $1,200 over a year. Set that against two real switching costs: a gap in supply while a new intake is reviewed, and the possibility that a new prescriber restarts titration rather than continuing your dose. Ask about dose continuation in writing before cancelling anything, because a month back at 2.5 mg is a month of lost progress no price difference recovers.

Fee structure, side by side

MEDVi charges no recurring fee on top of medication. SkinnyRx charges no recurring fee.

This is where most published comparisons break. A table quoting medication alone understates a membership programme by the full fee, every month, for as long as you stay. Every figure here folds it in, which is why our number can be higher than the one on a programme's own homepage.

Care model and what it buys

MEDVi: async, labs not required, none published. SkinnyRx: async, labs not required, none published.

Video visits, included laboratory work and real clinician access cost money to provide, and programmes providing them are rarely cheapest. That is what you are paying for. The failure is paying a premium for an asynchronous questionnaire a cheaper programme provides identically.

Verification, which outranks both

MEDVi: not named. SkinnyRx: not named.

A programme that will not name the pharmacy compounding your medicine is asking you to inject an unidentified preparation weekly. State boards publish licensee registers and FDA publishes outsourcing-facility registrations and warning letters, all free and searchable — but only if you have a name. That question outranks a price difference of almost any size.

Which is cheaper depends on where you land

A single annual comparison assumes one maintenance dose. This runs both programmes at every plausible outcome, over one year and three.

Read the final column before the first. A gap that looks modest over twelve months compounds into the three-year figure, and the withdrawal evidence for this drug class means three years is the more honest planning horizon.

What each one is actually charging for

MEDVi: $399 medication, no recurring fee. SkinnyRx: $299 medication, no recurring fee.

Both use the same fee structure, so the medication figures are directly comparable — which is unusual enough in this market to be worth stating.

What committing to a term does to the answer

MEDVi publishes $249 a month on its term, saving $1,800 a year against monthly billing.

SkinnyRx publishes no prepaid rate.

Prepaying converts a monthly decision into one that is effectively final, because compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped. During titration that is the wrong structure: you would be committing against the most likely reason to stop. After a stable cycle at maintenance it is reasonable, and it can change which of these two is cheaper.

What $1,200 a year actually buys

The gap between these two over a first year is $1,200, about 25% of the larger figure. Expressed differently, it is roughly 4.0 months of therapy at SkinnyRx's maintenance rate, or $3,600 across the three-year horizon the withdrawal evidence implies.

Whether that is decisive depends on what MEDVi provides that SkinnyRx does not. On the published record: MEDVi offers async against async at SkinnyRx.

If the answer is nothing you will use, the gap is simply a gap. If it includes clinician access during titration, when dose questions arrive weekly, it may be the better purchase — but that is a judgement about your first three months rather than about the annual total.

How the pricing models interact

Both hold one price at every strength, so the ranking here does not move with your dose. That is unusual: most pairings in this market mix a flat programme with a dose-scaled one, and the answer flips somewhere on the ladder.

It also means the comparison is unusually clean. Whatever your prescriber decides, SkinnyRx stays $100 a month cheaper at every tier. Decide on disclosure, care model and terms, because price has already been settled.

Committing to a term changes the answer, and the risk

MEDVi publishes $249 a month on a multi-month term; SkinnyRx publishes none.

Prepaying lowers the rate and makes the money effectively unrecoverable, because compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped. Entering a term during titration commits cash against the single most likely reason to stop, which is not tolerating the drug.

The sequencing that protects you is monthly billing until you have held a maintenance dose for a full cycle, then a term once the main reason to stop has passed. Two questions before committing, both answerable in writing: does the discounted rate hold for the whole term or revert at renewal, and what happens if a clinician stops your prescription mid-term.

Both figures carry the same evidence grade

Both are recorded as source verified, so the comparison is at least like for like. That is not the same as both being right: a shared evidence grade means we applied the same standard, not that the underlying numbers have been independently confirmed twice.

Check both against the providers' own pages before acting. Each programme page here links directly to the source we captured, with a Wayback lookup beside it.

Moving from MEDVi to SkinnyRx, and what it costs

The arithmetic is $1,200 over a year. The two costs that eat it are a supply gap while a new intake is reviewed, and a new prescriber restarting titration rather than continuing your dose.

The second is the expensive one. A month back at the starter dose is a month reproducing progress you had already made, and on SkinnyRx's pricing that month costs $299 while delivering a quarter of the drug. Ask for dose continuation in writing before cancelling anything, and do not cancel until the new programme has shipped.

Take three things with you: your current dose and the date you reached it, the concentration printed on your current vial, and any record of adverse effects with dates. Vial concentrations are not standardised between compounders, and carrying instructions from an old vial to a new one is a real hazard rather than a theoretical one.

What neither table can tell you

Whether shipments arrive on time, how fast a clinician replies, whether a dose adjustment takes two days or two weeks, and what happens when a cold-chain shipment fails. Those decide satisfaction more than price does.

We hold no measurements of any of them that we would defend, so they appear nowhere in our tables rather than being estimated into a score. The one usable proxy is what each programme publishes before it has your money: MEDVi and SkinnyRx can be judged on that today, and the disclosure rows above are the comparison.

Re-run this at your actual maintenance dose annually. Programmes do not notify existing patients when a competitor drops below them, and several tracked programmes moved pricing more than once in the past year.

If your titration runs slower than the textbook

Roughly a third of patients hold at a dose longer than four weeks because of tolerability. Add one extra month at 5 mg and MEDVi costs $399 more that year against $299 at SkinnyRx — a change of $100 in the gap.

On flat-rate pricing an extra month costs the maintenance rate regardless of the dose delivered, which is the one scenario where flat pricing works against you. On dose-scaled pricing it costs less but reproduces a step you had already paid for.

Neither is a reason to choose differently on its own. It is a reason to run both at one step slower than you expect and take the higher figure into the decision.

The three-year exposure

At a maintenance dose the annual difference is $1,200; over three years it is $3,600. At the ceiling those figures become $1,200 and $3,600.

Three years is the honest horizon rather than a rhetorical one. The withdrawal evidence for this class shows substantial regain after stopping, so the realistic question is not what a year costs but whether you can sustain the programme indefinitely.

A programme you abandon for cost in month fourteen has cost you more than the dearer one you would have kept, because the interruption undoes the result the spending bought.

The decision from MEDVi's side

You would choose MEDVi if its structure matches your expected course: flat pricing suits an uncertain or escalating titration, no recurring platform fee keeps the advertised figure honest, and its entry price of $399 sets your first month.

You would not choose it if the opposite is true of your course, or if the disclosure rows above leave a question you cannot get answered in writing.

The decision from SkinnyRx's side

You would choose SkinnyRx if its flat rate protects you against a dose increase you cannot predict, and if a single all-in figure is what you want. Its first month costs $299 and its maintenance rate is $299.

You would not choose it if the gap of $1,200 over a first year is decisive for your budget and nothing in its disclosure justifies the difference.

Putting medvi and skinnyrx in proportion

It is one input into a decision with three parts: what you pay at the dose you hold, who makes what you inject, and what happens if you stop. Weighting any one to the exclusion of the others is how people end up on a cheap programme they abandon in month nine.

The frame: 17 programmes publish a price we could capture, spanning $215 to $548 a month all-in at a maintenance dose. Against a spread that wide, most optimisation attempted at the margins is worth less than getting the basis right once.

What good looks like

A programme that states a figure at a named dose, names the pharmacy behind it, publishes cancellation terms before payment, and says plainly that a compounded preparation is not FDA-approved. Four things, all cheap to publish, and a minority of the market does all four.

The cheapest verified route sits at $215 a month all-in, which establishes that disclosure and low price are not in tension. Programmes publishing more are not systematically dearer — which undercuts the usual explanation for withholding.

What to do next

Narrow to two or three on the criterion that actually binds for you, open the individual reviews, and send each the same five questions: total at 10 mg including every fee, which pharmacy, is the prescriber licensed in my state, what notice to cancel, and what is refundable.

Whoever answers all five in writing has told you more than any comparison table can, this one included. Whoever does not has also told you something.

Where the money actually separates

A single annual figure hides when the gap opens. Tracked month by month through a first year you can see whether the difference is front-loaded during titration or accumulates quietly at maintenance.

Across the year the gap reaches $1,200, roughly 25% of the larger total and about 4.0 months of therapy at SkinnyRx's maintenance rate. Over three years at a stable dose the same difference compounds to roughly $3,600.

Does the answer change with your dose?

SkinnyRx is cheaper at every strength, so this comparison does not turn on where you settle. The decision moves to what else differs: disclosure, care model, commitment terms and behaviour when a shipment fails.

Commitment and what each puts at risk

MEDVi publishes a prepaid rate of $249 a month on its multi-month plan. SkinnyRx publishes no prepaid term.

Prepaying lowers the rate and makes the money effectively unrecoverable, because compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped. During titration that is the wrong structure: it commits against the most likely reason to stop. After a stable cycle at maintenance it is reasonable.

Care model and what you can verify

MEDVi: async, labs not required, pharmacy not named, cancellation 12-month plan for lowest rate.

SkinnyRx: async, labs not required, pharmacy not named, cancellation no membership on compounded.

Where one names a pharmacy and the other does not, that difference outranks a modest price gap. It is the only disclosure that lets you check a public register before injecting something weekly, and it costs a programme nothing to publish.

If you are already on one of them

Moving from MEDVi to SkinnyRx is worth $1,200 over a year, about 4.0 months of therapy at the cheaper rate. Set that against two real switching costs: a supply gap while an intake is reviewed, and the possibility that a new prescriber restarts titration.

Ask about dose continuation in writing before cancelling anything. A month back at 2.5 mg is a month of lost progress that no price difference recovers, and it is the most common regret reported by people who switched for a small saving.

What neither table can tell you

Shipping reliability, how fast a clinician actually replies, whether a dose adjustment takes two days or two weeks, and what happens when a cold-chain shipment fails. Those decide satisfaction more than price does, and we hold no measurements of them we would defend, so they are absent rather than estimated.

The one usable proxy is what each programme publishes before it has your money. A programme that states its price at every dose, names its pharmacy and puts cancellation terms in writing has already told you something about how it behaves when there is a problem.

Running this comparison again later

Both figures carry a capture date and both will change. Programmes do not notify existing patients when a competitor drops below them, and several tracked programmes moved pricing more than once in the past year.

Re-run this at your actual maintenance dose annually, and treat any figure older than a month as needing a re-check before you act on it.

Where both of these sit in the wider market

MEDVi at $4,788 and SkinnyRx at $3,588 for a first year sit against a market running from $2,580 to $6,576. At least one of them sits above the midpoint of what we track, which is worth knowing before treating this pairing as a shortlist.

If neither is close to the cheapest tracked route, the useful question is not which of these two wins but why you are choosing between these two at all. The comparison matrix will show what else is available at your dose in about ten seconds.

If you are already on one of them

Moving from MEDVi to SkinnyRx is worth $1,200 over a year. Set that against two real switching costs: a gap in supply while a new intake is reviewed, and the possibility that a new prescriber restarts titration rather than continuing your dose. Ask about dose continuation in writing before cancelling anything, because a month back at 2.5 mg is a month of lost progress no price difference recovers.

Fee structure, side by side

MEDVi charges no recurring fee on top of medication. SkinnyRx charges no recurring fee.

This is where most published comparisons break. A table quoting medication alone understates a membership programme by the full fee, every month, for as long as you stay. Every figure here folds it in, which is why our number can be higher than the one on a programme's own homepage.

Care model and what it buys

MEDVi: async, labs not required, none published. SkinnyRx: async, labs not required, none published.

Video visits, included laboratory work and real clinician access cost money to provide, and programmes providing them are rarely cheapest. That is what you are paying for. The failure is paying a premium for an asynchronous questionnaire a cheaper programme provides identically.

Verification, which outranks both

MEDVi: not named. SkinnyRx: not named.

A programme that will not name the pharmacy compounding your medicine is asking you to inject an unidentified preparation weekly. State boards publish licensee registers and FDA publishes outsourcing-facility registrations and warning letters, all free and searchable — but only if you have a name. That question outranks a price difference of almost any size.

Which is cheaper depends on where you land

A single annual comparison assumes one maintenance dose. This runs both programmes at every plausible outcome, over one year and three.

Read the final column before the first. A gap that looks modest over twelve months compounds into the three-year figure, and the withdrawal evidence for this drug class means three years is the more honest planning horizon.

What each one is actually charging for

MEDVi: $399 medication, no recurring fee. SkinnyRx: $299 medication, no recurring fee.

Both use the same fee structure, so the medication figures are directly comparable — which is unusual enough in this market to be worth stating.

What committing to a term does to the answer

MEDVi publishes $249 a month on its term, saving $1,800 a year against monthly billing.

SkinnyRx publishes no prepaid rate.

Prepaying converts a monthly decision into one that is effectively final, because compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped. During titration that is the wrong structure: you would be committing against the most likely reason to stop. After a stable cycle at maintenance it is reasonable, and it can change which of these two is cheaper.

What $1,200 a year actually buys

The gap between these two over a first year is $1,200, about 25% of the larger figure. Expressed differently, it is roughly 4.0 months of therapy at SkinnyRx's maintenance rate, or $3,600 across the three-year horizon the withdrawal evidence implies.

Whether that is decisive depends on what MEDVi provides that SkinnyRx does not. On the published record: MEDVi offers async against async at SkinnyRx.

If the answer is nothing you will use, the gap is simply a gap. If it includes clinician access during titration, when dose questions arrive weekly, it may be the better purchase — but that is a judgement about your first three months rather than about the annual total.

How the pricing models interact

Both hold one price at every strength, so the ranking here does not move with your dose. That is unusual: most pairings in this market mix a flat programme with a dose-scaled one, and the answer flips somewhere on the ladder.

It also means the comparison is unusually clean. Whatever your prescriber decides, SkinnyRx stays $100 a month cheaper at every tier. Decide on disclosure, care model and terms, because price has already been settled.

Committing to a term changes the answer, and the risk

MEDVi publishes $249 a month on a multi-month term; SkinnyRx publishes none.

Prepaying lowers the rate and makes the money effectively unrecoverable, because compounded medication is generally not refundable once shipped. Entering a term during titration commits cash against the single most likely reason to stop, which is not tolerating the drug.

The sequencing that protects you is monthly billing until you have held a maintenance dose for a full cycle, then a term once the main reason to stop has passed. Two questions before committing, both answerable in writing: does the discounted rate hold for the whole term or revert at renewal, and what happens if a clinician stops your prescription mid-term.

Both figures carry the same evidence grade

Both are recorded as source verified, so the comparison is at least like for like. That is not the same as both being right: a shared evidence grade means we applied the same standard, not that the underlying numbers have been independently confirmed twice.

Check both against the providers' own pages before acting. Each programme page here links directly to the source we captured, with a Wayback lookup beside it.

Moving from MEDVi to SkinnyRx, and what it costs

The arithmetic is $1,200 over a year. The two costs that eat it are a supply gap while a new intake is reviewed, and a new prescriber restarting titration rather than continuing your dose.

The second is the expensive one. A month back at the starter dose is a month reproducing progress you had already made, and on SkinnyRx's pricing that month costs $299 while delivering a quarter of the drug. Ask for dose continuation in writing before cancelling anything, and do not cancel until the new programme has shipped.

Take three things with you: your current dose and the date you reached it, the concentration printed on your current vial, and any record of adverse effects with dates. Vial concentrations are not standardised between compounders, and carrying instructions from an old vial to a new one is a real hazard rather than a theoretical one.

What neither table can tell you

Whether shipments arrive on time, how fast a clinician replies, whether a dose adjustment takes two days or two weeks, and what happens when a cold-chain shipment fails. Those decide satisfaction more than price does.

We hold no measurements of any of them that we would defend, so they appear nowhere in our tables rather than being estimated into a score. The one usable proxy is what each programme publishes before it has your money: MEDVi and SkinnyRx can be judged on that today, and the disclosure rows above are the comparison.

Re-run this at your actual maintenance dose annually. Programmes do not notify existing patients when a competitor drops below them, and several tracked programmes moved pricing more than once in the past year.

If your titration runs slower than the textbook

Roughly a third of patients hold at a dose longer than four weeks because of tolerability. Add one extra month at 5 mg and MEDVi costs $399 more that year against $299 at SkinnyRx — a change of $100 in the gap.

On flat-rate pricing an extra month costs the maintenance rate regardless of the dose delivered, which is the one scenario where flat pricing works against you. On dose-scaled pricing it costs less but reproduces a step you had already paid for.

Neither is a reason to choose differently on its own. It is a reason to run both at one step slower than you expect and take the higher figure into the decision.

The three-year exposure

At a maintenance dose the annual difference is $1,200; over three years it is $3,600. At the ceiling those figures become $1,200 and $3,600.

Three years is the honest horizon rather than a rhetorical one. The withdrawal evidence for this class shows substantial regain after stopping, so the realistic question is not what a year costs but whether you can sustain the programme indefinitely.

A programme you abandon for cost in month fourteen has cost you more than the dearer one you would have kept, because the interruption undoes the result the spending bought.

The decision from MEDVi's side

You would choose MEDVi if its structure matches your expected course: flat pricing suits an uncertain or escalating titration, no recurring platform fee keeps the advertised figure honest, and its entry price of $399 sets your first month.

You would not choose it if the opposite is true of your course, or if the disclosure rows above leave a question you cannot get answered in writing.

The decision from SkinnyRx's side

You would choose SkinnyRx if its flat rate protects you against a dose increase you cannot predict, and if a single all-in figure is what you want. Its first month costs $299 and its maintenance rate is $299.

You would not choose it if the gap of $1,200 over a first year is decisive for your budget and nothing in its disclosure justifies the difference.

Putting medvi and skinnyrx in proportion

It is one input into a decision with three parts: what you pay at the dose you hold, who makes what you inject, and what happens if you stop. Weighting any one to the exclusion of the others is how people end up on a cheap programme they abandon in month nine.

The frame: 17 programmes publish a price we could capture, spanning $215 to $548 a month all-in at a maintenance dose. Against a spread that wide, most optimisation attempted at the margins is worth less than getting the basis right once.

What good looks like

A programme that states a figure at a named dose, names the pharmacy behind it, publishes cancellation terms before payment, and says plainly that a compounded preparation is not FDA-approved. Four things, all cheap to publish, and a minority of the market does all four.

The cheapest verified route sits at $215 a month all-in, which establishes that disclosure and low price are not in tension. Programmes publishing more are not systematically dearer — which undercuts the usual explanation for withholding.

What to do next

Narrow to two or three on the criterion that actually binds for you, open the individual reviews, and send each the same five questions: total at 10 mg including every fee, which pharmacy, is the prescriber licensed in my state, what notice to cancel, and what is refundable.

Whoever answers all five in writing has told you more than any comparison table can, this one included. Whoever does not has also told you something.