Methodology

What we compare and why

This site compares telehealth programmes on the things a buyer can act on: what you actually pay at the dose you will hold, what is bundled, what is billed separately, what you can verify before you pay, and what happens if you stop. It is not a clinical encyclopedia. Clinical content appears only where it is needed to make a purchasing decision safely.

One price basis, applied everywhere

All-in monthly cost means medication plus any recurring membership or platform fee, at a named dose tier, before tax and before any prepaid discount. Shipping, consultation and laboratory charges are listed separately where a programme charges them. Prepaid rates and brand self-pay tiers get their own columns and are never blended into a headline.

That is why some figures here are higher than a programme's own homepage. A programme advertising medication at $133 while requiring a $74.99 membership costs $208, and a table that prints $133 is misleading its readers.

Rankings are computed, not chosen

Every ranking sorts the dataset on a criterion stated in the page title. Nothing is weighted by hand and no programme pays for position. The dataset is downloadable, so any ranking can be reproduced rather than trusted.

Why 72 comparisons and not 496

Thirty-two programmes yield 496 possible pairings. Generating all of them produces hundreds of near-identical doorway pages that help nobody. We publish the pairings a shopper actually weighs, and the comparison matrix handles the rest against the same data.

What we will not do

Publish a price we cannot interpret. Invent review counts, ratings or testimonials. Describe a compounded preparation as equivalent to an FDA-approved product. Accept payment for placement, for position, or for the removal of a criticism.

How this page fits the rest of the site

Everything here rests on one dataset: all-in monthly cost at six dose tiers for every tracked programme, with a capture date and an evidence status on each record. Rankings sort that dataset on a stated criterion; comparisons read the same rows; the calculators run against the same file. Nothing on this site is assembled by hand, which is why a policy page can describe a rule rather than an intention.

What we publish when we are not sure

The absence. A programme that does not publish a price gets a page saying so and listing what to ask before handing over a medical history. A figure taken from a third-party round-up is labelled as unconfirmed rather than presented alongside verified prices as though the two were equivalent. Where two sources disagree we show both.

That produces a shorter table than competitors publish. It also produces one that survives being checked, which is the only durable advantage a comparison site has.

The disclosures that matter more than any policy

Compounded preparations are not FDA-approved and are not reviewed by FDA for safety, effectiveness or quality before marketing. Tirzepatide is a prescription medicine and nothing here is medical advice. No programme pays for placement or position, and rankings are computed from the published dataset rather than assigned.

Tell us when we are wrong

Prices move, terms change and programmes leave the market. If a figure here differs from a programme's own page, ours is wrong. Send the URL through contact and the change is logged in corrections with the date it was made.

The standard this site holds itself to

Publish what can be verified, label what cannot, and record what changed. Those three rules generate everything else: why 11 of 32 programmes carry a verified tag and the rest do not, why some rows are blank, and why corrections appear on the page where the error was rather than in a log nobody reads.

They also explain what is missing. There are no ratings out of ten, no star scores and no aggregate quality judgements, because we cannot measure service quality from outside and inventing a number for it would corrupt the figures that are real.

Why the dataset is published rather than described

Every table on this site is generated from one file: 32 programmes with all-in cost at six dose tiers, first-year totals, fee structure, commitment terms, care model, pharmacy disclosure, evidence status and source, each with a capture date.

That file is downloadable. Sort it by first-year cost and it should reproduce our cheapest ranking exactly. If it does not, that is a bug or a lie, and you can find it without our help. A comparison site that will not publish its own data is asking to be trusted rather than checked.

The commercial conflict, named

Comparison sites in health are funded by the companies they rank. That creates an obvious incentive to rank the highest-paying option first and describe the arrangement vaguely, and it is the reason readers are right to be sceptical of every site in this category.

The defences available are boring and checkable: compute rankings from a published dataset on a stated sort key, publish the dataset, log corrections publicly, and record negative facts about highly ranked programmes. None of that proves good faith. It makes bad faith detectable, which is the most any publisher can honestly offer.

What good looks like in this market

A programme that publishes its price at every dose tier, names the pharmacy that compounds the medicine, states its cancellation terms before you pay, and can decline to prescribe. Those four together are rarer than they should be, and they cost a programme nothing except the ability to advertise a number that is not the number.

The cheapest tracked route currently runs $215 a month all-in at a 10 mg maintenance dose, about $2,580 for a first year. That figure is what a well-informed buyer should be measuring every other offer against.

The four decisions that produce every page

Which programmes to track: any tirzepatide telehealth service a US patient can enrol in directly, currently 32. What price to publish: the all-in monthly figure at a named dose. What evidence grade to attach: 11 verified at source, the rest labelled. And what to do when we cannot establish something: publish the absence.

Everything else on this site is downstream of those four, which is why the methodology page is short and the dataset is long.

Where this sits against the dataset

The figures behind this page come from one file: 32 programmes, all-in cost at six dose tiers, terms, care model, pharmacy disclosure, evidence status and source, each with a capture date. All-in cost at a maintenance dose runs $215 to $548 across it.

Change the file and every table, ranking and calculator changes with it. There is no separate editorial layer to adjust, which is the structural reason a policy page here can describe a rule rather than an intention.

What it would take to prove us wrong

Download the dataset, sort it on the criterion named in any ranking title, and check whether our published order reproduces. Then open any provider link and compare our figure to theirs. Both checks take minutes and neither requires trusting us.

If they disagree, that is a bug or a lie and we would rather hear about it than have it found later by someone with less reason to be generous.

Putting methodology 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.