Starting Dose Cost
The advertised month, and why it describes 8% of your year.
The advertised month, and why it describes 8% of your year.
Across the 17 programmes we price, all-in cost runs from $133 a month at the starter dose, with the cheapest first year at about $2,580 (NexLife, $215 a month at a 10 mg maintenance dose). Every figure on this page is on that same all-in basis.
All-in monthly cost = medication + any recurring fee, at a named dose, before tax and before prepaid discounts. Captured 2026-08-05. How we verify a price.
All-in monthly cost at 10 mg
| Programme | All-in at 10 mg | First year | Per mg | Structure | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NexLife | $215 | $2,580 | $5.38 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Join Fridays | $249 | $2,988 | $6.22 | flat at every dose | third-party figure |
| Yucca Health | $258 | $3,096 | $6.45 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Mochi Health | $278 | $3,336 | $6.95 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| IVIM Health | $278 | $3,219 | $6.95 | rises with dose | ✓ verified at source |
| ShedRx | $289 | $3,318 | $7.22 | rises with dose | ✓ verified at source |
| SkinnyRx | $299 | $3,588 | $7.47 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Amble Health | $300 | $3,600 | $7.50 | flat at every dose | third-party figure |
| TrimRx | $349 | $4,188 | $8.72 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Lavender Sky Health | $352 | $3,971 | $8.80 | rises with dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Found | $398 | $4,776 | $9.95 | flat at every dose | third-party figure |
| MEDVi | $399 | $4,788 | $9.97 | flat at every dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Remedy Meds | $399 | $4,788 | $9.97 | flat at every dose | third-party figure |
| Eden | $408 | $4,796 | $10.20 | rises with dose | ✓ verified at source |
| Henry Meds | $509 | $6,008 | $12.72 | rises with dose | third-party figure |
| LifeMD | $548 | $6,576 | $13.70 | flat at every dose | third-party figure |
What escalating the dose does to your bill
What to ask before you enrol
One question does most of the work: what will I pay in total in month six at 10 mg, including every fee? A programme that answers in one sentence has flat, all-inclusive pricing. A programme that needs three sentences has a structure worth reading carefully. A programme that cannot answer has told you something.
Then four more: which pharmacy fills the prescription, is the prescriber licensed in my state, does the quoted rate hold at renewal, and what is refundable before shipment.
Where these numbers come from
One dataset, captured 2026-08-05, with a verification status on every record. Prices we read at the provider are tagged as such; figures taken from third-party round-ups are tagged separately and treated as indicative. Where sources disagree we show the conflict rather than choosing. The whole file is downloadable.
Why this distinction changes what you pay
Every structural difference in this market resolves into money at a maintenance dose. Whether a programme charges a membership, whether it reprices with the dose, whether it demands a term, and whether it bundles or splits its charges together account for most of the gap between the cheapest tracked first year at $2,580 and the most expensive.
None of those differences is visible in an advertised headline figure, which is the reason this site exists in the form it does.
How to act on it this week
Price the dose you expect to maintain on rather than the starter dose. Add every recurring fee. Ask whether the quoted rate holds at renewal. Establish who compounds the medicine. And do not enter a prepaid term until you have held a maintenance dose for a cycle.
Those five steps take under an hour and reliably beat any amount of comparison reading, because they surface the information that comparison tables omit.
How this connects to what you will actually pay
Everything in this section resolves to one number: the all-in monthly cost at the dose you end up holding. Across the 17 programmes we price, that runs from $215 at the cheapest tracked route to several times that at the most expensive, for the identical molecule from the same category of licensed pharmacy.
6 of those programmes charge a recurring platform fee on top of medication and 11 hold one price at every strength. Those two facts explain most of the spread between advertised prices and real ones.
What we could verify and what we could not
11 of 32 tracked programmes have a price we read at the provider or manufacturer. The rest carry third-party figures we have not confirmed, or publish nothing we can interpret. Every table on this site marks which is which, and the comparison matrix lets you filter to verified prices only.
Where we have checked a third-party figure against a provider's own page, it has almost always moved — and it has moved upward. Promotional first months, prepaid bundle rates and medication-only figures that exclude memberships are all published as ongoing all-in prices. Assume an unverified figure is optimistic.
The regulatory distinction that sits under all of this
Compounded tirzepatide is not FDA-approved. FDA does not review compounded preparations for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed. The active molecule is the same as the branded product; the pre-market review is not, and the assurance comes instead from the pharmacy, the state board that licenses it and, at good operations, batch sterility and potency testing.
That is a legitimate framework rather than a loophole, and it is also why the price is lower. It puts more of the verification burden on the patient, which is the honest trade being made.
How this component moves the total
Across the 17 priced programmes, all-in cost at a maintenance dose spans $215 to $548. Most published comparisons explain that spread as differences in the medicine. It is not: the molecule is identical and frequently comes from the same category of licensed pharmacy.
It is overhead, clinical wrap, pharmacy sourcing and margin — plus the component this page isolates, which is invisible in a single headline figure.
The comparison this makes possible
Once each component is priced separately, two programmes with the same advertised number stop looking equivalent. 6 of 17 charge a mandatory recurring fee; 11 hold one price at every dose. A programme scoring badly on both can advertise the same figure as one scoring well on both.
That is why every table here states all-in cost at a named dose rather than a headline, and why some of our figures are higher than a programme's own homepage.
What to take from this page
One number to carry into any intake conversation: what you will pay in month six at 10 mg, including every fee. On the cheapest verified route that is $215. Anything materially below that band, from anyone, deserves the question of which of the four distortions is producing it.
Why the advertised month misleads
Isolating four weeks of a twelve-month course is the only way two programmes with different structures become comparable. Without it you are ranking marketing decisions rather than costs.
The spread this produces is not marginal. All-in cost at a maintenance dose runs $215 to $548 across the 17 programmes we price — for the identical molecule, frequently from the same category of licensed pharmacy. A reader comparing headline figures would conclude the market is tighter than it is, because the most aggressive fee structures advertise the lowest numbers.
The correction is unglamorous and worth more than any negotiation: price the dose you expect to hold, add every recurring charge, and compare that figure. On the cheapest verified route it is $215 a month.
What a programme's answer here reveals
A programme that can state this component in one sentence has a simple structure and usually knows it is competitive. One that needs three sentences has a structure worth reading closely — not necessarily a worse deal, but a more conditional one.
One that cannot answer before an intake has made a commercial choice: it wants your contact details and a medical history before you can compare it against anything. That is legal and common, and it is also the reason several programmes on this site carry a page explaining why we publish no figure for them.
Get the answer in writing. Almost every dispute that appears in public complaint records for this category traces back to a number that was never put in an email.
The failure mode this section is guarding against
Choosing a programme on a number that describes a different situation than yours. An entry price when you will hold maintenance. A medication figure when a membership applies. A promotional rate when you will renew. A prepaid rate when you will pay monthly.
Each of those errors is small individually and they compound in the same direction, which is why the cheapest-looking option in most published comparisons is the one most likely to be mis-stated.
Priced correctly, the cheapest verified route sits at $215 a month all-in at a maintenance dose. Anything materially below that band deserves the question of which distortion is producing it.
Why we publish the working rather than a verdict
A single recommendation is more useful to read and less useful to act on, because it hides the weighting. Two readers with different maintenance doses, different coverage and different tolerance for commitment should not receive the same answer.
So the tables carry the inputs and the rankings state their sort key. If you disagree with our weighting, take the file and weight it differently — that is what publishing it is for.
What would make this page wrong
A price change we have not captured, a programme leaving the market, or a figure we recorded from a third party that does not survive checking. All three have happened during 2026 and all three are logged when they do.
Prices here were captured 2026-08-05. Treat anything older than a month as needing a re-check against the provider's own page, which every programme record links directly.
Putting starting dose cost 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.
Open these rather than taking our word for it. Every one is a regulator, a trial registry, a label, an accreditor or the manufacturer.
Compare every programme on one screen
The matrix carries all-in price at every dose, fee structure, commitment terms, pharmacy disclosure and verification status for every programme we track.