Semaglutide cost without insurance

The short answer

In the CMS NADAC file dated 16 September 2026, a Wegovy 2.4 mg single-dose pen cost a retail community pharmacy $326.52. At one injection a week that is $1,415 a month and $16,979 a year of drug, nothing else included. Across every presentation with a single stated dose, a month of semaglutide at acquisition runs $1,007 to $1,416 — Ozempic tablets 1.5 mg daily at the low end and Wegovy injection 0.25 mg at the high. Both of those are starting doses, which is the clue: the $408 a month between them is the brand and the route, not the amount of drug. Now the ceiling: the 10 telehealth GLP-1 monthlies recorded in our directory run $79.99 to $260.00 a month — and every one of them is BELOW the floor, the dearest by $747 a month. That is not a discount and it is the single most useful thing on this page. A subscription priced under what a pharmacy paid is not supplying the branded product at that price; it is a different transaction, and our directory records what each provider states rather than which. Neither figure is a price you can pay, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

The figures, and where each one comes from

What this page will not tell you

Each of these is missing because it could not be sourced, not because it was overlooked. Where a figure is unpublished, this page says so rather than estimating it.

• What your pharmacy will charge you in cash.

  NADAC is an acquisition cost — what the pharmacy paid its wholesaler, before the dispensing fee and before margin. No federal or commercial dataset publishes what pharmacies then charge a cash payer for a GLP-1; the same NDC is quoted hundreds of dollars apart by two counters in one town. We can cite the first number and we decline to average the second into something that would look like a fact.

• What compounded semaglutide costs, at any point in the chain.

  Compounded preparations have no National Drug Code, so they appear in no NADAC file and in no other published acquisition dataset. There is also no approved concentration for compounded semaglutide — the strength is created when the diluent is added rather than being a property of what shipped — so there is no milligrams-per-millilitre to price against and no labelled container to divide by. Substituting the branded figure would understate a compounded subscription by roughly a factor of five, and inventing a compounding cost would be worse. Nothing on this page implies a cheaper equivalent of an approved product exists.

• A second, independent federal reference price.

  Our TRT cost page carries one: NADAC and the Medicare Part B payment limit for HCPCS J1071 reach almost the same per-milligram figure by unrelated methods, which is what makes it convincing. That check is unavailable here. We searched the October 2026 Medicare Part B Drug Payment Limit file for this page — it carries J1071 for testosterone cypionate and carries no HCPCS code for semaglutide, Ozempic, Wegovy or Rybelsus, because Part B pays for drugs a clinician administers and semaglutide is self-administered under Part D. One federal number, not two, and we are not going to dress a single source up as corroboration.

• A manufacturer direct-pay or savings-card price.

  Manufacturer cash-pay programmes for semaglutide exist, change their terms quarterly, and are conditional on eligibility criteria that differ by product and by indication. We could not source a figure and a set of conditions we would still stand behind in a month, so none is printed. If you are considering one, get the price and the eligibility rules from the manufacturer directly on the day you buy.

• A rate for the Wegovy FlexTouch pen or the single-dose syringes.

  Section 3 of the Wegovy label lists three presentation families — single-dose pens, single-dose syringes, and a single-patient-use FlexTouch pen holding "9.6 mg/3 mL (3.2 mg/mL)" that "delivers four 2.4 mg/0.75 mL doses". Only the single-dose pens appear in the 16 September 2026 NADAC file. That matters more than a missing row usually would: on tirzepatide the same file prices one injection in two devices and the multi-dose device is more than twice as cheap. The equivalent comparison for semaglutide cannot be made, and we are not going to assume the saving transfers.

• A discount-card or GoodRx price.

  Those resolve per ZIP code, per pharmacy and per card, and change without notice. A single figure printed here would be wrong for most readers on the day they read it and stale by the following week. We print none, and we do not average several into one.

• What semaglutide costs with insurance.

  This page is the cash case, by name. With coverage the bill turns on which indication is being treated, then on a specific plan's formulary tier, its prior-authorisation and step-therapy rules, and whether weight management is an excluded benefit at all — which for many employer plans it is. None of that is a national number and we will not invent an average copay.

Why the pen is what you are buying

There is no authoritative public retail price for semaglutide. Cash prices move by pharmacy, by discount card and by week; manufacturer direct programmes change their terms; a telehealth subscription folds a consultation, a prescription and sometimes the medication into one figure and does not say how it splits. One number in this market is published on a schedule with a methodology document: CMS contracts a monthly survey of what retail community pharmacies paid on invoice and publishes the National Average Drug Acquisition Cost weekly, per NDC. Every figure on this page is read from the file dated 16 September 2026, and the date is repeated in every caption because NADAC is republished every week and a citation to a moving dataset without a date is not a citation.

The container is the unit, not the milligram, and that is a fact about the product rather than a choice we made. A semaglutide dose is not a volume you draw — it is whatever the pen is built to deliver. So the arithmetic is the NADAC rate multiplied by the fill section 3 of the label states, divided by the number of administrations the same section says the container delivers. Do that across the whole range and the first finding appears immediately: every Wegovy single-dose pen in this file, from the 0.25 mg starter to the 7.2 mg high dose, sits within $0.87 of every other. The dose changes by a factor of 28.8 and the price does not move.

Which makes dollars-per-milligram close to meaningless here, and the table below says so in the cells rather than in a footnote. For Wegovy's own pens the per-milligram figure runs from $1,306.73 at the starting dose down to $45.25 at 7.2 mg — a factor of 28.88x for a product that has not changed. For the tablets there is no per-milligram figure at all: NADAC prices them per EA, one tablet, and every Wegovy tablet from 1.5 mg to 25 mg costs within $0.11 of every other. Dividing those two by their strengths produces numbers seventeen times apart that describe nothing, so the column is left empty and the reason is printed in it.

The second finding is that the brand on the box moves the price more than the molecule in it. All of these are semaglutide. A month of Ozempic injection at 1 mg is $1,079 at acquisition; a month of Wegovy at 2.4 mg is $1,415; a month of Rybelsus at 14 mg is $1,009 and a month of Wegovy tablets at 25 mg is $1,320. The labels differ in indication, not in chemistry — and the oral products are not interchangeable with each other either: the tablet label states in as many words that "RYBELSUS and OZEMPIC tablets are not substitutable on a mg-to-mg basis."

There is no generic, and the file says so in a column nobody reads. NADAC prints a "Corresponding Generic Drug NADAC Per Unit" beside any brand row with a generic on the market. It is populated on 0 of the 19 Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus rows in the 16 September 2026 file, and on 3 rows in the same file — all of them liraglutide, a different and older GLP-1 that does have a generic. The blank is therefore a finding rather than a gap in the data. Until it fills, nothing structural about these figures changes and no amount of shopping moves the floor.

Which brings the two halves together. The 10 telehealth GLP-1 monthlies we have recorded run $79.99 to $260.00, and the cheapest approved semaglutide month in the file is $1,007. Every listing is below the floor rather than above it, which has exactly one implication and it is arithmetic rather than accusation: the subscription price is not buying the branded product at that price. It may be dispensing a compounded preparation, it may bill the medication separately, or the fee may cover consultation and membership only. The useful thing to take from this page is not a number to expect — it is a question to ask a provider before you compare two subscriptions on price.

Every approved semaglutide presentation at pharmacy acquisition cost

What a retail community pharmacy reported paying, from the CMS NADAC file dated 16 September 2026, joined to the container facts in section 3 of each FDA label. Not a price you can pay — see the note beneath the table.

Read down the "per injection or tablet" column and the finding is that it barely moves. Every Wegovy single-dose pen from 0.25 mg to 7.2 mg is within $0.87 of the same figure; every Ozempic multi-dose pen delivers four injections at close to $248.92 each whichever strength it is; and the 10 tablet rows span only $10.40 across a 1.5 mg to 25 mg range. The last column is therefore empty for every tablet — NADAC prices those per EA and a per-milligram figure derived from one describes nothing — and is shown for the pens only so the size of the distortion is visible. The 2 mg/3 mL Ozempic pen appears twice because section 3 gives it two stated patterns, and the initiation pattern delivers six injections at two different strengths, so it carries no single per-milligram figure either.

One molecule, four brand names, four different monthly costs

Each product at a dosage its own label names, from the same 16 September 2026 file. Every row is semaglutide. What separates them is the indication the label was approved for and the device it arrives in, not the chemistry.

The oral products are the cheapest month here and the injectable weight-management product is the dearest, which is the reverse of how these are usually described. Two cautions before anyone acts on that. The routes are not clinically interchangeable and the doses are not equivalent — the tablet label states that "RYBELSUS and OZEMPIC tablets are not substitutable on a mg-to-mg basis", and it also states "Swallow tablets whole. Do not split, crush, chew or dissolve in any solution", which closes the obvious way someone might try to make a tablet cheaper. And an acquisition cost is not a price: nothing here says a pharmacy, a plan or a manufacturer programme passes any of the difference on.

What our recorded telehealth listings charge against the published floor

Every GLP-1 monthly in our provider directory that states a per-month period, ordered by price because that is how a price is looked up. The floor is $1,007 — what a pharmacy paid for a month of Ozempic tablets 1.5 mg daily, the cheapest steady-state semaglutide presentation in the 16 September 2026 file.

Ordered by listed price because that is how you look a price up, and the difference column measures distance from a published acquisition cost rather than quality. Two things this table is doing. It applies the same per-month period guard our cost tooling uses everywhere: a listing is charted as a monthly only where it states a per-month period, which is why Roman and Sesame Care appear with no figure — Roman's only price-shaped field in this category is "$15", an entry price for a different treatment, and charting it here is precisely the error the guard was written after. The floor it subtracts from is the lowest steady-state month of any approved route, which is an oral one; it excludes the Ozempic initiation pen, because six injections at two different strengths out of one container is not a month of treatment at a dose. Using the cheapest weekly INJECTION instead — Ozempic injection 1 mg at $1,079 a month — would widen every gap below, which is why the lower figure is the one used. And it does one subtraction: every recorded subscription, from $79.99 to $260.00 a month, sits below even the lower floor. That permits exactly one conclusion, and it is arithmetic: the money is not buying branded semaglutide at that price. It may be a compounded preparation, the medication may be billed separately, or the figure may cover consultation and membership only. Our directory records what each provider states and does not record which. Verify the current price and what it includes with the provider before you buy.

Frequently asked questions

How much does semaglutide cost without insurance?

There is no single number and anyone who gives you one has quoted one pharmacy on one day. What can be stated is the floor. In the CMS NADAC file dated 16 September 2026, a Wegovy 2.4 mg pen cost a retail pharmacy $326.52, which at one injection a week is $1,415 a month and $16,979 a year. The cheapest approved semaglutide presentation of any route in the same file is $1,007 a month. Your cash price is above that, and how far above depends on the pharmacy's markup, your plan and any manufacturer programme.

Why is a 0.25 mg Wegovy pen the same price as a 7.2 mg one?

Because the pen is what is priced, not the drug in it. Every Wegovy single-dose pen in the 16 September 2026 file sits within $0.87 of the same acquisition cost across the whole 0.25 mg to 7.2 mg range, and the same pattern holds for Ozempic's pens and for every tablet in the class. Two consequences worth knowing. Dollars-per-milligram is nearly useless here — for Wegovy it runs from $1,306.73 per mg at the starting dose to $45.25 at 7.2 mg, a factor of 28.88x — and the titration weeks cost exactly as much as maintenance, so the cheap early months people budget for do not exist.

Why can you state an acquisition cost but not a cash price?

Because one is published and the other is not. CMS contracts a monthly survey of invoice prices paid by retail community pharmacies and publishes the average weekly, per NDC, with a methodology document. What a pharmacy then charges a cash payer is set counter by counter, is reported to nobody, and varies by hundreds of dollars within a single town for the same NDC. We can cite the first. We decline to average the second into a figure that would look like a fact, which is why this page prints a list of what it will not tell you rather than filling the gaps.

Is a semaglutide subscription at $199 a month a discount on Wegovy?

No, and the arithmetic settles it without anyone having to speculate about a particular company. A month of Wegovy 2.4 mg cost a pharmacy $1,415 in the 16 September 2026 file, and the cheapest approved semaglutide month of any route was $1,007. Every GLP-1 monthly recorded in our directory — $79.99 to $260.00 — is below both. A price below what the pharmacy paid cannot be that product. It may be a compounded preparation, the medication may be billed separately, or the fee may be for the consultation and membership. Ask which before comparing two subscriptions on the monthly.

Is there a generic Ozempic or generic Wegovy?

No. NADAC prints a "Corresponding Generic Drug NADAC Per Unit" column beside any brand row that has a generic on the market, and across all 19 Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus rows in the 16 September 2026 file it is empty. In the same file it is populated on 3 rows, all liraglutide, which does have a generic — so the blank is a real signal rather than a gap in the data. Compounded semaglutide is not a generic: a generic is an approved product that has demonstrated bioequivalence to the brand, and compounded preparations are neither approved nor required to demonstrate it.

How much does compounded semaglutide cost to make?

No figure here, and be sceptical of anyone who gives you one. Compounded preparations have no National Drug Code, so they are absent from NADAC and from every other published acquisition dataset, and there is no approved concentration for compounded semaglutide, so there is no milligrams-per-millilitre to price against. FDA states that "compounded drugs are not FDA approved. This means the agency does not review compounded drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed", and it lists "offers medicine at deep discounts or prices that seem too good to be true" among its telehealth warning signs. What can be said is what the approved products cost a pharmacy, which is in the tables above.

Does Medicare publish a second price for semaglutide the way it does for testosterone?

No, and we checked rather than assumed. Our TRT cost page leans on the fact that two federal datasets agree: CMS NADAC puts testosterone cypionate at $0.0183 a milligram at acquisition and the Medicare Part B payment limit for HCPCS J1071 puts it at $0.023. The October 2026 Part B Drug Payment Limit file carries that J1071 line and carries no HCPCS code for semaglutide, Ozempic, Wegovy or Rybelsus at all, because Part B pays for drugs a clinician administers and semaglutide is self-administered under Part D. So this page has one federal source rather than two, and it says so in the refusals rather than implying corroboration it does not have.

What does this page not tell me?

Seven things, listed on the page under their own heading rather than quietly omitted: what your pharmacy will charge in cash, what compounded semaglutide costs at any point in the chain, a second independent federal reference price, a manufacturer direct-pay figure, a rate for the Wegovy FlexTouch pen or the single-dose syringes (both are on the label, neither is in the 16 September 2026 NADAC file), a discount-card price, and what any of it costs with insurance. Each is missing because it could not be sourced, and each entry names the dataset that does not exist.

Sources

1. [1]
   CMS / Medicaid.gov — Retail Price Survey, the programme that produces the NADAC files every figure on this page is computed from

   These pricing files, entitled the NADAC (National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) files, provide state Medicaid agencies with covered outpatient drug prices by averaging survey invoice prices from retail community pharmacies across the United States.

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

2. [2]
   NADAC weekly reference file, 16 September 2026 — the semaglutide rows charted above (CSV, about 92 MB; the quoted line is the Wegovy 2.4 mg pen, filtered on an As of Date of 09/16/2026)

   WEGOVY 2.4 MG/0.75 ML PEN,00169452414,435.35779,08/19/2026,ML,C/I,N,"1, 5",B,,,09/16/2026

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

3. [3]
   WEGOVY (semaglutide) injection and tablets — full US prescribing information, Novo Nordisk, NDA 215256 and NDA 218316. Section 3 Dosage Forms and Strengths, from which every container fill above is taken. DailyMed set id ee06186f-2aa3-4990-a760-757579d8f77b

   0.25 mg/0.5 mL, 0.5 mg/0.5 mL, 1 mg/0.5 mL, 1.7 mg/0.75 mL, 2.4 mg/0.75 mL, or 7.2 mg/0.75 mL (WEGOVY HD) in a single-dose pen

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

4. [4]
   OZEMPIC (semaglutide) injection — full US prescribing information, Novo Nordisk, NDA 209637. Section 3, which states how many injections each multi-dose pen delivers. DailyMed set id adec4fd2-6858-4c99-91d4-531f5f2a2d79

   Injection: 2 mg/3 mL (0.68 mg/mL) for 4 doses of 0.25 mg and 2 doses of 0.5 mg or 4 doses of 0.5 mg, 4 mg/3 mL (1.34 mg/mL) for 4 doses of 1 mg, and 8 mg/3 mL (2.68 mg/mL) for 4 doses of 2 mg in single-patient-use pens

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

5. [5]
   RYBELSUS and OZEMPIC (oral semaglutide) tablets — full US prescribing information, Novo Nordisk, NDA 213051. Section 2, for the once-daily cadence the tablet rows are costed at and for the two statements quoted beneath the brand table. DailyMed set id 27f15fac-7d98-4114-a2ec-92494a91da98

   RYBELSUS and OZEMPIC tablets are not substitutable on a mg-to-mg basis.

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

6. [6]
   CMS — October 2026 Medicare Part B Drug Payment Limit File (ZIP). Searched for semaglutide, Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus in the section 508 CSV: the file carries no HCPCS code for any of them. The quoted line is the testosterone cypionate entry that does exist, which is the comparison this page declines to make

   J1071,Inj testosterone cypionate,1 MG,0.023,20.000

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

7. [7]
   Alpha Health Finder online GLP-1 provider directory — the listed monthly plans charted above, recorded by us from each provider and filtered by a per-month period guard

   Maximus "Semaglutide Weight Loss" $79.99/mo through MangoRx "Weight Loss (Slim)" $260.00/mo, as recorded in src/data/online-providers.ts

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

8. [8]
   U.S. Food and Drug Administration — FDA’s Concerns with Unapproved GLP-1 Drugs Used for Weight Loss, on compounded semaglutide and on what a price too far below the approved product implies

   However, compounded drugs are not FDA approved. This means the agency does not review compounded drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed.

   Retrieved 2026-09-20

Next steps

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Other cost references

• Tirzepatide cost without insuranceThe published acquisition floor for every approved tirzepatide presentation, the same injection priced twice, and the recorded telehealth ceiling.
• TRT cost without insuranceThe published floor for testosterone cypionate, the listed ceiling for online TRT, and the gap between them.
• ED medication costThe published floor for all four ED tablets, the recorded listings, and the fact that generic does not mean cheap.
• Finasteride costThe published floor for finasteride, the brand rate beside it, and what eight recorded hair-loss plans actually charge.
• Testosterone lab panel costThe published federal rate for each test on a men’s panel, and why no marketed panel can be compared to it.