Reference · 20 terms
GLP-1 pricing glossary
The vocabulary this site uses, defined precisely. Several of these terms are used loosely elsewhere in this market — "all-inclusive" and "compounded" especially — and the imprecision is usually doing commercial work.
- 503A pharmacy
- A compounding pharmacy that prepares medications against individual patient-specific prescriptions. Does not produce FDA-approved products.
- 503B outsourcing facility
- A facility registered with the FDA that may compound in bulk and is inspected against a stricter manufacturing standard than a 503A pharmacy. Still does not produce FDA-approved products.
- All-in monthly cost
- The medication plus every mandatory recurring fee — membership amortised monthly, required shipping, and any non-optional consultation charge — quoted at the maintenance dose. The only basis on which programs that bundle differently can be fairly compared.
- Bulks list
- The FDA list of bulk drug substances that 503B outsourcing facilities may compound from. Semaglutide, tirzepatide and liraglutide have never been on it, and the FDA has proposed keeping them off permanently.
- Category floor
- The cheapest all-in monthly figure among rankable compounded programs for a medication. The denominator in the Value Score's price term.
- Certificate of analysis
- A lab document stating a specific lot's identity, potency and sterility testing results. The main paper check available to a consumer buying a compounded product.
- Compounded medication
- A preparation made by a pharmacy rather than an approved manufacturer. Not FDA approved, not a generic, and not reviewed for safety, effectiveness or quality before dispensing.
- Dose ladder
- The full sequence of doses a program prices. A program that publishes a price at every rung has a complete ladder; most publish gaps, which this site leaves blank rather than interpolating.
- Dose-flat pricing
- One price at every dose, so titrating upward costs nothing extra. The opposite of dose-tiered pricing, where the price rises with the dose and the advertised figure describes the bottom of the ladder.
- Evidence status
- How well this site knows a figure: verified (captured at checkout by our desk), provider-stated, operator-stated, third-party reported, or unrankable. Printed beside every price and weighted in the Value Score.
- GLP-1 receptor agonist
- A class of medication that mimics the glucagon-like peptide-1 hormone to reduce appetite and slow gastric emptying. Semaglutide is one; tirzepatide also targets GIP, and retatrutide additionally targets glucagon.
- Maintenance dose
- The dose most people settle at after titration. This site quotes tirzepatide at 10 mg per week and semaglutide at 2.4 mg per week, because quoting a starting dose describes four weeks rather than a year.
- Medicare GLP-1 Bridge
- A time-limited Medicare programme running 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2027 covering injectable weight-loss medication for eligible beneficiaries, with a maximum $50 monthly copay.
- Prepaid term
- A multi-month plan paid up front at a lower monthly equivalent. Genuinely cheaper and genuinely less reversible; read it beside the refund policy.
- Prior authorisation
- An insurer's requirement that a prescriber document a qualifying diagnosis and criteria before a medication is covered. Most denials are documentation mismatches rather than clinical judgements.
- Research-grade peptide
- A substance sold labelled 'not for human consumption' or 'for research use only', outside any prescribing or pharmacy system. Not a cheaper version of a medicine.
- Salt form
- A chemically modified version of a molecule — semaglutide sodium or acetate, for example — that the FDA has warned is not the same substance as the base molecule in approved products.
- Titration
- The stepped increase from a starting dose to a treatment dose, typically about four weeks at each step. Tirzepatide has six steps from 2.5 to 15 mg per week; semaglutide has five from 0.25 to 2.4 mg.
- Unrankable
- A program that publishes no maintenance-dose price and therefore cannot enter a like-for-like ranking. It stays in the database with the reason stated.
- Value Score
- This site's published 0–100 formula: 70 points scaled by price against the category floor, 15 by evidence status, 10 for dose-flat pricing, 5 for no membership fee. Recomputed at every build and re-runnable from the public dataset.