Nearly every price on this site is for a compounded product. A handful of sellers also list branded Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound or Mounjaro, usually at several times the figure. That is not one product at two prices, and the difference is worth understanding before treating the gap as a bargain.
What compounding is
A compounding pharmacy prepares a medication to order against a prescription. It is a long-established and lawful part of medicine, intended for cases where an approved product does not suit a particular patient — a different strength, or a formulation without an allergen.
What it is not is an approval pathway. Compounded drugs are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy or quality before they are dispensed. No agency has checked that a given vial contains what the label says, at the potency stated, free of contamination. That review is exactly what separates the two columns above.
What the trials studied
Every result on the evidence page — the −14.9%, the −20.9%, the cardiovascular reduction — came from trials of the branded products at labeled doses, manufactured under the inspection regime those approvals require. Those findings describe the molecule as supplied in the trial.
Whether a compounded preparation performs identically has not been established, in either direction. It may well. It has not been shown, and a seller implying otherwise is making a claim nobody has tested. The same caveat applies to the side-effect rates and to the withdrawal trials.
Why the price gap is so large
Chiefly because the branded price reflects a patent, a development program and a supply chain built to a regulatory standard, while the compounded price reflects a pharmacy preparing a peptide. Both are real costs of doing genuinely different things.
The practical consequence for comparison shopping is narrow but important: never compare one seller’s compounded price against another’s branded one. Several sellers list both side by side, and the two figures answer different questions. Our boards rank the compounded figure and say so.
What to ask a compounded seller
The single most useful question is which pharmacy prepares the product, because that is what actually determines what is in the vial. Most sellers on this roster do not publish it. A seller that names its pharmacy has told you something checkable; a seller that will not has told you something too.
The second is what dose the monthly price buys. Without it, two monthly figures are not comparable quantities at all. Where sellers do publish, the semaglutide board and the tirzepatide board carry the figures side by side.