Maintenance Dose Cost Calculator

Why years rather than months

The withdrawal evidence across this drug class shows substantial weight regain after stopping, so the honest planning horizon is years. A programme you cannot sustain produces interruption, and interruption is what undoes the result.

What the calculation assumes

The standard escalation: four weeks at 0.20.5 mg, four at 0.5 mg, then your chosen maintenance dose for the remainder. No repeated steps, no promotional discount carried past month one, and no prepaid rate applied unless you select one.

Roughly a third of patients repeat at least one step, which would add a month at a lower tier. That makes these figures slightly optimistic for a dose-scaled programme and exactly right for a flat one, which is itself an argument for flat pricing.

Why the answer changes when you change the dose

Dose-scaled programmes reprice as you climb; flat programmes do not. The cheapest programme at the 0.20.5 mg starter dose is frequently not the cheapest at 2.4 mg, and almost never the cheapest at 2.4 mg.

Because nobody knows their maintenance dose at intake, the defensible way to use this is to run it twice: once at the dose you expect and once at 2.4 mg. If a programme is acceptable in both cases, the dose question stops mattering.

What it cannot price

Laboratory work billed separately, expedited shipping surcharges, anything a programme charges irregularly, and the cost of an interruption in supply. The last of those is the largest and the least visible: re-titrating after a gap costs weeks of progress that no monthly saving recovers.

It also cannot price service quality. The cheapest tracked first year is about $1,740 through NexLife, and whether that is the right choice depends on things this tool does not measure.

Nothing here is transmitted

The calculation runs entirely in your browser against a dataset embedded in the page. There is no account, no email gate and no submission. Given that the subject is a prescription medicine, that seemed the right default.

What this calculator assumes

Four weeks at 0.20.5 mg, four at 0.5 mg, then your chosen maintenance dose. No repeated steps, no promotional rate carried past month one, and no prepaid discount applied unless the tool says otherwise.

Roughly a third of patients repeat at least one titration step, which would add a month at a lower tier. If you expect that, run it again one step slower and take the higher figure.

Where the numbers come from

The same file behind every table on this site: 32 programmes with all-in cost at five dose tiers, captured 2026-08-05, each carrying an evidence status. Prices marked verified were read on the provider's own page.

Nothing you enter is transmitted anywhere. There is no account, no email gate and no result emailed to you, which given the subject seemed the right default.

What it cannot tell you

Whether a programme ships on time, answers messages, or is clinically appropriate for you. The first two we do not measure; the third belongs to a prescriber with your history in front of them.

Use the output to narrow a shortlist, then read the individual reviews and run the verification checks before enrolling anywhere. The cheapest verified route currently sits at $145 a month all-in at a 2.4 mg maintenance dose.

Why this runs in your browser

No account, no email gate, nothing transmitted. Given that the subject is a prescription medicine and the inputs describe your dose and budget, that seemed the only defensible default.

It also means the result is not stored, so bookmark or screenshot anything you want to keep. The underlying dataset is downloadable if you would rather work in a spreadsheet.

What this calculator assumes

Four weeks at each step from 0.25 mg through 1.7 mg, then your chosen maintenance dose for the remainder. No repeated steps, no promotional rate carried past month one, and no prepaid discount unless the tool says otherwise.

A large share of patients hold at a step longer than four weeks. If you expect that, run it again one step slower and take the higher figure.

What it cannot tell you

Whether a programme ships on time, answers messages, or is clinically appropriate for you. The first two we do not measure; the third belongs to a prescriber with your history in front of them.

Use the output to narrow a shortlist, then read the individual reviews and run the verification checks before enrolling. The cheapest verified route currently sits at $145 a month all-in at a 2.4 mg maintenance dose.

Putting maintenance dose cost calculator 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 one to the exclusion of the others is how people end up on a cheap programme they abandon in month nine.

The frame: 20 programmes publish a capturable price, spanning $145 to $324 a month all-in at a 2.4 mg maintenance dose. 4 charge a mandatory recurring fee. 6 name the dispensing pharmacy before purchase.

What good looks like

A figure at a named dose, the pharmacy named, cancellation terms published before payment, and a plain statement that a compounded preparation is not FDA-approved. Four things, all cheap to publish, and a minority does all four.

The cheapest verified route sits at $145 a month, which establishes that disclosure and low price are not in tension.

What to ask before you pay

Five questions, all answerable in a short email, all before a medical history changes hands: the total at a maintenance dose including every fee; which pharmacy fills it; whether the prescriber is licensed in your state; the notice period to cancel and what is refundable; and which form of the active ingredient the pharmacy compounds from.

None requires clinical training to evaluate. The speed and specificity of the reply tells you how the operation is run, and it arrives before your money does.

The failure mode this section guards 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.

Each error is small alone and they compound in one 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 $145 a month all-in at a 2.4 mg maintenance dose.

Why we publish the working rather than a verdict

A single recommendation reads better and acts worse, 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 every ranking states its sort key. Disagree with our weighting and you can take the file and weight it yourself — which is what publishing it is for.

The number most people get wrong

The month-six figure. Almost everyone budgets from the first month, which on semaglutide describes four weeks at 0.25 mg — roughly 1 mg of active drug against the 9.6 mg a maintenance month delivers.

Ten of your first twelve months are spent at or near maintenance. A ranking sorted on the advertised month is sorting on about eight per cent of your year, and on a dose-scaled programme those are different numbers entirely.

Run the first-year calculator at the dose you expect to hold. It takes under a minute and it reorders the market for most people.

What a year of this actually looks like

Four weeks at 0.25 mg, four at 0.5 mg, four at 1 mg, four at 1.7 mg, then 2.4 mg for the remainder. Sixteen weeks of titration if nothing is repeated, and repeats are common rather than exceptional.

Budget two extra months at a lower tier and treat anything better as upside. Fix a weekly injection day, record dose and date, and diary the renewal date if an introductory rate applies — the reversion is where most complaints in this category begin.