By JOHN SAMARAS
Eli Lilly sells a month of 10mg Zepbound for $449 through LillyDirect, its own pharmacy. That price holds only if you refill within 45 days of your last fill. Refill on day 46 and the same box is $699. The $250 is a late fee.
Here are the two ways to buy branded Zepbound that publish a cash price. Both ship Lilly’s single-dose vials from Lilly’s own pharmacy.
LifeMD prescribes Zepbound and fills it through the same LillyDirect. It charges $349 to $549 for the drug where Lilly charges $299 to $449, and bills $149 a month on top of that.
Zepbound is tirzepatide. Compounded semaglutide is a different molecule on a different price ladder. Of the 15 programs I track that dispense compounded GLP-1, five name the pharmacy that makes it. Ten do not.
| Where you buy it | Published cash price | Fee on top |
| Lilly direct, self-pay | $299 at 2.5mg, $399 at 5mg, $449 at 7.5mg and above | none |
| LifeMD | $349 to $549 by dose | $149 a month, $39 first month |
FDA wrote to three of those sellers on February 20. It told Strut to stop selling its compounded drugs as “Generic Zepbound, Mounjaro.” It told Medvi to drop “Same active ingredient as Wegovy and Ozempic.” For Ivim the problem was the label. Printing “Ivim” on the vial implied Ivim had compounded the drug. It had not.
All three letters are about what the sellers wrote on a page.
I price these programs every Monday, and the Internet Archive holds what they charged before I started, so the letters have a before and an after. Strut advertised $149 for its starting-dose compounded semaglutide injection a month before its letter and publishes $149 today. Medvi has published $299 for compounded semaglutide refills at every Monday check since May 25.
None of the three letters required a program to name the pharmacy that fills the order.
John Samaras is the founder and editor of GLP Chart, which tracks what every major GLP-1 program charges, checked every Monday, and publishes its methodology. No program pays to be listed or ranked.
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