Home How We Verify Prices
How We Verify Prices
Where each number comes from, how often we re-check, and what we do when a program hides its pricing.
Sources, in order of preference
First, the program's own public pricing page, captured with a date. Second, a written quote supplied to us or to a reader, with the reader's identifying details removed. Third, the program's response to a direct question from us. We do not use screenshots from social media or figures quoted on other comparison sites.
Gated pricing
A growing number of programs reveal price only after an intake form captures your contact details. Where that is the case, the provider page says so explicitly and the figure shown is labeled as provider-reported. We treat gated pricing as a transparency failure and it is scored as one.
Modeling dose-scaled pricing
Where a program publishes an entry price and a maximum but not each intermediate tier, we model the intermediate tiers linearly and label the figures as modeled. Where a program publishes every tier, we use the published figures. The distinction is stated on each provider page.
What you should still do
Get your own quote in writing before paying, specifically covering the price at your expected maintenance dose, every additional fee, and the renewal rate. Prices in this market move quickly and no comparison site, including this one, can guarantee a figure at the moment you check out.
How We Verify Prices: how this site is actually built
Every price table, ranking and comparison on this site is generated from a structured dataset rather than written by hand. That has one consequence worth stating plainly: rankings are computed, not chosen. We cannot quietly move a program up a table, because there is no table to edit — there is a dataset and a sort order, both published. The dataset is downloadable, and so is the formula for the disclosure score.
We currently track 44 routes to tirzepatide or semaglutide, priced at all six dose tiers, with entry pricing for compounded preparations starting at $133 per month. Every record carries the date it was last verified, because a price without a date is not a fact, it is a memory.
How We Verify Prices: what we will not do
We will not publish a price we cannot interpret. A figure advertised without the dose it applies to or the period it covers is left blank rather than estimated, and the blank is deliberate. We will not invent review counts, ratings or testimonials. We will not describe a compounded preparation as equivalent to an FDA-approved product, because FDA does not approve compounded drugs and does not review them for safety, effectiveness or quality before marketing. And we will not accept payment for placement, for position, or for the removal of a criticism.
How We Verify Prices: the disclosure score in full
The score measures what a program publishes before you pay — not the quality of its care, which we have no way to measure and will not pretend to. Its seven inputs and weights:
- Price published at all six dose tiers — 25 points.
- Price does not rise as the dose escalates — 20 points.
- Dispensing pharmacy or prescriber identified by name — 15 points.
- No separate recurring membership fee — 10 points.
- Prepaid term and its rate published — 10 points.
- State availability published — 10 points.
- Delivery formats published — 10 points.
All seven are derivable from the published dataset, which means anyone can recompute the number and get the same answer. If you think the weighting is wrong, take the data and weight it differently; that is why it is published.
How We Verify Prices: how we handle conflicting sources
Where two sources give different prices for the same program, we show both, name each source and its date, and state that neither has been independently verified. Choosing one silently would produce a cleaner table and a less honest one. Those conflicts appear as callouts on the affected program pages.
How We Verify Prices: commercial relationships
Some outbound links are commercial and may earn a commission. Commissions do not influence rankings, scores or published prices. Table order is computed from the published dataset rather than assigned, so the ranking can be reproduced from the files on the data page. Where we have no outbound link for a program, the page says so and suggests searching for it directly rather than following an advertisement. See the advertising disclosure for the full statement.
How We Verify Prices: corrections
Substantive errors — a wrong price, a misstated dose, an incorrect trial result, a ranking moved by bad data — are logged publicly with the date they were fixed. A site publishing prices in a fast-moving market that never records a correction is not being careful; it is not checking. Report anything you believe is wrong through contact with the page URL and, if you have one, a source.
How We Verify Prices: what this site is not
It is not medical advice, it is not a pharmacy, and it does not sell medication. Tirzepatide is a prescription medicine, and only a licensed clinician who has reviewed your history can decide whether it is appropriate for you. Compounded preparations are not FDA-approved. If a program guarantees approval before a clinician has seen your record, that is the clearest warning sign available in this market, and no price justifies it.
How We Verify Prices: why any of this is worth stating
Health-adjacent comparison sites are structurally conflicted. They are funded by commissions from the companies they rank, which creates an incentive to rank the highest-paying option first and to describe the arrangement vaguely. The defences against that are boring and checkable: publish the dataset, publish the formula, compute the ranking rather than choosing it, disclose the commercial relationships in the same typeface as everything else, and log corrections publicly with dates.
None of that proves good faith. It does make bad faith detectable, which is the most any publisher can honestly offer. If our ranking and our published dataset ever disagree, that is a bug or a lie, and either way you can find it without our help.
How We Verify Prices: how to check us
Download providers.json and sort it yourself by twelve-month cost. The order should match our tables. Recompute the disclosure score from the criteria and weights on the data page; the numbers should match the badges. Follow a trial citation to its registration record and confirm the endpoint we quoted was the primary one. Any mismatch is a reportable error and goes in the corrections log with the date it was fixed.
How We Verify Prices: the limits of what a website can do
We can tell you what a program publishes and what it costs at each dose. We cannot tell you whether its clinicians are good, whether its shipments arrive on time, or whether tirzepatide is appropriate for you. The first two we do not measure and will not guess at; the third belongs to a licensed clinician with your medical history in front of them. Compounded preparations are not FDA-approved and are not reviewed by FDA for safety, effectiveness or quality before marketing, and no amount of comparison shopping changes that distinction.
How We Verify Prices: the numbers behind the site
We track 44 routes to tirzepatide or semaglutide, priced at all six dose tiers, with compounded entry pricing from $133 to $399 a month and a cheapest twelve-month total of about $2,388. Every figure carries a verification date. Anything older than a month should be re-checked before you act on it, including by us.
People also ask about how we verify prices
What is how we verify prices?
How we verify prices is covered in full on this page, with the clinical detail drawn from the tirzepatide prescribing information and the published SURMOUNT and SURPASS trial program, and any price figures drawn from our tracked dataset and dated to their last verification.
Does how we verify prices apply to compounded tirzepatide as well as Zepbound?
The molecule is the same, so the clinical content applies to both. What differs is regulatory status, dose metering and price: compounded preparations are not FDA-approved, arrive as a multi-dose vial you measure yourself, and cost a fraction of the brand routes.
How much does how we verify prices cost per month in 2026?
Compounded tirzepatide runs from $133 per month at the entry dose across the 21 compounded programs we track. At a 10 mg maintenance dose the cheapest tracked route is Oak Longevity at $199 per month, or about $2,388 for a first year on the standard escalation. Brand Zepbound through manufacturer self-pay sits well above that and pharmacy retail well above again. Verified 2026-08-05.
Is how we verify prices FDA-approved?
Brand tirzepatide (Zepbound and Mounjaro) is FDA-approved. Compounded tirzepatide is not: FDA does not approve compounded drugs and does not review them for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed. The active molecule is the same; the regulatory review is not.
Primary sources
Clinical, dosing and regulatory statements on this page rest on the documents below. Links go to the publisher, not to a summary of it. Prices are not sourced here — they carry a verification date instead, and the reason is set out in the source ledger.
- ZEPBOUND (tirzepatide) full prescribing information — DailyMed, US National Library of Medicine. Dose ladder, contraindications, warnings, storage.
- FDA’s concerns with unapproved GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss — US Food and Drug Administration. Compounded GLP-1 risks, API import alert, cold-chain complaints.
- FD&C Act provisions that apply to human drug compounding — US Food and Drug Administration. Why a compounded preparation is lawful without being FDA-approved.
- Tirzepatide once weekly for the treatment of obesity (SURMOUNT-1) — N Engl J Med 2022;387:205-216. Registration NCT04184622. The weight-reduction and adverse-event figures used across this site.
- The full source ledger — every primary source, what it supports, the date we read it, and the claims we deliberately do not source.