If you're reading this, there's a decent chance you didn't set out to become a peptide researcher. You started on a GLP-1 prescription, and at some point the monthly cost or the pharmacy shortage or the insurance fight got old enough that you went looking for another way to keep doing what was already working.
What else is in this class
Most people only ever meet one of these. You were prescribed whatever your doctor's office happened to work with, and that was the whole picture you got.
There are three worth knowing about. Semaglutide is the one most people start on. Tirzepatide works on a second receptor and, for a lot of people, does more at a lower dose. Retatrutide adds a third receptor, and it's the newest and least settled of them.
They are not interchangeable, and the differences between them matter more than the price does. We took the first two apart side by side: what each one does, who tends to do better on which, and where the trade-offs sit.
Once you know which one you're asking about, the cost question gets a lot easier to answer.
That's the whole reason this newsletter exists, not to talk you into anything, just to put the real numbers in front of you so you're choosing instead of guessing.
The middle of the market came down
Six weeks ago the typical tirzepatide listing in our index sat at $3.83 per milligram. Today it's $2.75. Semaglutide moved the same direction over the same stretch, from $7.00 down to $6.17.
Where that came from is the interesting part. The cheapest tirzepatide didn't get any cheaper, the most expensive didn't either, and no new vendors turned up. Both ends of the range sat exactly where they were. What moved is everything in between, the mid-priced shops sliding down toward the cheap ones. The typical vial also grew from 20 mg to 30 mg over those same weeks, and per-milligram always falls as the vial gets bigger, so some of this is that rather than anyone cutting a price.
Nothing about you changed. What changed is how many places will sell it to you.
A prescription has one price. You can't shop it, you can't compare it, and when it goes up you find out at the counter. This is the opposite of that. Eighteen prices for semaglutide, twenty-one for tirzepatide, and every one of them moves week to week.
A short buy note. Retatrutide had a rough week in the news. Eli Lilly filed six federal lawsuits against sellers and the FDA reiterated its position on unapproved sales. We wrote up what actually happened and what it means if you're researching it, including the vendor-vetting piece that matters most right now: our full report on the Lilly lawsuits.
Until next Saturday.