About Semawise

Sofia Mendez, Patient Education Editor

I’ve been on semaglutide. I worked my way up the dose schedule, and I lived through the nausea, the plateaus and the monthly math that the marketing pages tend to skip. If you’re reading this because you’re about to start, or you’re trying to work out whether a $199 offer is really $199, I’ve been where you are.

Since finishing college I’ve kept track of the telehealth programs and compounding pharmacies that sell GLP-1 medication in the United States: what they charge, what that price actually covers, and the question almost none of them answer on their own, which is which pharmacy physically fills your prescription. That question is the reason our pharmacy tracker, Who made your semaglutide?, exists.

My job here is the reading most people don’t have time for: pulling the current FDA label, checking a claim against the actual trial results instead of the press release, re-checking prices, and reading the terms under a low headline price to find the twelve-week commitment hiding underneath.

Sofia is not a clinician, and nothing on Semawise is medical advice. It is patient-to-patient education, sourced to primary research and official labeling — take any decision about starting, stopping or changing a medication to a licensed clinician who knows your history.

Two programs can both advertise “$199 a month” and mean completely different things. One is a first-month price that climbs at your next dose step. The other is the price you keep paying, but only if you prepay for six months. One tells you which pharmacy fills your prescription; the other never does. One is brand-name Wegovy, and the other is a compounded version that isn’t FDA-approved. All of that is usually written down somewhere on the company’s own site, just rarely next to the headline price.

Semawise puts those details side by side, in plain language, so you can compare programs on what you’d actually pay and get. And when you sit down with a clinician, you’ll already know the right questions to ask.

• Guides to the medication itself. How semaglutide works, how dosing goes up, what side effects to expect, Wegovy versus Ozempic versus the pill, and what the STEP, SUSTAIN and SELECT trials found. They’re all in the research library.
• Honest provider reviews. One page per telehealth program: what it sells, what it charges and what that includes, the terms you’re agreeing to, and the trade-offs worth knowing before you sign up. Browse them on the reviews page.
• Side-by-side lists. Our semaglutide provider list, the cheapest semaglutide list sorted by price, and a comparison table you can filter.
• Free calculators. For cost, dose units and mixing compounded vials, on the tools page.

We start where you’d end up: the company’s own website. That’s the version of the offer you’ll actually be held to, so it’s the one we report.

• We read the pricing, FAQ and terms pages ourselves. In a browser, the way you would. We write down the price together with what it covers: which dose, whether it's compounded or brand-name, and whether it's a first month, a prepaid rate or what you'll keep paying. We don't use promo landing pages or other sites' price lists.
• Every price carries a date. You'll see the month we last checked it next to every price. We re-check partners and the providers people search for most at least every 60 days, so you can always tell how fresh a number is.
• We look up FDA warning letters. If the FDA has sent a company a warning letter, that company's review tells you, near the top, whether or not it pays us. It's something to weigh, and you deserve to see it.
• We note who fills the prescription. If a program names its pharmacy before you pay, we say so. If it doesn't, we say that too, and suggest you ask before ordering.
• We name the trade-offs. Every review has specific drawbacks, including reviews of companies that pay us. A review with nothing but good news isn't much help to you.

Our medical guides work differently: every claim about the drug is tied to a peer-reviewed study or the official FDA label, cited right where it’s made. The whole set of rules lives in our editorial policy.

Semawise is free to read, and we’d like to keep it that way. Some providers pay us a commission when you follow our link and become a customer. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and those providers are always labeled “Partner” so you know which is which.

No provider sees or approves a review before it goes up, and a commission doesn’t buy a softer write-up or a different price. If you want the full picture, including how partners appear on our lists, it’s all on how Semawise makes money.

• We won't give you medical advice. We can help you understand your options and ask better questions, but whether to start, stop or change a medication is a decision for you and a licensed clinician who knows your history. Our medical disclaimer says more.
• We won't pretend a doctor checked our pages. No doctor, pharmacist or nurse reviews what we publish, and we'll never suggest otherwise. If that changes, you'll see their real name and credentials.
• We won't sell you medication. We're not a pharmacy or a telehealth company. When you sign up with a program, your agreement is with them, and so is your care.
• We won't guess a price. If a company doesn't publish one, we tell you that and suggest you ask for it in writing before you commit.

Prices move fast in this market, and we’d much rather hear about a stale number from you than leave it up. Email ask@semawise.com and a real person will read it. The contact page has a few tips on what to include.

When we get something wrong, we fix the page, update its date, and note any meaningful change in our public corrections log, so you can see what changed and when.