GLP-1 Microdosing Chart: Semaglutide & Tirzepatide

Search for a "GLP-1 microdosing chart" and you'll find tidy tables of milligrams and weekly schedules for both **semaglutide** (Ozempic, Wegovy) and **tirzepatide** (Mounjaro, Zepbound), shared in forums, on social media, and in some compounding-pharmacy marketing. This page collects what those charts actually claim for each drug, places them next to the real FDA-approved dose ladders, and is honest about the part most of them skip: **there is no clinical trial of intentional GLP-1 microdosing, no recognized medical protocol for it, and the practice carries specific, documented risks.** What follows is a description of what people do — it is **not medical advice and not a recommendation to do it.**

We cover semaglutide and tirzepatide together here because the microdose logic, and the dangers, are nearly identical across the two. If you only care about tirzepatide, our tirzepatide-specific dose chart goes deeper on that drug alone.

First, what "microdose" even means here

There is no medical definition of a GLP-1 "microdose." In practice the word describes a self-selected amount **below the lowest FDA-approved starting dose** of one of these drugs — a rung the label never lists and no trial ever tested. Both semaglutide and tirzepatide are GLP-1 receptor agonists (tirzepatide also activates the GIP receptor), and both work largely by slowing gastric emptying and acting on central appetite circuits¹. The only clinical literature that addresses microdosing directly is **cautionary**: it describes a trend driven by patient anecdotes that surfaced amid GLP-1 compounding restrictions, and it warns specifically about dosing errors, pen manipulation, medication sharing, and unregulated sourcing⁷. So treat every chart below as *what people report doing*, not a validated regimen. The full evidence picture is in our pillar, microdosing GLP-1: what the evidence actually shows.

The only charts with evidence: the FDA dose ladders

Before any microdose scheme, it helps to know the real approved schedules — because every microdose chart is defined relative to them. Both drugs start low and step up slowly so the gut can adapt.

**Semaglutide (Wegovy, for weight management)** titrates over months¹⁰:

- **Weeks 1–4:** 0.25 mg once weekly - **Weeks 5–8:** 0.5 mg once weekly - **Weeks 9–12:** 1 mg once weekly - **Weeks 13–16:** 1.7 mg once weekly - **Week 17 onward (maintenance):** 2.4 mg once weekly

**Tirzepatide (Zepbound, for weight management)** uses a similar stepped ladder¹¹:

- **Weeks 1–4:** 2.5 mg once weekly (a starting dose, not maintenance) - **Weeks 5–8:** 5 mg once weekly - **Then in 2.5 mg steps no sooner than every 4 weeks:** 7.5 → 10 → 12.5 → 15 mg - **Maintenance options:** 5, 10, or 15 mg once weekly; **maximum 15 mg**

Two things matter. First, the lowest *approved* amounts — 0.25 mg semaglutide and 2.5 mg tirzepatide — are temporary starting rungs, not destinations. Second, both drugs have long half-lives (about a week for semaglutide, roughly 5 days for tirzepatide), which is why they're dosed once weekly¹⁰¹¹. A "microdose" sits **below** these starting rungs.

The microdose schemes people circulate

The charts shared online take a few recurring forms. We're reproducing the *patterns* — not endorsing any number — so you can recognize them.

**1. Fractional weekly dosing.** The most common scheme takes a fraction of the lowest starting dose and often "holds" there instead of titrating up. For semaglutide people describe amounts like 0.1–0.25 mg weekly; for tirzepatide, amounts like 0.5–1.5 mg weekly. The pitch is gentler side effects and lower cost. There's no trial of either, and dose-response data (below) predict they do less.

**2. Split or more-frequent dosing.** Some divide a weekly amount into two or three smaller injections per week, claiming "smoother levels." But both drugs' week-long half-lives already produce steady weekly exposure¹⁰¹¹, so this is a preference, not a pharmacologic necessity — and it multiplies the number of hands-on measurements, which is where errors happen.

**3. "Units" off an insulin syringe.** Because microdosing is almost always done from a **compounded multi-dose vial**, charts translate milligrams into "units" on a U-100 insulin syringe. This is the single most error-prone step in the whole practice: the conversion depends entirely on the vial's concentration (mg per mL), which varies between compounders and is sometimes mislabeled or uncertain. A chart that says "draw 5 units" is meaningless — and dangerous — unless the exact concentration is known and verified.

**4. Pen "clicks."** Some try to dial fractional amounts out of a prefilled pen by counting clicks or partial turns. These pens are **not designed for fractional dosing**, and manipulating them is exactly the "pen manipulation" the cautionary literature flags as a source of dosing error⁷.

We dig into whether any of this produces results in does microdosing GLP-1 actually work.

What the dose-response data predict these charts will do

Here's the inconvenient part for every microdose chart: the best dose-finding evidence says **less drug does less**. The clearest single source is a phase 2 dose-ranging trial of semaglutide for weight loss, where mean weight loss scaled cleanly with dose²:

- Placebo: about −2.3% - 0.05 mg: about −6.0% - 0.1 mg: about −8.6% - 0.2 mg: about −11.6% - 0.3 mg: about −11.2% - 0.4 mg: about −13.8%

At the full approved dose, semaglutide 2.4 mg weekly produced about 15% mean weight loss versus roughly 2% on placebo³. Tirzepatide shows the same gradient in its own trials: in SURMOUNT-1 the 5, 10, and 15 mg tiers produced roughly 15–21% weight loss, with higher tiers doing more⁴, and the head-to-head SURPASS-2 trial showed effects climbing with dose⁵. A microdose sits at the very **bottom** of these curves. So the honest read of any GLP-1 microdose chart is that it describes a **smaller-effect** regimen, not a shortcut to full-dose results. We walk through the numbers in GLP-1 dose-response: why lower doses do less.

There's a second catch for the "tiny maintenance dose" idea: the benefit tracks ongoing, adequate exposure. In the STEP 4 trial, people who stopped semaglutide regained weight while those who continued held their loss⁶ — which suggests a dose low enough to be a "microdose" may be too low to reach or hold a meaningful effect in the first place.

Where the real risk lives in these charts

A lower number on a chart is not the same as lower risk. Two distinct risk layers stack up, and they apply to both drugs.

**The drug-class risks don't vanish at low doses.** A large real-world analysis linked GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight loss to elevated risk of pancreatitis, bowel obstruction, and gastroparesis⁸. Nausea, vomiting, and constipation are mechanistic consequences of GLP-1 action (slowed gastric emptying)¹, not purely a function of dose.

**The microdosing-specific risks are mostly about measurement and sourcing.** Because these charts are executed with compounded vials and DIY math, the dangerous failure modes are preparation and dosing errors. A pharmacovigilance analysis of compounded GLP-1 agonists using the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System found markedly elevated reporting odds for **preparation errors (reporting odds ratio about 48.9), contamination (about 19.0), compounding issues (about 8.5), and prescribing errors (about 4.5)**, plus more reports of abdominal pain, cholecystitis, and hospitalization⁹. Those are association signals from a reporting database, not proof of causation — but they point in a worrying direction, and they land hardest exactly when someone is measuring a sliver of a milligram out of a vial whose true concentration may be uncertain⁷. We cover this in depth in is compounded / microdosed GLP-1 safe.

The practical upshot, for either drug: the most dangerous line in any microdose chart isn't the milligram target — it's the unit-conversion step that assumes you know your vial's concentration. Get that wrong by a factor of ten and a "microdose" becomes a large overdose.

Semaglutide vs tirzepatide microdosing: do the differences matter?

For the purpose of these charts, the two drugs behave similarly: both titrate from a low starting rung, both are dosed weekly because of long half-lives, and both show the same "more drug, more effect" gradient in trials²⁴⁵. The milligram numbers differ — tirzepatide's ladder runs in whole milligrams (2.5–15 mg), semaglutide's in fractions (0.25–2.4 mg) — so a tirzepatide microdose and a semaglutide microdose are not interchangeable amounts, and a chart built for one is meaningless for the other. But the core honesty is identical for both: no trial tested microdosing, dose-response says it does less, and the compounded-vial measurement step is where the real danger lives. For a closer comparison of what changes between low and full doses, see low-dose vs full-dose GLP-1.

The honest bottom line

GLP-1 microdose charts — for semaglutide or tirzepatide — are easy to find and impossible to verify. The only schedules with trial evidence behind them are the **approved ladders** (0.25 → 2.4 mg semaglutide; 2.5 → 15 mg tirzepatide), and even their lowest rungs are temporary starting doses, not microdoses. The fractional, split, "units," and "clicks" schemes people share are untested, off-label, and built on an error-prone measurement step — and the dose-response data say they'd do less anyway. If you're weighing any of this, treat the charts as a description of a risky trend, not a prescription, and talk to a qualified clinician.

For the fuller picture, see our pillar microdosing GLP-1: what the evidence actually shows, the tirzepatide-only version of this page, the microdosing tirzepatide dose chart, the dose-response deep dive on why lower doses do less, and the safety review is compounded / microdosed GLP-1 safe. To see how providers compare on price and oversight, we rank them on our GLP-1 microdose rankings hub.