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. We work through the half-life math behind this in GLP-1 split dosing: twice-weekly vs once-weekly.

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. These injectable charts don't translate to the pill — see why you can't microdose Rybelsus (oral semaglutide), whose tablet absorption breaks if you split it. To see how providers compare on price and oversight, we rank them on our GLP-1 microdose rankings hub.