Flat-pricing math
One price, whatever the dose
Of the 373 providers on our review index, 76 publish a single figure that does not move with the dose, and 39 quote their figures off the lowest dose. On a general weight-loss board flat pricing is a selling point. If you are deliberately taking a quarter of a dose, it means you are buying a quarter of the drug for the whole price.
That gap is exactly computable, from your own dose and a range the provider already publishes. Nobody quotes it to you, because on every other site the question does not come up.
Read before you use this
This is arithmetic on figures you supply, not medical advice and not a recommendation about any dose. We do not know what you take, we do not suggest a value for it, and nothing here says a dose is enough, right or safe. The “top dose the same price covers” field is a pricing fact published by a company — copy it off their page. Intentional microdosing is off-label and unproven.
- You pay per year
- $2,388
- $199 × 12 charges
- Drug you receive
- 13.0mg/yr
- 0.25 mg × 1/wk × 52.18 weeks
- Cost per mg you take
- $183
- against $19.07 at the plan's top dose
- Share of your bill
- 90%
- buys drug that is never dispensed to you
- If the price tracked the dose
- $20.73/mo
- not a price anyone is offering — the zero point
- The flat-rate premium
- $2,139/yr
- $178 a month
You are taking 10% of the dose this one price covers, and paying 100% of it. That is 9.6× the cost per milligram someone at the plan’s top dose pays on the identical bill, and $2,139 a year more than the same plan would cost if the price moved with the drug. That is the upper bound: some of what you pay is consultation, shipping and pharmacy work that costs the same at any strength. Put your own estimate of that share in the last field to see the narrower figure. A provider that quotes its price off the lowest dose, or sells a microdose as its own product is the structure that closes it.
Why the premium is so steep at the bottom of the range
A flat price is a single number divided by however much drug you take, so the cost per milligram is set entirely by your dose. At the top of a 0.25–2.4 mg range you get roughly ten times the drug a reader at the bottom gets, for the same bill. Neither of you is quoted a cost per milligram anywhere, so neither of you can see it — and only one of you is being sold to.
This is not a hidden fee and nobody is concealing it. It is a structure, published plainly, that happens to be priced around a patient who is not you. The honest version of the complaint is narrower than it first sounds: part of every bill is a consultation, a pharmacy and a shipment, and that part genuinely does not shrink when your dose does. That is what the last field is for, and it is why the headline figure is described as an upper bound rather than a number to wave around.
What closes the gap is the pricing structure, not the price. A provider that quotes its figures off the lowest dose bills you for what you take. A provider that sells a microdose as its own separately priced product does the same by another route — as long as that product is actually cheaper than its own full-dose plan, which on several of the companies we track it is not.
Common questions
- What does 'the top dose the same price covers' mean, and where do I find it?
- It is the upper end of the dose range the provider says its single price applies across — the 2.4 in 'semaglutide 0.25–2.4 mg' or the 15 in 'tirzepatide 2.5–15 mg'. It is printed on the provider's own pricing or product page, usually right next to the figure, and it is the number that makes flat pricing mean something specific rather than being a slogan. If a provider says the price is flat but never publishes a range, you cannot compute this and neither can we — which is itself worth knowing before you pay.
- Isn't some of what I pay the consultation and shipping rather than the drug?
- Yes, and that is exactly what the last field is for. A clinician review, a pharmacy fee and a cold-chain shipment cost a provider about the same whether the vial holds a quarter dose or a full one, so the part of the bill they represent is not a premium at all. Leave the field at zero and you get the upper bound; put your own estimate in and the premium is computed only on the remainder. The result text says which of the two you are looking at.
- Are you saying flat pricing is a rip-off?
- No. Flat pricing is a perfectly reasonable way to sell a weight-loss plan and a genuinely good deal for the patient it is designed for — someone who expects to titrate up to the top of the range and would rather not watch the bill climb with the dose. Put a top-of-range dose into this calculator and it reports no premium at all, because there is none. It is a bad structure for one specific reader: the one who intends to stay small on purpose. That reader is this site's entire audience, which is why the tool exists here and nowhere else.
- What pricing structure would actually be cheaper for a low dose?
- Two of them. A provider that quotes its figures off the lowest dose and charges more as the dose rises bills you in proportion to what you take. A provider that sells a microdose as its own separately priced product does the same thing by a different route, provided that product is priced below its own full-dose equivalent — which is not automatic, and on several providers we track the microdose SKU actually costs more than the standard plan. Our review index groups every provider by which of those five structures it publishes.
- Does this replace the vial waste calculator?
- No — they are two different halves of the same bill and they stack. This one is about the plan: what share of the price you pay buys drug that is never dispensed to you. The vial waste calculator is about the vial you were dispensed: how much of it expires before a small dose can get through it. A reader on a flat plan drawing microdoses from a full-size vial is paying both, and neither figure appears on any provider's pricing page.
Informational only and not medical advice. This tool performs arithmetic on figures you supply and knows nothing about your prescription, your plan or your provider. It does not recommend a dose, evaluate a dose, or suggest that any dose is sufficient. It is not a reason to change what you take. Compounded GLP-1s are not FDA-approved and intentional microdosing is off-label and unproven. Talk to a licensed clinician.