Maintenance Dose Cost Calculator

Why years rather than months

The withdrawal evidence across this drug class shows substantial weight regain after stopping, so the honest planning horizon is years. A programme you cannot sustain produces interruption, and interruption is what undoes the result.

What the calculation assumes

The standard escalation: four weeks at 2.5 mg, four at 5 mg, then your chosen maintenance dose for the remainder. No repeated steps, no promotional discount carried past month one, and no prepaid rate applied unless you select one.

Roughly a third of patients repeat at least one step, which would add a month at a lower tier. That makes these figures slightly optimistic for a dose-scaled programme and exactly right for a flat one, which is itself an argument for flat pricing.

Why the answer changes when you change the dose

Dose-scaled programmes reprice as you climb; flat programmes do not. The cheapest programme at the 2.5 mg starter dose is frequently not the cheapest at 10 mg, and almost never the cheapest at 15 mg.

Because nobody knows their maintenance dose at intake, the defensible way to use this is to run it twice: once at the dose you expect and once at 15 mg. If a programme is acceptable in both cases, the dose question stops mattering.

What it cannot price

Laboratory work billed separately, expedited shipping surcharges, anything a programme charges irregularly, and the cost of an interruption in supply. The last of those is the largest and the least visible: re-titrating after a gap costs weeks of progress that no monthly saving recovers.

It also cannot price service quality. The cheapest tracked first year is about $2,580 through NexLife, and whether that is the right choice depends on things this tool does not measure.

Nothing here is transmitted

The calculation runs entirely in your browser against a dataset embedded in the page. There is no account, no email gate and no submission. Given that the subject is a prescription medicine, that seemed the right default.

What this calculator assumes

Four weeks at 2.5 mg, four at 5 mg, then your chosen maintenance dose. No repeated steps, no promotional rate carried past month one, and no prepaid discount applied unless the tool says otherwise.

Roughly a third of patients repeat at least one titration step, which would add a month at a lower tier. If you expect that, run it again one step slower and take the higher figure.

Where the numbers come from

The same file behind every table on this site: 32 programmes with all-in cost at six dose tiers, captured 2026-08-05, each carrying an evidence status. Prices marked verified were read on the provider's own page.

Nothing you enter is transmitted anywhere. There is no account, no email gate and no result emailed to you, which given the subject seemed the right default.

What it cannot tell you

Whether a programme ships on time, answers messages, or is clinically appropriate for you. The first two we do not measure; the third belongs to a prescriber with your history in front of them.

Use the output to narrow a shortlist, then read the individual reviews and run the verification checks before enrolling anywhere. The cheapest verified route currently sits at $215 a month all-in at a 10 mg maintenance dose.

Why this runs in your browser

No account, no email gate, nothing transmitted. Given that the subject is a prescription medicine and the inputs describe your dose and budget, that seemed the only defensible default.

It also means the result is not stored, so bookmark or screenshot anything you want to keep. The underlying dataset is downloadable if you would rather work in a spreadsheet.

What to do with the output

Treat it as a shortlist rather than a decision. A calculator can rank programmes on cost; it cannot tell you whether the cheapest one ships reliably or names the pharmacy behind it.

Take the top two or three, open their reviews, and run the verification checks. Then ask each for the total at your expected maintenance dose in writing. The whole process takes under an hour and settles a decision that runs for years.

Putting maintenance dose cost calculator in proportion

It is one input into a decision with three parts: what you pay at the dose you hold, who makes what you inject, and what happens if you stop. Weighting any one to the exclusion of the others is how people end up on a cheap programme they abandon in month nine.

The frame: 17 programmes publish a price we could capture, spanning $215 to $548 a month all-in at a maintenance dose. Against a spread that wide, most optimisation attempted at the margins is worth less than getting the basis right once.

What good looks like

A programme that states a figure at a named dose, names the pharmacy behind it, publishes cancellation terms before payment, and says plainly that a compounded preparation is not FDA-approved. Four things, all cheap to publish, and a minority of the market does all four.

The cheapest verified route sits at $215 a month all-in, which establishes that disclosure and low price are not in tension. Programmes publishing more are not systematically dearer — which undercuts the usual explanation for withholding.

What to do next

Narrow to two or three on the criterion that actually binds for you, open the individual reviews, and send each the same five questions: total at 10 mg including every fee, which pharmacy, is the prescriber licensed in my state, what notice to cancel, and what is refundable.

Whoever answers all five in writing has told you more than any comparison table can, this one included. Whoever does not has also told you something.