Ozempic and Wegovy are the same molecule, made by one manufacturer, sold in the same country. Read their price guides side by side on the same day and the pricing does not follow the drug. It follows the box.
Every figure below comes from Novo Nordisk's own price guides — Ozempic document code US26NC00009 dated May 2026, Wegovy US26NC00049 dated April 2026 — both downloaded and read on 2026-09-08. This page reports prices, not treatment decisions; those belong with a prescriber, as our editorial standards set out.
Ozempic's published self-pay prices
| Form | Dose | Self-pay per month | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pen | 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg | $199 | New patients only, first two monthly fills, through 2026-12-31 |
| Pen | 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg | $349 | Standard offer |
| Pen | 2 mg | $499 | Standard offer |
| Pill | 1.5 mg | $149 | Standard offer |
| Pill | 4 mg | $199 | Standard offer |
| Pill | 9 mg | $299 | Standard offer |
One month is one box of one Ozempic pen, or one bottle of 30 tablets. With commercial insurance, the savings card advertises "as little as $25", capped at $100 of saving per month, with government beneficiaries excluded.
The finding: the higher dose is the cheaper one
Set the two Novo guides beside each other at the top of each dose ladder.
| Ozempic pen | Wegovy pen | |
|---|---|---|
| Top marketed dose | 2 mg weekly | 2.4 mg weekly |
| Self-pay price per month | $499 | $349 |
| Semaglutide over four weekly doses | 8 mg | 9.6 mg |
| Cost per milligram | ≈ $62 | ≈ $36 |
The weight-management brand delivers 20% more semaglutide for $150 a month less. Per milligram, Ozempic at its top dose costs about 1.7 times what Wegovy costs at its top dose. Over a year of twelve fills the gap is $1,800.
The per-milligram figures are our arithmetic — price divided by four weekly doses at the labelled strength — not something either guide prints. The monthly prices and the dose strengths are Novo's, read the same day.
Two honest qualifications. First, below 2 mg the brands are priced identically: $349 a month for 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg and 1 mg on both guides, and $199 for a new patient's first two fills on both. The divergence is a single step at the top of the Ozempic ladder. Second, oral and injectable semaglutide are not interchangeable milligram for milligram, so the pill prices in the table above are not comparable to the pen prices on a per-milligram basis and are not compared here.
Our Wegovy cost page sets out that side of the comparison, including why its pen price is flat across the whole dose ladder — which is the structural reason this gap exists at all.
What the comparison does show is that the price is not a function of the drug. It is a function of the brand on the box and the indication behind it. That is ordinary in United States pharmaceutical pricing and it is invisible to anyone reading a single guide.
The packaging difference, and why it does not change the comparison
A detail that trips up most side-by-side comparisons of these two products: Novo does not define "one month" the same way for them.
- Ozempic: one month = one box containing one pen. The Ozempic pen is multi-dose.
- Wegovy: one month = one box containing four pens. The Wegovy pens are single-dose.
The comparison above survives that, because both boxes cover four weekly injections. A reader glancing at "four pens" against "one pen" might reasonably conclude Wegovy supplies four times as much for less money; it does not. It supplies four weekly doses in four devices where Ozempic supplies four weekly doses in one.
What Ozempic's price is not
It is not the list price. The figure commonly quoted for Ozempic's list price is about $1,028 a month, from a White House statement of 2026-02-05, sourced on our GLP-1 cost page. A list price is what the manufacturer charges wholesalers; almost nobody pays it directly, and the self-pay programme above exists precisely so that nobody has to.
It is also not what an insured patient pays. Ozempic is approved for type 2 diabetes, and that is the coverage question that matters. A plan that covers it for diabetes may leave a copay of anything from $0 to several hundred dollars, and the savings card closes at most $100 of that — so the "$25" headline holds only where the copay is already $125 or less. The arithmetic is the same one Lilly's cards use with different caps; we work through it in detail on our Mounjaro cost page, where the published caps happen to give the underlying list price away.
The pill line is being rearranged
One thing changing underneath these prices. FDA's drug shortage database carries a notice dated 2026-06-04 discontinuing all three Rybelsus tablet strengths, with the stated reason that they will be replaced by Ozempic tablets — and the approval file for NDA 213051 now carries Ozempic tablets at 1.5 mg, 4 mg and 9 mg, which are exactly the strengths priced in the guide above. Oral semaglutide is not going away; it is being consolidated under the two strongest brand names. Our compounded semaglutide page documents that change, and the generic semaglutide injection that already holds a tentative FDA approval and is waiting only on patents.
Sources, with dates
- Novo Nordisk, Ozempic pill and pen price guide, document code US26NC00009, dated May 2026 — read 2026-09-08. Every Ozempic price and term on this page comes from it.
- Novo Nordisk, Wegovy price guide, document code US26NC00049, dated April 2026 — read 2026-09-08, for the comparison figures.
- Novo Nordisk, Wegovy savings offer — read 2026-09-08, for the savings-card cap wording.
Prices in this market changed four times in the twelve months to September 2026. Every figure here carries the date it was read; re-check the manufacturer page before relying on any of them.