How every number is made
Methodology
The normalization rules, the ranking formula, the evidence tiers, and the limits — everything needed to reproduce or attack our numbers.
The core normalization
True monthly cost = medication price + mandatory membership + required consultation fees + shipping (where charged). Advertised prices enter the dataset as published; rankings use the all-in figure only. We rank tirzepatide at the 10 mg maintenance dose (where most patients spend years; 5 mg and 15 mg answers derive from the same records) and semaglutide at the standing full-dose rate. Standing month-to-month rates are ranked; prepaid/multi-month effectives are reported alongside, labeled, never mixed in. Starter prices, first-month promotions, microdose tiers, and dose-capped programs are excluded from standard rankings and labeled as what they are.
What we'd compute with better data
The ideal metric is cost per milligram dispensed (total paid ÷ total mg received), which neutralizes vial-size and concentration games — but most programs don't publish dispensed quantities, so computing it would mean guessing. We publish the honest second-best (all-in monthly at a fixed dose basis) and will add per-mg the day dispensed-quantity disclosure becomes the norm. Providers: publish your mg.
Evidence tiers
Every price carries one of four labels. Source-verified: read on the provider's own pricing page, capture-dated, archive-linked where possible. Third-party-reported: from credible external coverage; pending recapture at the source. Stated, not page-verified: the company communicated the figure but we couldn't capture it on a pricing page. No price published: tracked, unpriced, unranked. Verification dates are per-provider in the dataset; the current base capture is 2026-08-05 with brand figures refreshed 2026-08-09.
The ranking formula (100 points)
Price, 45 — 45 × (field-floor ÷ program all-in), so the cheapest verified program takes full marks and everyone else scales down. Price evidence, 15 — source-verified 15, third-party 8, stated 6, none 2. Pharmacy disclosure, 10 — named pharmacy 10, unnamed 3. Flexibility, 15 — cancel-anytime 15 down to term-locked 7. Breadth, 15 — both molecules, brand access, insurance navigation. The weights are editorial choices, stated so you can reject them: the downloads contain every input.
Limits, plainly
We read prices; we don't mystery-shop checkouts, so intake-flow surcharges can escape us until reported. Capture dates mean figures age — this market reprices monthly. We can't verify compounded product quality, only disclosure about it. And no ranking here weighs clinical fit: dose, history, and molecule choice belong to you and a licensed clinician, not to a spreadsheet.
Frequently asked
What does “all-in” mean on this site?
Medication plus every mandatory recurring fee — membership, required consults, charged shipping. It's the billed monthly total at the ranking dose, which is why our figures sometimes exceed advertised ones.
Why rank at 10 mg?
Because maintenance (10–15 mg for most tirzepatide patients) is where years of spending happen, and starter-dose pricing describes only month one. Flat-rate programs are unaffected; dose-scaled programs are ranked where they actually bill.
Why isn't cost-per-mg your metric?
It's the better metric and the unavailable one: providers rarely publish dispensed quantities, and we won't rank on guesses. All-in monthly at a fixed basis is the best fully-verifiable normalization today.