What the index measures

The advertised monthly price of a GLP-1 weight-loss medicine at UK online pharmacies. The measure is deliberately narrow: it is the price shown to a new, logged-out visitor browsing from the UK, at a named dose, for roughly one month of supply. It is not what any individual ends up paying, and it does not attempt to be. Consultation outcomes, subscription tiers and personal discounts all move the real figure, in ways a public page cannot see.

The basket

The index tracks a fixed set of medicine and dose combinations. Fixing the basket is what makes month-to-month comparison meaningful: if the contents changed with availability, movement in the headline would just be movement in the basket.

• Mounjaro (tirzepatide) at 2.5mg, 5mg, 7.5mg, 10mg, 12.5mg, 15mg
• Wegovy (semaglutide injection) at 0.25mg, 0.5mg, 1mg, 1.7mg, 2.4mg, 7.2mg
• Wegovy pill (oral semaglutide) at 1.5mg, 4mg, 9mg, 25mg

Liraglutide brands, Orlistat and Mysimba are outside the basket: each appears at only one or two pharmacies in our dataset, which is too thin to median honestly, and they sit in a different part of the market. Needles and other add-ons are not medicines and never count. Basket changes happen only at a release boundary, with a note in the change log below, never silently.

Which pharmacies

UK-registered online pharmacies and prescribing services that publish a price for at least one basket dose on a page a logged-out visitor can reach. The current set is 23 providers, listed with their GPhC registration on the price explorer. We include a pharmacy because it publishes prices, never because of any commercial relationship, and no pharmacy can pay to be added, removed or ranked.

What counts as a price

• Advertised, logged out, UK. The figure shown to a new visitor without an account, browsing from the UK.
• Renewal, not introductory. Where a pharmacy shows both a first-order price and an ongoing one, the index uses the ongoing price. First-order discounts are recorded separately and are never blended into the median, because an intro price is a marketing offer rather than the cost of treatment.
• One month at one dose. A row must represent roughly four weeks of supply at a single named dose. Rows priced per two months, per three pens, per pack of capsules, or as a "from" figure with no stated quantity are excluded and listed on the release rather than converted by guesswork.
• Starter and all-dose bundles are excluded. A single price covering a range of doses cannot join a per-dose median.
• Total, as advertised. Where a pharmacy quotes an all-inclusive price, that is what we record. Where consultation or delivery is charged separately and disclosed, the headline product price is what enters the index, and the extras are noted on the price explorer.

How the number is calculated

1. For each basket dose, take every comparable pharmacy price for that month and compute the median. Medians rather than averages, so one unusually cheap or expensive pharmacy cannot move the headline.
2. Add the dose medians together to get the basket cost for the month.
3. The index value is the basket cost expressed against the baseline month, which is July 2026 and is set to 100. A later month at 103.2 means the basket costs 3.2% more than it did at baseline.
4. Alongside the headline we publish the spread for each dose, the gap between the cheapest and dearest pharmacy in the same month, because the variation is often a bigger story than the average.

Every published figure reconciles exactly to the data behind it. We do not round to convenient numbers, and we never print a forecast next to a measured series.

Collection

The July 2026 baseline was collected by hand, pharmacy by pharmacy, from each provider's own public pages. From the next release onwards, collection is automated on a fixed monthly run with the same rules, and every observation is captured with its source URL, the time it was read and an archived copy of the page.

The collection policy is deliberately conservative: public logged-out pages only, robots.txt respected, an honest identifying user agent that names this page, at least two seconds between requests, and roughly seventy page reads a month. Where a pharmacy blocks automated access, we read the most recent public archive snapshot instead and label the row as archive-sourced. We do not attempt to bypass any access control, and a pharmacy that asks to be read differently only has to get in touch.

Missing and stale data

When a price cannot be read in a given month, the index says so. The row keeps its real last-verified date and appears as "could not verify this month" rather than silently carrying forward as though it were fresh. After two consecutive months without a reading, a pharmacy drops out of the headline comparison, though it stays listed with its real date, until it can be read again. Every observation on a release page carries the month it was verified, so mixed freshness is visible rather than hidden.

Release schedule and corrections

Collection runs at the start of each month and the release publishes on the first Tuesday. The next release date is printed on every page: currently Tuesday 1 September 2026.

A published release is never edited in place. If a number turns out to be wrong, we publish a dated correction note on that release, add a line to the change log below, and leave the original figure visible, because someone may already have quoted it. This is the single most important promise on this page: if you cite a Healthcount figure, it will still say what it said when you cited it.

Independence and money

The index pages carry no advertising and no affiliate links, and no pharmacy pays for inclusion or position. Healthcount does earn commission from some pharmacies elsewhere on this site, which is set out in our affiliate disclosure. Those relationships have no bearing on what the index measures or reports, and the index deliberately keeps a wall between the two: a page that names a prescription medicine never carries a commercial link.

Licence and reuse

Every release ships a CSV of the observations behind it, licensed CC BY 4.0. Use the figures anywhere, including commercially, with attribution to the Healthcount GLP-1 Price Index and a link to this site. Journalists are welcome to the underlying evidence for any row on request.

Known limitations

• Advertised prices are not transaction prices. Nobody publishes what UK patients actually pay, so no index can measure it.
• The intro-versus-renewal split is currently inferred from how each pharmacy describes its offer, not from a structured field. Where a description is ambiguous, the row is treated as a standard price and flagged.
• The July 2026 baseline carries mixed verification dates, disclosed on the release page, because it predates automated collection.
• Coverage is UK online pharmacies. It excludes the NHS, which does not work on advertised prices, and high-street dispensing that is not published online.

Change log

Questions about the method, or think we have something wrong? That is genuinely welcome: contact us. Corrections get published.