GLP-1 research that shows what you actually pay.
40 direct-to-consumer providers reviewed against their own published terms, and 12 employer vendors scored on a published rubric. In this market the advertised price and the charged price are usually different numbers — we rank on the second one.
No employer vendor pays for placement, rank, or coverage. Our consumer provider pages carry one disclosed paid partner. How we make money
The leaderboard
Ranked by weighted score, not by who returns our calls
Every vendor is scored on the same six dimensions. Clinical rigor and outcomes evidence carry the most weight, because they are the two things that survive contact with a CFO.
Nutrition-first diabetes and obesity reversal with explicit deprescribing goals
- PMPM benchmark
- $40–$95
- Minimum lives
- 2,000
Between-visit cardiometabolic care with a GLP-1 companion track
- PMPM benchmark
- $32–$58
- Minimum lives
- 1,000
Board-certified obesity medicine delivered virtually
- PMPM benchmark
- $58–$105
- Minimum lives
- 500
Sensor-driven metabolic modeling aimed at medication reduction
- PMPM benchmark
- $55–$120
- Minimum lives
- 1,500
Found
Personalized weight care spanning medication, behavior, and biology
- PMPM benchmark
- $45–$85
- Minimum lives
- 500
Combined cardiometabolic and mental health care in one care team
- PMPM benchmark
- $38–$78
- Minimum lives
- 1,000
Methodology
What we score, and what we refuse to score
Weights are fixed before any vendor is reviewed. We publish them so you can disagree with them — and so you can re-rank the table against your own priorities.
We do not score brand strength, funding, or how impressive the demo was. Those correlate with sales performance, not with whether a program works or what it costs you in year three.
Where a vendor cannot produce evidence for a claim, we grade the claim, not the marketing. Our evidence scale has four tiers and treats a vendor-reported figure as what it is.
Prescriber credentials, titration protocol, comorbidity screening, and off-ramp planning.
Quality of published results: peer review, sample size, control group, and follow-up duration.
Ability to hold net pharmacy spend down: gating, biosimilar strategy, and risk sharing.
Eligibility-level reporting, claims feeds, and whether you can audit the vendor's own numbers.
PBM, carrier, HRIS, and point-solution interoperability without custom engineering.
Time to first appointment, app quality, care-team continuity, and support responsiveness.
Categories
These vendors are not substitutes for each other
A coaching companion and a full-service clinic solve different problems at different prices. Comparing them on one number is the most common mistake in this category.
Prescribes, manages, and monitors end to end
These vendors employ or contract prescribers and own the entire care pathway: intake, labs, prescribing, titration, and maintenance. You are buying a virtual obesity-medicine clinic. Expect the highest per-member cost and the most direct influence on net pharmacy spend.
Wraps behavior change around someone else's prescription
Coaching companions do not prescribe. They surround a GLP-1 prescription written elsewhere with nutrition, strength, and adherence support. Cheapest tier, and the natural choice when your PBM already controls the drug and you want to protect lean mass and durability.
Diabetes-first, medication-sparing clinical models
Built around type 2 diabetes and metabolic reversal rather than weight alone. Often position GLP-1s as one tool among several, with explicit deprescribing goals. Strong fit when your population skews diabetic and your CFO wants drug spend to fall, not rise.
Routes members to the right vendor and enforces policy
Rather than delivering care, these platforms sit above your point solutions, triage members, and enforce eligibility rules across them. Valuable at scale and in multi-vendor environments; redundant if you have a single clinical partner.
Direct-to-consumer names with an employer contract
Consumer weight-management brands that added prescribing and now sell to employers. Best-in-class member acquisition and app polish; the diligence question is always whether clinical governance and reporting match the marketing.
Free tool
Model net cost before you model vendors
Enrollment rate is the single largest driver of your GLP-1 spend, and it is the number every vendor projection gets wrong. Put in your census, set an uptake assumption, and see three-year net cost under conservative, expected, and high-uptake scenarios.
Illustrative figures. The live model runs your own census and assumptions.
Buyer's guides
Operator playbooks, not thought leadership
Written for the person who has to defend this decision in a committee meeting and then live with it for three years.
Should we cover GLP-1s at all?
The decision framework to run before you talk to a single vendor — and the three numbers that actually determine the answer.
Writing eligibility criteria that hold up
BMI thresholds are the weakest gate in your program. Here is what actually controls utilization without creating an appeals problem.
The 17 diligence questions vendors hope you skip
Most RFPs test marketing. These questions test whether the clinical and financial model actually works.
Insights
What changed this quarter
The compounded GLP-1 cliff and what it did to vendor pricing
When compounded semaglutide access narrowed, the vendors built on it had to re-price. Here is who absorbed it and who passed it through.
Persistence, not weight loss, is the metric that decides your ROI
Every vendor leads with average weight reduction. The number that actually determines whether your spend produced anything is how many members are still on therapy at month twelve.
The lean mass problem is becoming a contracting issue
Body composition during rapid weight loss has moved from a clinical footnote to something buyers are starting to write into agreements.
Buying for yourself?
113 pages on what these actually cost
40 telehealth services reviewed against what they actually publish — membership fees, medication pricing, eligibility, labs, shipping, cancellation and refunds. Where a provider will not disclose something, we say so instead of guessing. Every ranking sorts on the sustained monthly total, not the advertised figure.
Going to market this cycle?
Send us your population profile and current stack. We will tell you which three vendors are worth an RFP and which questions will actually separate them — no vendor introductions, no referral fees.