Mounjaro vs Ozempic: One Flat Price Against a Four-Step Ladder

These two drugs are priced on opposite philosophies, and once you see that, the comparison stops being a single number.

Eli Lilly sells Mounjaro® to self-pay patients through LillyDirect at "Starting at $499/month" — and it prints that same figure against all six strengths: 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 and 15 mg.¹ One price, whatever is in the pen.

Novo Nordisk sells Ozempic® to self-pay patients through NovoCare Pharmacy on a ladder. New patients pay $199 a month for their first two fills of the 0.25 and 0.5 mg pens; after that it is $349 for 0.25, 0.5 or 1 mg and $499 for 2 mg. There is also an Ozempic pill, priced separately at $149 for 1.5 mg, $199 for 4 mg and $299 for 9 mg.²

Where the two lines cross

At the top of the Ozempic pen ladder they are identical: $499 against $499. Everywhere below that, Ozempic is cheaper, and the gap grows the lower you go.

The crossing point matters because it is the only place the two drugs cost the same, and it is a dose, not a date. Below 2 mg of Ozempic the flat Mounjaro price is the worse deal by $150 a month. At 2 mg it is a wash on price alone.

A year, priced twice

Neither manufacturer sells a calendar month. A NovoCare Ozempic month is "1 box of 1 Ozempic pen", which delivers four weekly doses, so 365 days holds about 13 fills.

Ozempic pen, taking both new-patient fills and settling at 1 mg: (2 × $199) + (11 × $349) = $4,237.

Ozempic pen, escalating to the 2 mg dose: (2 × $199) + (2 × $349) + (9 × $499) = $5,587.

Mounjaro, flat at any dose: 13 × $499 = $6,487.

So the annual gap is $2,250 for a reader who lands at 1 mg of Ozempic and $900 for one who reaches 2 mg.

The pill that undercuts both

The Ozempic tablet is the cheapest branded route to semaglutide that Novo publishes. Its month is a bottle of 30 tablets — a real 30-day month, so about 12.2 fills a year rather than 13.

Twelve fills, starting at 1.5 mg and stepping up: $149 + $199 + (10 × $299) = $3,338.

Against $6,487 for a year of Mounjaro, that is $3,149 less. It is also a different product with different labelling: Ozempic tablets come in 1.5, 4 and 9 mg, and the same FDA label warns that "RYBELSUS and OZEMPIC tablets are not substitutable on a mg-to-mg basis".³ Whether a tablet is appropriate at all is a prescriber's call. What the tablet is not is expensive.

What the ladder tracks, and what it does not

CMS publishes NADAC, a survey of what retail pharmacies pay their wholesalers. Run the arithmetic on the file dated 5 August 2026, rates effective 22 July⁴:

Ozempic 0.25/0.5 mg pen — $331.96747 per mL × 3 mL = $995.90 a month.

Ozempic 1 mg pen — $331.89168 × 3 = $995.68.

Ozempic 2 mg pen — $331.93567 × 3 = $995.81.

Ozempic 1.5 mg tablet — $33.09081 each × 30 = $992.72.

Ozempic 4 mg tablet — $33.06527 × 30 = $991.96.

Every Ozempic presentation costs a pharmacy within four dollars of every other one. Pen or tablet, lowest dose or highest, the acquisition cost is flat at roughly $992 to $996 a month. The patient-facing ladder runs from $149 to $499 across that same flat line.

Mounjaro, by contrast, is flat in both directions. 10 mg pen: $538.60429 × 0.5 mL × 4 pens = $1,077.21. 15 mg pen: $538.45947 × 0.5 × 4 = $1,076.92. Flat acquisition cost, flat cash price.

The point is not that one company is behaving worse. It is that a dose-priced ladder is a commercial decision about you, not a pass-through of what the box costs.

Both savings cards are built for thirteen fills

The clearest evidence that the manufacturers themselves think in 28-day months sits in the fine print of the savings cards.

Lilly's Mounjaro card for commercially insured patients with coverage caps savings at $150 a month and $1,950 a year. $1,950 ÷ $150 = 13.

For commercially insured patients whose plan does not cover Mounjaro, the card offers the drug at $499 for a one-month fill, capped at $647 a month and $8,411 a year. $8,411 ÷ $647 = 13.

Both cards state that they expire and savings end on 31 December 2026.⁵

Novo's commercial-insurance offer on Ozempic is structured differently again: "pay as little as $25", subject to a maximum saving of $100 a month, with government beneficiaries excluded.⁶ A $100 ceiling is not a $25 price — it is $100 off whatever your plan charges you.

They are approved for the same thing, which makes this a real comparison

Unlike the weight-management pair, these two are genuinely substitutable on paper. Both are indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycaemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes, and both carry a cardiovascular risk-reduction indication in that population.³ That is why the price ladder is worth this much attention: here, the number really can be the deciding factor.

What we could not establish

We could not find a published Mounjaro price below $499 anywhere on Lilly's own properties, so we have not represented one. We could not price either drug under a specific insurance plan, because plan-level cost sharing is not published per drug by any first-party source. And we have not compared either against a compounded tirzepatide or semaglutide here — that comparison is a different one, and it is in compounded tirzepatide vs branded Zepbound and compounded semaglutide vs branded Wegovy.

For the weight-management pair rather than the diabetes pair, see Zepbound vs Wegovy. For what each manufacturer's own pharmacy charges across its whole catalogue, see what NovoCare Pharmacy costs and what LillyDirect costs.

Ozempic® is a registered trademark of Novo Nordisk A/S; Mounjaro® is a registered trademark of Eli Lilly and Company.