Generic Liraglutide: The Cheapest GLP-1 Almost Nobody Prices

"There is no generic GLP-1" is one of the most repeated sentences in this category, and it is not true. There has been one for a while, it comes in two different versions, and on the only neutral cost data anyone publishes it is far cheaper than everything else in the class.

It also has four catches, and they are not small. Both halves of that belong on the same page.

Nine approvals, two different drugs

Drugs@FDA lists nine liraglutide applications alongside the two Novo Nordisk originals.¹ They split into two groups, and the split matters more than the count:

Referencing Victoza® (NDA 022341) — therapeutic-equivalence code AP1. Biocon ANDA 215245, Lupin ANDA 215421, Hikma ANDA 215503, Orbicular ANDA 217590, Nanjing King Friend ANDA 218115. These carry the type 2 diabetes label: an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control, dosed once daily at 0.6, 1.2 or 1.8 mg.²

Referencing Saxenda® (NDA 206321) — code AP2. Teva ANDA 214568, Biocon ANDA 217063, Orbicular ANDA 217234. These carry the weight-management label: to reduce excess body weight and maintain weight reduction long term, with a recommended dose of 3 mg daily reached by weekly increments from 0.6 mg.³

Both are 6 mg/mL solution in a 3 mL prefilled pen — 18 mg per pen. They are the same molecule with different labels and different pack sizes, and a quote for one is not a quote for the other.

What a pharmacy pays for a 30-day carton

CMS's NADAC survey reports what retail pharmacies pay wholesalers. On the file dated 5 August 2026, rates effective 22 July⁴:

The diabetes generic costs a pharmacy 36% of what the brand does. The weight generic costs 63%.

And it is still falling

Generic prices decay as more applications reach the market, and this one is decaying fast.

Seven months apart, on the same survey and the same NDC.⁴

The Teva 5-pen carton fell from $71.75767 per mL to $55.17226 over the same period — down 23.1%.

Nothing else in this class is moving in that direction. Every branded GLP-1 acquisition cost we checked was flat or slightly up across the same window.

Against the rest of the class

Now the whole class, cheapest first.

The cheapest thing in the class costs 22% of the dearest.

Four reasons this is not a simple win

You cannot buy it at that price, and we cannot tell you what you can buy it at. NADAC is a survey of pharmacy acquisition cost, not a retail price. No generic maker runs a direct-to-patient storefront like NovoCare Pharmacy or LillyDirect, so as of August 2026 no maker publishes a cash price for generic liraglutide anywhere. What a pharmacy charges you over that $288.20 is between you and the pharmacy.

It is a daily injection. Both labels dose liraglutide subcutaneously once daily.² That is 365 injections a year against 52 for the weekly products. Whether that trade is worth several hundred dollars a month is a question about your life, not your budget.

One presentation is being retired. FDA's drug shortages data, queried on 7 August 2026, flags Teva's 5-pen carton — NDC 0480-7250-46, the weight-management generic priced above — as "To Be Discontinued", posted 14 May 2026.⁵ The other two weight-management applications, from Biocon and Orbicular, are not flagged. So the category is not disappearing; one company's version of it is.

The two versions are not interchangeable on the label. The AP1 generics carry a diabetes indication and a dosing ladder that tops out at 1.8 mg daily. The AP2 generics carry a weight-management indication and a recommended 3 mg daily. Which one a prescription is written against determines both what it treats and, at these pack sizes, what it costs.

Why nobody talks about it

Because there is no marketing budget behind a generic and no direct-to-patient storefront to publish a price. Novo built NovoCare Pharmacy and Lilly built LillyDirect; Hikma and Biocon built neither. The cheapest molecule in the class is the one with nobody advertising it, which is more or less the definition of a generic.

That does not make it right for anyone in particular — it is an older drug with a different dosing burden and a different evidence base, and none of that is a pricing question. It does mean that if cost is the constraint, it is worth asking a prescriber about by name.

What we could not price

We could not price generic liraglutide to a patient at all, for the reason above.

We could not compare it on effect. Doseworth prices things; it does not adjudicate clinical outcomes, and no figure on this page speaks to how any of these drugs perform.

And the 5 August NADAC file lists no rows for the Biocon or Orbicular weight-management cartons, so the only weight-management generic priced here is the one being discontinued.

Related: GLP-1 costs by dose, what NovoCare Pharmacy costs, and compounded semaglutide vs branded Wegovy — where the FDA's own distinction between a generic and a compounded drug does a lot of work.

Victoza®, Saxenda®, Wegovy® and Ozempic® are registered trademarks of Novo Nordisk A/S. Mounjaro® and Zepbound® are registered trademarks of Eli Lilly and Company.