# GLP-1 Titration Planner: the Ladder, and What It Costs | This GLP

The approved week-by-week dose schedules for semaglutide and tirzepatide, read off the current labels — with the cost of climbing them at a flat seller against a dose-indexed one.

Publisher: This GLP Editorial Team
Canonical: https://thisglp.com/tools/glp1-titration-planner
Updated: 2026-09-16

[← Tools](https://thisglp.com/tools)Dose and cost

# GLP-1 Titration Planner

Both of these drugs start below the dose that was studied and climb for months. That has a clinical consequence and a financial one, and the financial one is the part nobody puts in a headline: the opening dose is the dose you are on for the fewest weeks of the year, so a seller’s price at the top of the ladder matters more than its price at the bottom.

By [This GLP Editorial Team](https://thisglp.com/about) Schedules read from the current prescribing information

The Wegovy label ladder plotted against time: five four-week blocks climbing from 0.25 mg at week one to 2.4 mg at week seventeen, with 0.25, 0.5 and 1 mg drawn as open squares because the label lists them only as stepping doses and not as maintenance options. · WEGOVY LABEL LADDER · 0.25 · 0.5 · 1 · 1.7 · 2.4 · 1 · 5 · 9 · 13 · 17 · Week. Filled = a maintenance dose; open = a stepping dose.

Wegovy escalation schedule, week by week
| Weeks | Dose | What the label calls it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1–4 | 0.25 mg | initiationStarting dose. Not intended to produce weight loss — it is there to let the gut adjust. |
| 5–8 | 0.5 mg | escalation |
| 9–12 | 1 mg | escalation |
| 13–16 | 1.7 mg | escalation |
| 17+ | 2.4 mg | maintenanceThe dose STEP 1 studied, where the −14.9% mean change was measured. |

Reaching 7.2 mg takes **1 weeks** on this schedule, so a buyer spends roughly **0%** of a first year below the top dose. Source: [Wegovy prescribing information, DailyMed](https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=ee06186f-2aa3-4990-a760-757579d8f77b).

### What the ladder costs, two ways

The same escalation, priced by a seller that holds one figure across every dose and by one that raises it at each step. Put in any two numbers you are comparing.

Flat at every dose

Monthly price

$1,788

across a first year

Priced by dose

Opening price

Rise per step

$2,351

across a first year

On these figures the dose-indexed seller costs **$563** more across the year, despite opening $50 lower a month.

## These are the approved products’ schedules

Every step above comes from the prescribing information for Wegovy and Zepbound, not from a seller’s page. Most sellers on this site dispense a compounded preparation, and a compounding pharmacy is free to supply a different ladder entirely — which is exactly what a microdose protocol is. If a seller does not publish the strengths it dispenses, this schedule tells you what the approved product does and not what will arrive in your vial.

It is also not a prescription. Escalation is decided by a clinician against how you are tolerating the drug, and both labels allow holding a dose longer or stepping back down. The schedule here is the default path, not an instruction — escalation is a clinical decision, and the ladder exists because of how the drug is tolerated on the way up.