How we review GLP-1 providers: our methodology in full

A review is only worth the reasoning behind it. This is the full method behind our GLP-1 provider reviews — what we measure, what we deliberately ignore, and why the price table can never be bought.

Anyone can rank a list of pharmacies. The harder thing — the thing that earns a reader's trust — is showing your working. So here it is in full: the criteria we score, the sources we accept, the weights we apply, and the deliberate refusals that keep the whole exercise honest.

If you only remember one thing, remember this: our table is sorted by price, in public, every time. No provider can pay to climb it, and nothing a provider does adds a point to a score. Everything below is the scaffolding around that single promise.

Why a published methodology matters for GLP-1 provider reviews

The UK GLP-1 market is crowded and fast-moving. We track 24 regulated providers selling Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Wegovy (semaglutide), and the same 5 mg maintenance dose of Mounjaro ranges from about £173.99 to £259 across them — a spread of roughly £85 a month for what is, chemically, the same medicine in the same pen.

When the differences are that large, a review site carries real responsibility. A lazy or pay-to-play ranking sends readers to whoever bids highest, not whoever serves them best. So before we scored anyone, we wrote down the rules. Publishing them is the point: you can check our reasoning against the same public data we used.

The five things we actually measure

Every provider is assessed against five criteria. Each is scored from the provider's own published information — pricing pages, terms, regulatory registrations and service descriptions — never from marketing claims we cannot verify.

1. Price honesty (not just price)

Low headline prices mean little if the real cost is hidden. We look at the ongoing monthly price at a genuine maintenance dose, not just the starter-month promo. We check whether needles, delivery and consultations are included or bolted on afterwards, and whether a "first month" offer quietly becomes a subscription. A provider that is dearer but completely upfront can score better here than a cheaper one burying fees.

2. Regulation and safety

This is a gate, not a slider. Every provider we list is regulated in the UK — typically GPhC-registered as a pharmacy, CQC-registered for the clinical service, or both. Anyone selling GLP-1 medicines without that footing is not reviewed low; they are not listed at all. We never mention or link unregulated sellers or "compounded" versions except to warn against them.

3. The clinical review

Mounjaro and Wegovy are prescription-only medicines, and the quality of the prescribing check is a safety issue, not a formality. We look at how a provider verifies who you are, whether there is a real prescriber decision, how dose increases are supervised, and whether there is any ongoing clinical contact rather than a one-off tick-box at checkout.

4. The patient experience

Delivery reliability, cold-chain packaging, whether sharps and needles are supplied, how support is reached, and whether the plan traps you in a contract you cannot easily leave. Small frictions matter when you are re-ordering a temperature-sensitive injection every four weeks.

5. Transparency

Can a normal person find the ongoing price before handing over card details? Are the terms readable? Is the discount code honest about what it does? Providers that make you build an account before they will show a price lose marks here — deliberately.

How the scoring maps to real numbers

To keep this concrete, here is how a handful of providers look on the price-honesty inputs we start from — real figures from our dataset, checked on 4 July 2026. This is the raw material a score is built on, not the score itself.

Prices last checked 4 July 2026. Figures are price information, not an offer of supply — always confirm the current price on the provider's own site. Providers shown are GPhC and/or CQC-regulated.

Notice what the table exposes. Voy's £139 first month looks like the best deal in the row until you read across to the £244 ongoing price. Price honesty scoring is designed to reward the providers whose second month looks like their first — and to gently penalise the ones whose promo does the heavy lifting.

How we weight the five criteria

The five criteria are not equal. Regulation is a pass/fail gate — fail it and you are simply not on the site. Among the providers that clear the gate, price honesty and the clinical review carry the most weight, because those two do the most to protect a reader's money and safety. Patient experience and transparency refine the ranking between providers that are otherwise close.

Crucially, the composite score and the price ranking are two different things. The score is our editorial read of quality. The price table on the homepage is sorted purely by ongoing price, ascending, with The Weight Clinic pinned as our recommended pick and clearly labelled as such. You can ignore our opinion entirely and still use the table as a neutral price ladder.

What we deliberately refuse to do

A method is defined as much by its refusals as its rules.

• No pay-to-play. No provider can change the table order or add a point to a score. The table is sorted by price and nothing else moves it.
• No invented testimonials. We publish no fake reviews, no star counts we cannot source, and no quotes from people who do not exist.
• No medical claims beyond the evidence. Where we cite outcomes — for example the roughly 21% average weight loss in the SURMOUNT-1 trial of tirzepatide, or around 15% in the STEP 1 trial of semaglutide — those come from established public results, not from a provider's advertising.
• No scarcity theatre. No countdown timers, no "only 2 left", no manufactured urgency. GLP-1 treatment is a considered medical decision.

How often we re-check, and how to correct us

Prices in this market move. Every figure carries the date it was last checked — currently 4 July 2026 — and we re-verify prices against provider pages on a rolling basis. When a provider changes its pricing or terms, the score can move with it; nothing here is set in stone. If you spot a figure that is out of date or a judgement you think is wrong, the correction address is in our footer, and we would rather fix it than defend it.

You can see the method applied in practice across our other reviews: our full review of The Weight Clinic, our roundups of the best Mounjaro providers and best Wegovy providers, and our look at budget versus premium providers.