Shortly after scoring a historic FDA nod for its Wegovy pill, Novo Nordisk is off to the races with the oral obesity med’s launch.
The once-daily pill officially debuted in the U.S. Monday, with the cost of the starting 1.5-mg dose set at $149 per month—or about $5 per day—for cash-paying patients. The monthly price for commercially insured patients, meanwhile, could potentially run as low as $25 for those using savings plans, Novo said in a Jan. 5 press release.
Novo’s Wegovy pill became the first oral GLP-1 approved by the FDA for weight loss Dec. 22. Aside from its obesity indication, the daily medication is also cleared to curb patients’ risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) such as death, heart attack or stroke.
Prior to the Wegovy pill’s approval, Novo in 2019 scored an FDA nod for an oral version of the same GLP-1 molecule, semaglutide, as the Type 2 diabetes medicine Rybelsus.
For now, the green light gives Novo an edge over its chief metabolic medicine rival, Eli Lilly, which gained the upper hand over Novo in the U.S. prescription obesity market last year with its dual GIP/GLP-1 agonist Zepbound (tirzepatide). Lilly is jockeying for FDA approval of its own oral obesity candidate, orforglipron, which could come quickly on the heels of Novo's nod.
“Wegovy pill is here, and it represents a significant innovation as the first and only GLP-1 pill for weight loss,” Ed Cinca, SVP of marketing and patient solutions at Novo, said in a statement Monday.
“This moment is about changing what's possible in weight management, and to make that possible, we have worked to ensure Wegovy pill is affordable and accessible to those who need it, however they choose to receive their care,” he added.
As part of that effort to make its medicines more accessible, Novo has, like many others in the industry, turned to self-pay channels and tapped certain telehealth outfits to help market its GLP-1s, oral Wegovy included. The strategy aims to tackle both lingering coverage constraints around prescription obesity drugs, as well as the spate of compounding pharmacies who took to marketing their own versions of Novo and Lilly GLP-1s when both companies faced supply shortfalls in prior years.
The Wegovy pill will be available at U.S. pharmacies like CVS and Costco, as well as select telehealth providers such as Ro, LifeMD, Weight Watchers, GoodRx and Novo’s own direct-to-patient sales channel, NovoCare Pharmacy, the company said in its launch announcement.
For patients paying out of pocket, the $149-per-month price will apply to the Wegovy pill’s starting 1.5 mg dose, as well as the 4 mg dose through April 15, at which point the cost of the second dose will rise to $199 monthly. The highest doses of the Wegovy pill will cost $299 per month for patients without insurance, Novo explained.
Aside from the starting dose, Novo’s GLP-1 pill is administered at 4 mg and 9 mg strengths, with a maximum maintenance dose of 25 mg.
Novo’s increasing pivot toward direct-to-consumer sales also comes amid a broader reckoning on drug prices in the U.S., driven by the second Trump administration’s “most favored nation” cost-balancing efforts, which have already seen multiple pharma majors make high-profile concessions with the White House.
Novo, alongside Eli Lilly, signed its own U.S. pricing deal in November, and shortly thereafter announced it was cutting the self-pay cost for all doses of injectable Wegovy—and all but the 2-mg dose of the drug’s diabetes counterpart Ozempic—to $349 per month, down from $499 monthly.
At the time of Novo’s oral Wegovy approval last month, the company’s EVP of U.S. operations, Dave Moore, noted in a statement that the company was “prepared for a full U.S. launch in early January,” adding that production of the Wegovy pill was already “well underway” in North Carolina.
Novo is hoping that the new oral formulation of its popular weight loss medication will expand Wegovy access by introducing the drug to patients with an aversion to needles and by eliminating other constraints like the need for a cold chain and refrigeration of the final injectable product, Jason Brett, M.D., principle medical head at Novo Nordisk, told Fierce in an interview late last year.
Earlier in 2025, Novo’s chief scientist, Martin Holst Lange, estimated that just 2% of people with obesity in the U.S. were receiving a prescription medication for their condition. But with the oral Wegovy nod, Brett said he figures Novo could “improve care on a population level” by making its drug more accessible.
“There is no one-size-fits-all in medicine in general, and especially in obesity treatment,” he said at the time.
In the Oasis 4 study that secured the Wegovy pill its FDA nod, oral semaglutide spurred average weight loss of nearly 17% among patients who adhered to treatment, compared to roughly 3% weight loss for those on placebo. In terms of efficacy, regardless of whether all patients stayed on treatment, the average weight loss on the Wegovy pill clocked in at 13.6%, versus 2.4% in the phase 3 trial’s control cohort.
Novo’s stock price was up a little more than 3% as of 10 a.m. ET on Monday morning.