The Wegovy Dosage Chart: From Starting Dose to Maintenance

By the Affordable GLP-1 Providers desk · label and trial figures human-verified before launch per our editorial policy · not medical advice

Wegovy’s ladder is the one the famous trial results were built on. Here it is rung by rung — including the maintenance option most charts leave off and the restart rule most people learn the hard way.

The ladder, week by week

Weeks 1–4: 0.25 mg. Weeks 5–8: 0.5 mg. Weeks 9–12: 1 mg. Weeks 13–16: 1.7 mg. Week 17 onward: 2.4 mg, the maintenance dose. Each block is a minimum, not a stopwatch — the label explicitly allows holding a rung an extra 4 weeks when side effects need settling, and clinical practice holds longer than that routinely.

1.7 mg is a real destination

If 2.4 mg proves intolerable, the label’s answer is not "quit" — it is maintenance at 1.7 mg. That option changes the arithmetic of side effects: the choice is rarely all-or-nothing, and meaningful results occurred at sub-maximal doses in the trial program too. Anyone told the only options are 2.4 or zero is hearing marketing, not the label.

The adolescent note

Wegovy is approved for adolescents 12 and older with obesity, on the same titration spine, with treatment decisions and monitoring firmly in pediatric hands. That approval is one more reason the "same medication" claims of compounded sellers matter: nothing about a pediatric label transfers to a pharmacy-made copy.

Pausing, missing, and restarting

A missed weekly dose is taken when remembered if the next scheduled dose is still a couple of days out; otherwise skip [verify the label’s exact window]. The rule that surprises people is the restart: after a gap of more than a few weeks, prescribers commonly re-titrate from a lower rung rather than resuming at 2.4 cold, because tolerance to GI effects fades during the gap. Budget for that in both side effects and — on dose-priced programs — cost.

What the chart cannot tell you

The ladder is the same for everyone; the response is not. Trial averages at 2.4 mg came with wide individual spread, and the right maintenance dose is the one balancing your results, your side effects, and your prescriber’s judgment — a triangulation no chart performs.

The semaglutide schedules, straight from the labels

Wegovy (weight management, weekly injection): 0.25 mg for weeks 1–4, then 0.5 mg, 1 mg, and 1.7 mg in successive 4-week blocks, reaching the full 2.4 mg maintenance dose at week 17. The label allows 1.7 mg as a maintenance dose for people who cannot tolerate 2.4, which is a detail many summaries skip. Escalation can be delayed 4 weeks at any rung if side effects need time to settle.

Ozempic (type 2 diabetes, weekly injection): 0.25 mg for 4 weeks — a starter dose with no glycemic effect claimed — then 0.5 mg. If more control is needed, 1 mg, then a maximum of 2 mg. There is no 2.4 mg Ozempic; that dose belongs to Wegovy’s label.

Rybelsus (type 2 diabetes, daily tablet): 3 mg for 30 days (a starter dose), then 7 mg, with 14 mg available if needed. It only works taken on a truly empty stomach with no more than 4 oz of plain water, waiting at least 30 minutes before any food, drink, or other oral medication — the absorption enhancer that makes oral semaglutide possible is that fragile.

Rules that apply across all three: steps happen no faster than every 4 weeks; your prescriber can hold a rung longer; a missed weekly dose is taken within the window the label specifies (roughly, if the next dose is still several days away — confirm the exact window on your product’s label [verify]) and never doubled; and none of this is a template for compounded products, whose concentrations and schedules vary by pharmacy.

What a schedule costs — the part dose charts leave out

Every rung on these ladders is also a line on an invoice, and the pricing model decides how. Under dose-laddered pricing, the chart is a revenue plan: a program quoting $149 at the starting dose and $299 at maintenance bills roughly $3,138 across a titration year (three entry months, nine at the top), while a flat-at-every-dose program at $169 bills $2,028 for the identical clinical path — an $1,100 gap produced entirely by pricing structure, not medicine. Four-week billing quietly adds another ~8.7%, because 28-day cycles land 13.04 times a year. Run your own quote through the tirzepatide or semaglutide dose-and-cost tool before signing anything.

Restarts have economics too. A gap — shortage, travel, finances — often means re-titrating from a lower rung for tolerability, and on laddered pricing that can mean paying “intro” months again while some programs also re-charge intake fees. Ask any program two questions before enrolling: what does my price become at each dose on this chart, and what happens to my rate if I pause and restart? A seller that answers in writing in one email is telling you something; a seller that answers with a phone-only “it depends” is telling you something too.

Finally, the label-to-insurance mapping: coverage follows the product and indication, not the molecule — which is why the same milligram can be covered as one brand and denied as another, and why compounded versions sit outside coverage entirely (cash-pay, sometimes HSA/FSA-eligible, which is not the same thing). The chart you titrate on and the label your plan reads are the same document; keep both in view.

A 2026-specific footnote: post-shortage, supply is a program-level variable again. Ask how a program handles a pharmacy backlog mid-titration — does your rate and rung hold, do they transfer the prescription, do they re-charge intake? A schedule is only as stable as the supply chain and pricing model underneath it, and both are fair questions before month one.

Safety, before anything else. Semaglutide and tirzepatide carry a boxed warning: thyroid C-cell tumors occurred in rodents, and the drugs are contraindicated with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or MEN 2. Stop and seek care for severe, persistent abdominal pain (with or without vomiting) — the classic pancreatitis presentation. Gallbladder disease, dehydration-driven kidney injury, and hypoglycemia when combined with insulin or sulfonylureas are on the labels. Tell every clinician you take a GLP-1 before any procedure requiring sedation — anesthesia societies advise holding these drugs beforehand because of delayed stomach emptying [verify current guidance]. Do not use in pregnancy. In an emergency, call 911. Report side effects to your clinician and FDA MedWatch (1-800-FDA-1088).

Where this fits the pricing picture. Everything above describes the FDA-approved brand products and their labels. The compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide sold by the telehealth programs in our price index are not FDA-approved, are not reviewed for safety or effectiveness, and vary by pharmacy — trial results and label percentages do not transfer to them. If cost is what brought you here, start with the true-month calculator and the dose-and-cost ladders, and read the full safety page before comparing a single price. One more habit that pays: before enrolling anywhere, check whether the program publicly names its dispensing pharmacy — our pharmacy disclosure index tracks who does, because in a market of not-FDA-approved preparations, the pharmacy is the product and silence about it is information.

The bottom line

The Wegovy Dosage Chart is a topic where the label, the trials, and the marketing routinely tell three different stories. The version above sticks to the first two, flags what still needs verification, and leaves the clinical decisions where they belong — with a prescriber who knows your history. When you’re ready to compare what any of this costs in practice, the price index carries every price we track with its source and its date.

Questions worth bringing to your prescriber

Print or paraphrase; the point is walking in with structure. Which product and label are we dosing from, and why that one for me? What is our escalation plan — and our hold-the-rung plan if a step is rough? Which maintenance dose are we aiming for, and what result would make a lower one acceptable? What exactly should I do about a missed dose on this product — what window, and where is it written? If I pause for travel, illness, or cost, how do we restart — same rung or re-titrate? Do any of my other medications need timing changes around slowed stomach emptying? A prescriber who enjoys these questions is the one you want; a program whose intake flow can’t handle them is answering a different question — about itself.

How to read this article — and everything else on this site

House rules, so you can audit us: label claims cite labels, trial numbers cite the named trial, and a bracketed [verify] marks a figure our desk re-checks against the current source before each publication cycle rather than trusting memory. Dates matter as much as numbers — labels get revised, prices move — so treat anything undated (here or anywhere) as a rumor with good typography. Nothing above transfers to compounded copies: they are pharmacy preparations that are not FDA-approved, and a trial that tested the brand tested the brand. If you catch an error, [email protected] reaches a human with a 72-hour target; the corrections log shows we mean it.

Two more reading habits pay for themselves. First, separate frequency from severity: a 40% side effect that fades in a week and a 1% one that ends up in an emergency department are different kinds of facts, and sentences that blur them are selling something. Second, notice denominators — “in trials” means the approved product at protocol doses in monitored adults, which is the strongest evidence available and still not a promise about a different product, a different dose, or you.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to reach the full Wegovy dose?

Seventeen weeks at the label’s default pace. Slower is allowed and common; there is no prize for speed and a real cost in side effects.

Can I stay on 1.7 mg forever?

Yes — 1.7 mg is an approved maintenance dose for people who cannot tolerate 2.4 mg. It is a destination on the label, not a failure state.

What happens if I stop Wegovy for a month?

Expect your prescriber to restart below your previous dose and re-climb, because GI tolerance fades during gaps. Restarting cold at 2.4 mg is how bad weeks happen.

Sources. FDA prescribing information for Wegovy, Ozempic, Rybelsus, Mounjaro, and Zepbound (dosage & administration sections); FDA drug-shortage and compounding communications. Figures marked [verify] are checked by a human editor against the current label before launch, per our editorial policy. Compounded products are not FDA-approved; label schedules describe the brand products only.