Buying a GLP-1 online: what the FDA tells consumers to check
The FDA publishes a list of warning signs for companies selling GLP-1 drugs online, and a set of specific concerns about compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide. This page reproduces them. It names no company and recommends none — the judgments below are the agency’s, and this page carries no paid link of any kind.
Ellis Brandt built this site’s grading methodology and maintains it. Two FDA pages, quoted with the dates the agency prints on them. Last re-read 2026-09-04.
Not medical advice. Semaglutide and tirzepatide are prescription-only medicines, and whether one is appropriate for you is a question for a licensed clinician who knows your history. This page reports what the FDA-approved prescribing information says and nothing else; it is not written or reviewed by a clinician. See the medical disclaimer.
Why this page has no links
Some links elsewhere on this site are paid. A page about how to judge a seller cannot be one of them, so it carries none at all — no provider named, no outbound commercial link, nothing to click that earns anything.
Sources read 2026-09-04, and listed in full at the foot of this page.
The FDA’s telehealth warning signs
Under the heading “Telehealth red flags for consumers”, the FDA lists warning signs to look for in a company. These are its words, reproduced.
| The warning sign, as the FDA words it |
|---|
| makes claims such as the compounded drug is the same as an FDA-approved drug |
| offers medicine at deep discounts or prices that seem too good to be true |
| sends medicine that looks different than what you’ve previously received at your local pharmacy or was pictured on their website, or arrives in packaging that is broken or damaged or lacks instructions for use |
| does not require a screening and prescription by a licensed doctor before providing medicine |
| does not have a licensed doctor available to answer questions after you receive your medication |
| makes spelling errors on the label or provides incorrect addresses of the pharmacy |
| includes a pharmacy name on the label that you think might be fraudulent |
Seven of them, reproduced in the order the agency lists them, from a page it marks current as of 2026-09-01.
What “compounded” means, in the FDA’s own words
“Compounded drugs are not FDA-approved. This means that FDA does not verify the safety, effectiveness or quality of compounded drugs before they are marketed. Consumers and health care professionals rely on FDA’s drug approval process for verification of safety, effectiveness and quality.”
Compounding and the FDA: Questions and Answers, current as of 2025-09-16.
On its GLP-1 page the agency puts the same point beside a condition: “A compounded drug might be appropriate if a patient’s medical need cannot be met by an FDA-approved drug, or the FDA-approved drug is not commercially available.” Its recommendation to patients is stated in one line: “Compounded drugs should only be used in patients whose medical needs cannot be met by an FDA-approved drug.”
Four specific concerns the agency has published
These are narrower and more practical than the general warning above, and each is a thing a reader can check about a delivery they have already received.
| Concern | What the FDA states |
|---|---|
| Multiple-dose vials | The agency states: “Generally, FDA recommends that vials containing multiple doses of sterile medications be used within 28 days after the first use because there is an increased risk of contamination after 28 days.” It advises discarding the vial at 28 days “even if instructions from the compounder say the medication can be used for longer than 28 days”, and using a new sterile needle and syringe for every dose. |
| Shipping temperature | “Injectable GLP-1 drugs require refrigeration as indicated in their package inserts.” The FDA says it has received complaints that some compounded GLP-1 drugs arrived warm or with inadequate ice packs, and recommends patients not use any injectable GLP-1 drug that arrives warm or with insufficient refrigeration. |
| Dosing errors | The agency reports receiving “multiple reports of adverse events, some requiring hospitalization, that may be related to dosing errors associated with compounded injectable semaglutide products”, arising from patients measuring and self-administering incorrect doses and, in some cases, health care professionals miscalculating doses. |
| Salt forms, and ingredients that cannot be compounded | Semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate are “different active ingredients than are used in the approved drugs”, and the FDA says it is “not aware of any lawful basis for their use in compounding”. Separately, it states that retatrutide and cagrilintide “cannot be used in compounding under federal law” and “have not been found safe and effective for any condition”. |
Two things worth knowing about the evidence itself
The agency states that it is aware of “fraudulent compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide marketed in the U.S. that contain false information on the product label” — in some cases naming a compounding pharmacy that does not exist, in others naming a real licensed pharmacy that, on the information the FDA has gathered, did not compound the product. A pharmacy name printed on a label is therefore a claim, not a verification.
It also says something important about its own adverse event data: “federal law does not require state-licensed pharmacies that are not outsourcing facilities to submit adverse events to FDA so it is likely that adverse events from compounded versions of these drugs are underreported.” ⛔ A low count of reported problems for a compounded product is not evidence that few occurred.
What a reader can do about that is narrow and the FDA says it plainly: get a prescription from a doctor, fill it at a state-licensed pharmacy, and contact the compounder or the telehealth platform with any question about the label or the instructions for use.
Sources
| Page | Publisher | Content current as of | Address |
|---|---|---|---|
| FDA’s Concerns with Unapproved GLP-1 Drugs Used for Weight Loss | U.S. Food and Drug Administration | 2026-09-01 | fda.gov |
| Compounding and the FDA: Questions and Answers | U.S. Food and Drug Administration | 2025-09-16 | fda.gov |
Read with a browser user agent rather than an automated fetcher, and a nonsense fda.gov path was requested through the identical method in the same session as a control — it returned 404, so the pages above returned because they exist.
The approved products’ own storage and administration instructions are in their prescribing information rather than on these pages. What those labels say about doses, missed doses and warnings is on the dose escalation page and the contraindications page.
More, read from the labels themselves
- Semaglutide vs tirzepatidereading the label
What the four FDA-approved labels say each molecule is, what each is approved to treat, and where the two differ.
- Dose escalation schedulesreading the label
The starting dose, the escalation interval and the maximum dose each label sets, and why they are not interchangeable.
- Side effect ratesreading the label
What each label reports for nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and constipation — and the sentence every label prints above those numbers.
- Missed dose rulesreading the label
The window each label gives for a late dose, and the minimum gap it requires when the injection day changes.
- Drug interactionsreading the label
Insulin and sulfonylureas, oral medications, and the oral-contraceptive precaution that appears on two of these four labels and not the other two.
- Who should not take onereading the label
The boxed warning every one of these labels carries, the two contraindications, and which warnings appear on which product.