Generic Ozempic could cost less than $3 a month, study shows

Generic versions of Novo Nordisk A/S’s hit shots Ozempic and Wegovy could be sold for under $3 a month, a new study showed, underscoring their potential to unlock global access to powerful weight-loss drugs.

Generic injectable semaglutide, the main ingredient in both blockbuster drugs, could cost $28 to $140 a year, according to researchers at the University of Liverpool. By contrast, Novo’s US list price is $1,027.51 for Ozempic and $1,349 for Wegovy, though it has pledged to cut both to $675 on Jan. 1. Direct-to-consumer prices are lower, at $349 a month for most doses of Wegovy.

Generic Ozempic is set to emerge in major markets from India and Brazil to China and Canada this year, reshaping the sector in those countries. Analysts have predicted that a price war will eventually push the monthly cost as low as $15 for patients in some countries.

Firms could sell it for even less, the researchers said. Their study was released this week in a preprint and has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“It allows a much larger scale of treatment,” said Andrew Hill, a senior visiting research fellow at the University of Liverpool, who helped lead the study. “The low price gives countries a vision of treating their whole population.”

They calculated the cost by analyzing shipment records for 2024 and 2025 of key ingredients used to make semaglutide, and estimated manufacturing costs that included packaging, taxes and profit. The methods are similar to those that a different team of researchers used in 2024 to find that Ozempic could be profitably produced for less than $5 a month.

Hill’s team found that oral versions of the drug would be more expensive than shots, at $186 to $380 per year. For injected versions, the drug ingredient itself was a fraction of the cost, between a penny and 12 cents per dose. They estimated injection pens accounted for 30 cents to $2.50 per device.

The level of affordability of generic semaglutide “will depend largely on low-cost device mass production,” the researchers wrote. The team wanted to make their findings public as soon as possible in order to give health authorities more visibility as they negotiate prices for semaglutide generics, Hill said.

As well as the 10 countries where semaglutide loses patent protection this year, the team identified 150 more nations with no patent filings at all. That means generic semaglutide could be available in 160 countries that are home to 69% of type 2 diabetes patients and 84% of people with obesity, they said.