Semaglutide Dosage Chart: What the Wegovy and Ozempic Labels Actually Specify

There is no single semaglutide dosage chart, and that is the first thing most of them get wrong. There are at least three, on the same molecule, on current FDA labels: Wegovy's injection ladder, Wegovy's tablet ladder, and Ozempic's — which stops at a maximum dose lower than Wegovy's starting maintenance dose. Pick the wrong one and you are reading a real chart for the wrong product.

Below is each of them, quoted from the labels, plus the arithmetic that connects a milligram dose to what you actually draw out of a compounded vial. None of it is dosing advice. The escalation instructions on these labels are written for a prescriber, and every number here describes an approved product — not whatever is in a vial bought elsewhere.

Wegovy injection: the ladder most people mean

The recommended starting dose is 0.25 mg subcutaneously once weekly, and the label's own Table 1 sets out the escalation for all approved indications: 0.25 mg for weeks 1 through 4, 0.5 mg for weeks 5 through 8, 1 mg for weeks 9 through 12, 1.7 mg for weeks 13 through 16, and the maintenance dose from week 17 onward¹.

The maintenance dose depends on why it was prescribed. For weight reduction in adults it is 1.7 mg or 2.4 mg once weekly, with 2.4 mg recommended — and, in a provision that postdates most of the dosage charts circulating online, for patients who tolerate 2.4 mg for at least four weeks and for whom additional weight reduction is clinically indicated, "the dosage may be increased to a maximum dosage of 7.2 mg subcutaneously once weekly¹." For cardiovascular risk reduction it is 2.4 mg (recommended) or 1.7 mg; for noncirrhotic MASH with moderate to advanced liver fibrosis it is 2.4 mg, reducible to 1.7 mg if not tolerated, with re-escalation to be considered; for pediatric patients aged 12 and older, 2.4 mg (recommended) or 1.7 mg¹.

The label also builds in a pause that charts tend to drop: "If patients do not tolerate a dose during dosage escalation, consider delaying dosage escalation for 4 weeks¹." The ramp exists, in the label's own words, "to reduce the risk of gastrointestinal adverse reactions¹" — the same reason tirzepatide's does.

For context on where the 2.4 mg maintenance dose came from: the trial that established it for weight management randomized 1,961 adults without diabetes 2:1 to 68 weeks of once-weekly semaglutide 2.4 mg or placebo, alongside lifestyle intervention, and reported a mean body-weight change of −14.9% versus −2.4% on placebo. Nausea and diarrhea were the most common adverse events, "typically transient and mild-to-moderate in severity³" — which is what the four-week escalation steps above exist to blunt.

Ozempic: a different ladder, and a lower ceiling

Ozempic is semaglutide labelled for type 2 diabetes, and its schedule is genuinely different rather than a subset. Initiation is 0.25 mg once weekly for four weeks, then 0.5 mg once weekly. If additional glycemic control is needed, the dose may be increased to 1 mg after at least four weeks on 0.5 mg, and to 2 mg after at least four weeks on 1 mg. The recommended maintenance dosages are 0.5 mg, 1 mg or 2 mg, and the maximum is 2 mg once weekly².

Read those two paragraphs together and the trap is obvious: Wegovy's recommended weight-management maintenance dose (2.4 mg) is higher than Ozempic's approved maximum (2 mg). A chart that says "semaglutide maxes out at 2 mg" is describing Ozempic. A chart that says "the maintenance dose is 2.4 mg" is describing Wegovy. Both are correct about their own product and wrong about the other.

Wegovy tablets: a third ladder entirely

An oral semaglutide is now labelled for weight reduction, and it does not map onto the injection at all. Wegovy tablets start at 1.5 mg once daily for 30 days, titrating every 30 days, to a recommended maintenance dose of 25 mg orally once daily; the available strengths are 1.5, 4, 9 and 25 mg¹.

The administration protocol is as much a part of the dose as the number: take one tablet on an empty stomach in the morning with no more than four ounces of water, no other liquid, swallowed whole — not split, crushed, chewed or dissolved — and wait at least 30 minutes before eating, drinking anything else, or taking other oral medication¹. Oral semaglutide's absorption is the engineering problem the tablet solves; the protocol is how it gets solved.

The label also specifies switching in both directions: a patient on Wegovy 2.4 mg injection may switch to 25 mg tablets by starting the tablets one week after the last injection, and a patient on 25 mg tablets may switch to injection by starting 2.4 mg subcutaneously the day after the last tablet¹. That is a labelled protocol with specific intervals — not something to improvise.

Missed doses: three different rules, and one that sends you backwards

Semaglutide's missed-dose handling is the most-confused part of this whole topic, and the rules genuinely differ by product.

Wegovy injection. If one dose is missed and the next scheduled dose is more than two days away, administer it as soon as possible; if the next dose is less than two days away, skip it and resume on the regular day. And the provision with real consequences: "If 2 or more consecutive doses of WEGOVY injection are missed, reinitiate dosage escalation at a lower dosage to reduce the risk of gastrointestinal adverse reactions¹." Tolerance to a GLP-1 fades; the label says so by making you climb again.

Wegovy tablets. Skip the missed dose and take the next one the following day¹.

Ozempic. Administer within five days of the missed dose; if more than five days have passed, skip it and resume on the regular day. The weekly administration day can be changed as long as more than 48 hours separate two doses².

For a fourth variant, tirzepatide's window is four days with a 72-hour minimum between doses — covered in detail on our tirzepatide label page. Four molecules-or-brands, four rules. None is transferable.

Milligrams per week versus milligrams per millilitre

The approved pens hide the concentration from the patient by dialling a dose. A compounded vial does not, and the concentration spread across approved semaglutide products alone is wide enough to make the point.

Ozempic ships three pen concentrations: 0.68 mg/mL (a 2 mg/3 mL pen), 1.34 mg/mL (4 mg/3 mL) and 2.68 mg/mL (8 mg/3 mL)². Wegovy's single-dose pens run from 0.25 mg/0.5 mL up to 2.4 mg/0.75 mL, with a 7.2 mg/0.75 mL high-dose presentation; its multi-dose FlexTouch pen is 3.2 mg/mL (9.6 mg in 3 mL) delivering four 2.4 mg doses of 0.75 mL each¹. Widen the frame to include tirzepatide's 25 mg/mL vials and the range across FDA-approved GLP-1 injections is roughly 37-fold.

Which is why a "units" figure means nothing on its own. The arithmetic, written out:

• •Volume (mL) = dose (mg) ÷ concentration (mg/mL).
• •On a U-100 insulin syringe, 1 mL is marked as 100 units — a property of the syringe, not the drug. Units = mL × 100.

Run it on the label's own numbers rather than a hypothetical: Wegovy's FlexTouch delivers 2.4 mg at 3.2 mg/mL, which is 2.4 ÷ 3.2 = 0.75 mL, matching the label's stated 0.75 mL dose volume exactly. Ozempic's 1 mg dose at 1.34 mg/mL is 1 ÷ 1.34 = 0.75 mL as well — same volume, a very different milligram amount, because the concentrations differ by more than a factor of two.

⚠ This arithmetic tells you nothing about what dose you should take, and nothing about what is actually in a compounded vial — the concentration used is whatever that vial's label claims, and compounded products are not FDA-reviewed for identity, strength or purity before sale. FDA has received "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 from clinicians miscalculating them⁴. Our reconstitution calculator and units-to-mg converter run this arithmetic on numbers you supply.

What this means for a compounded prescription

The broad legal basis for selling compounded semaglutide at scale closed in 2025 — our dated timeline covers each step — and one path that remains open is patient-specific: a prescriber documenting that a particular patient needs something the commercial product does not offer⁵. In practice that makes a compounded dose an individualized decision rather than a standard protocol, which is a good reason to know what the standard protocol actually is.

There is also a semaglutide-specific check no dosage chart covers: whether the product is semaglutide base or a salt form. FDA states that semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate "are different active ingredients than are used in the approved drugs" and that it is "not aware of any lawful basis for their use in compounding⁴" — a distinction with no tirzepatide equivalent, covered in our explainer on what compounded semaglutide actually is.

If you are comparing sellers rather than schedules, our semaglutide provider comparison reads pharmacy, regulatory category and standing price off each company's own pages, and our cross-board pricing index puts every provider's real price for every compound in one sortable table.

The bottom line

Wegovy injection climbs 0.25 → 0.5 → 1 → 1.7 mg in four-week steps to a 2.4 mg maintenance dose, with a 7.2 mg tier now available above it for weight reduction in adults. Ozempic climbs 0.25 → 0.5 → 1 → 2 mg and stops at 2 mg. Wegovy tablets start at 1.5 mg daily and titrate every 30 days to 25 mg. Miss two consecutive Wegovy injections and the label sends you back down the ladder. All of that is written on current FDA labels, which is why it can be stated flatly. What the label cannot tell you is what is in a compounded vial or what dose belongs to you — the first is a question for the pharmacy, the second for the prescriber.