How is the halfrx score calculated?

It is arithmetic over the facts recorded for each provider and drug, with the weights published on this page. Providers are scored on cost at maintenance (2.5), branded versus compounded medication (2.5), the strongest molecule they can prescribe (1), contract length (1), the care wrapped around the prescription (1) and conduct (2). Medications are scored on trial evidence (3.5), FDA approval (3), cost (2.5) and caveats (1). Nobody types a number in, and a price change re-scores the card.

Can a company pay for a better score or to have a flag removed?

No. Affiliate status is not an input to any component of the formula, and no provider sees a review before publication. Because the formula is published in full, you can recompute any score yourself from the card and check that the number matches.

Why does halfrx quote a different price from the provider's own advert?

Because we quote what you pay once titrated to a maintenance dose. Advertised figures are frequently an introductory rate covering the first fills, a starting dose the label says is not for maintenance, or the bottom of a dose-scaled range. Those earn no points in our cost component.

Why do some cards show no price at all?

Because we have not verified one. A card whose maintenance price we cannot confirm shows no maintenance figure and scores zero on cost; where the seller publishes parts of a price — a membership fee, a per-dose rate — the card may show halfrx's sum of those parts, marked as an estimate, and an estimate costs a provider 0.2 points under conduct. A provider publishing only titration pricing is treated as publishing none: a maintenance price nobody publishes is not a cheap price.

Why is a company under an FTC action capped at 4.5 out of 10?

Penalties floor at zero within each component, so without a cap a company under an open regulator action would keep every point its price and product earned and land mid-table. Any of these is disqualifying rather than merely costly: FTC lawsuit, state action, BBB rating F, FDA warning letter.

How current are the prices?

Every card carries the date its price was last verified, printed on the card and in our machine-readable feed. A nightly job re-reads published pricing and queues changes; a person approves each one before it reaches a page. Providers that block automated reading of their own pages, and prices that come from a third-party report, are re-checked by hand and go stale between checks, which the card says.

← All providers and medications

How halfrx scores

Every score on this site is arithmetic over the facts recorded for each provider and drug. Nobody types a number in. Change a price and the score moves on the next run — which is the only version of a rating a reader can actually check.

Providers, out of 10

Costmax 2.5
What you pay once titrated, not the intro rate or the starting dose, scored against the observed spread of every verified program price. Where a program publishes a range that reaches the maintenance dose but no single ongoing figure, the top of the range is scored, because dose-scaled pricing lands you there. Where it publishes only titration or introductory prices — nothing at the maintenance dose — cost scores zero, exactly as it does with no verified price at all: an unpublished price is not a neutral fact.
Medicationmax 2.5
Branded FDA-approved medication scores full marks, and a program offering both branded and compounded scores 1.2. Compounded alone scores zero: the FDA does not review it for safety, efficacy or quality. Cheapness cannot buy back those points — an earlier draft of this formula weighted cost highly enough that compounded programs outranked branded ones, which is the opposite of what a reader needs.
What they supplymax 1
The strongest molecule the program can actually prescribe. Tirzepatide or orforglipron 1.0, semaglutide 0.8, liraglutide 0.3 — liraglutide delivers roughly 8% weight loss against tirzepatide's 21%, and a program selling only the weak one should not rank beside one selling the strong one.
Commitmentmax 1
No contract 1.0, month-to-month 0.85, three months 0.5, six months 0.25, twelve months 0, and 0.3 where the term is not published. The term you cannot leave is the one that costs you when side effects stop you.
Care around the prescriptionmax 1
A full program with coaching, titration support and prior-authorization help scores 1.0; a clinician who only writes the prescription 0.6; a pharmacy channel with no program at all 0.2.
Conductmax 2
Starts at 2 and loses points for each of these on the record: FTC lawsuit −1.5, FDA warning letter −1.5, BBB rating F −1.5, state action −1.0, compounding legal risk −0.8, manufacturer lawsuit −0.8, no published price −0.7, cancellation complaints −0.6, supply risk −0.5, overpriced for category −0.3, intro price expired −0.2, price estimated −0.2. Compounding legal risk is charged to every program whose medication is compounded, whether or not the flag is on its record. An estimated price is charged only where cost was scored on that estimate. The component cannot fall below zero.

Medications, out of 10

Evidencemax 3.5
Mean weight loss as the drug's own FDA label reports it for everyone randomized, scaled against 21% — roughly what tirzepatide achieves. Papers usually also publish a higher figure for the patients who stayed on treatment; that one is not used here, because mixing the two would rank drugs on how their results were analyzed. Where a diabetes label reports weight only in kilograms, the percentage is worked out from its own kilograms and baseline, and the card says so. No weight-loss figure on the label scores zero.
Approvalmax 3
FDA approved scores full marks. Compounded products score zero: they are not reviewed for safety, efficacy or manufacturing quality.
Costmax 2.5
Maintenance-dose price at the cheapest legitimate channel, against the observed spread of every verified medication price. Titration and intro prices do not count: where no single maintenance figure is published the top of the published range is scored, and titration pricing alone, or no verified price, scores zero.
Caveatsmax 1
Starts at 1 and loses points for each of these on the record: weaker molecule −0.5, boxed warning −0.5, off-label for weight −0.4, REMS restricted −0.3, price unverified −0.3, newly approved −0.2, controlled substance −0.2, strict dosing rules −0.2. The component cannot fall below zero.

The ceiling

Penalties floor at zero within a component, so without a cap a company under an FTC action would keep everything its price and product earned and land mid-table. A card carrying any of these therefore cannot score above 4.5, whatever else it earns: FTC lawsuit, state action, BBB rating F, FDA warning letter.

Worked examples

Open either card and the same numbers are printed there. If they disagree, the card is right and this page is stale — tell us.

Calibrate7.5

0.66/2.5Cost — $548/mo at maintenance, scored against the $129–$699 spread of every verified price we track
2.5/2.5Medication — FDA-approved branded medication
0.8/1What they supply — strongest molecule offered: semaglutide
0.5/1Commitment — three-month contract
1.0/1Care around the prescription — coaching, titration support and insurance help included
2.0/2Conduct — no penalties on file

Hims & Hers4.5

0.0/2.5Cost — no verified all-in price, so no points
2.5/2.5Medication — FDA-approved branded medication
0.8/1What they supply — strongest molecule offered: semaglutide
0.85/1Commitment — month-to-month
1.0/1Care around the prescription — coaching, titration support and insurance help included
0.0/2Conduct — −4.8: FTC lawsuit −1.5, state action −1.0, cancellation complaints −0.6, intro price expired −0.2, FDA warning letter −1.5

Capped at 4.5: this card carries one of the flags listed under the ceiling above.

What the score deliberately ignores

—Whether we earn a commission. Affiliate status is not an input, and no component can be bought.
—Customer review averages. They are trivially gamed, and a program with a five-star average and an open FTC complaint is not a five-star program.
—App polish and onboarding. Real, but not what determines whether the medication arrives, works, or bankrupts you.

Where the numbers come from

Every price carries the date it was verified, printed on the card. A card with no verified price shows no verified figure — where the seller publishes parts of a price, their sum is shown marked as an estimate — and a card with no price at all scores zero on cost, because an unpublished price is not a neutral fact. A nightly job re-reads published prices and queues changes; a person approves each one before it reaches a page.

Right now 19 of 43 cards carry a verified all-in price. 3 are due a re-check — never checked, or last checked more than 45 days ago — and the oldest check on the site is 2026-08-19.

Questions about the score

How is the halfrx score calculated?: It is arithmetic over the facts recorded for each provider and drug, with the weights published on this page. Providers are scored on cost at maintenance (2.5), branded versus compounded medication (2.5), the strongest molecule they can prescribe (1), contract length (1), the care wrapped around the prescription (1) and conduct (2). Medications are scored on trial evidence (3.5), FDA approval (3), cost (2.5) and caveats (1). Nobody types a number in, and a price change re-scores the card.
Can a company pay for a better score or to have a flag removed?: No. Affiliate status is not an input to any component of the formula, and no provider sees a review before publication. Because the formula is published in full, you can recompute any score yourself from the card and check that the number matches.
Why does halfrx quote a different price from the provider's own advert?: Because we quote what you pay once titrated to a maintenance dose. Advertised figures are frequently an introductory rate covering the first fills, a starting dose the label says is not for maintenance, or the bottom of a dose-scaled range. Those earn no points in our cost component.
Why do some cards show no price at all?: Because we have not verified one. A card whose maintenance price we cannot confirm shows no maintenance figure and scores zero on cost; where the seller publishes parts of a price — a membership fee, a per-dose rate — the card may show halfrx's sum of those parts, marked as an estimate, and an estimate costs a provider 0.2 points under conduct. A provider publishing only titration pricing is treated as publishing none: a maintenance price nobody publishes is not a cheap price.
Why is a company under an FTC action capped at 4.5 out of 10?: Penalties floor at zero within each component, so without a cap a company under an open regulator action would keep every point its price and product earned and land mid-table. Any of these is disqualifying rather than merely costly: FTC lawsuit, state action, BBB rating F, FDA warning letter.
How current are the prices?: Every card carries the date its price was last verified, printed on the card and in our machine-readable feed. A nightly job re-reads published pricing and queues changes; a person approves each one before it reaches a page. Providers that block automated reading of their own pages, and prices that come from a third-party report, are re-checked by hand and go stale between checks, which the card says.

Conflicts of interest

halfrx may earn a commission when you sign up through some links. That is why the score is a published formula rather than an opinion: you do not have to trust our motives, you can recompute the number. Note also that some comparison sites in this category are run by providers who appear in their own rankings — GoodRx now sells its own weight-loss subscription while also publishing comparisons. We sell nothing.

Why this score is a review and not a rating

The number above is published to search engines as a review: one named author, a stated scale, and the formula on this page so it can be recomputed rather than trusted. It is not published as an aggregate rating, which means an average of ratings collected from users. halfrx collects none. Building one out of a single editorial score, or out of the star ratings other sites collected, would be filling the field with something it does not mean — so Google reports a missing property here permanently, and that is the correct state. What the star ratings on those other sites are worth is a separate question, and they disagree with each other by up to three and a half points on the same company.

What we will and will not publish →Every correction, dated →Who checks the prices →What changed this week →Download the data →

The registers the score is built from

The record half of the score is a search of these. Publishing the formula is worth little without naming what it reads.

Warning letters, U.S. Food and Drug Administration — The register searched for every seller on this site. A letter found here is linked from the seller's page to the original.
Cases and proceedings, Federal Trade Commission — The register searched for advertising and billing actions against a seller.