GLP-1 Prescriptions in the US: The Numbers by Quarter

If you have ever wondered whether “everyone is on Ozempic” is a real trend or a media story, this page is the answer in numbers. It pulls together the prescription counts, the quarterly revenue and the market share figures that the two biggest GLP-1 makers and the data firm IQVIA have actually published, and it explains why the figures you see in headlines often disagree.

None of this is medical advice. It is a description of a market. If you are deciding whether a GLP-1 is right for you, that is a conversation with a healthcare provider.

This page contains no dosing guidance. It does not describe what dose to take, how to change a dose, when to start or stop a medication, or how to combine one with another. Those are set by the FDA-approved prescribing information and Instructions for Use for each product, by your own prescription, and by your provider.

How many GLP-1 prescriptions do Americans fill?

The best long-run public series comes from IQVIA, the firm that tracks prescriptions filled at US pharmacies.

Before October 2022, GLP-1 drugs of all kinds together reached about 2.5 million prescriptions per month in the United States [1]. That covered everything: Ozempic and Trulicity for type 2 diabetes, Victoza, Saxenda, and the first Wegovy prescriptions.

Then the volume roughly doubled within a year, and by the end of 2024 IQVIA reported that GLP-1 volume had passed 9 million prescriptions a month [1].

Two other IQVIA figures fill in the picture:

• Commercial-insurance GLP-1 volume grew from 680,000 a month in January 2020 to 4.7 million in May 2025 [2].
• Medicare GLP-1 volume grew from about 400,000 a month to about 2 million over the same period [2].
• As of the second quarter of 2025, about 11 million unique US patients were using a GLP-1 across all indications [1].

That last number is the one worth holding onto. Prescriptions are fills; patients are people. An 11 million patient base in a country where more than 100 million adults have obesity means the market is large but still early.

What happened in 2026?

Two things changed the shape of the market in 2026: pills arrived, and prices collapsed.

The FDA approved the Wegovy pill, oral semaglutide 25 mg, on December 22, 2025, and Novo Nordisk launched it in the US in early January 2026 [12]. The FDA approved Eli Lilly’s Foundayo (orforglipron), a once-daily small-molecule oral GLP-1, on April 1, 2026; Lilly accepted prescriptions immediately through LillyDirect with shipping from April 6 [13].

Wegovy pill by quarter

Period	Prescriptions
First four days after the early-January 2026 launch	3,071 [3], unverified against the primary tracker
Second week	about 18,410 [3]
Q1 2026 total	about 1.3 million [4]
Q2 2026 total	about 2.9 million [5]
Cumulative by early August 2026	more than 5 million [5]

Novo describes this as the strongest GLP-1 volume launch ever recorded in the US [5]. Two details matter more than the headline. First, IQVIA found that within eight weeks the pill was capturing roughly one-third of all new-to-brand obesity prescriptions [6]. Second, about two-thirds of that volume came from people who had never taken any GLP-1 [6]. The pill did not mostly move existing patients around; it brought new ones in.

Foundayo by week

Period	Prescriptions
Week ending April 10, 2026 (likely two days of capture)	1,390 [3]
Second week	3,707 [7]
Week nine	just under 20,000 [7]
Late July 2026	34,219 [7]
Following week (early August 2026)	38,928 [7]

Foundayo opened slower than the Wegovy pill but faster than either injectable had opened years earlier. For comparison, injectable Zepbound recorded about 1,100 prescriptions in its first week and injectable Wegovy 768 [7]. RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh told Reuters that weeks eight through twelve were the earliest sensible window to judge the launch [3], and by that point Foundayo was compounding steadily.

What do the weekly market share numbers say?

Every week, Wall Street analysts publish IQVIA total-prescription counts for the branded obesity market, and trade publications compile them. Here is the picture from the summer of 2026.

A caveat that applies to every weekly figure below: the canonical weekly compilation, Fierce Pharma’s Oral GLP-1 Tracker, blocks automated retrieval, so the week-by-week counts here were captured from search-result excerpts of that tracker and from analyst notes quoted in the press rather than read off the tracker itself. Treat any individual weekly number in this section as unverified against the primary tracker. The figures Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly published themselves, and the quarterly totals, are verified against company filings.

For the week ending July 10, 2026, IQVIA data cited by Citi showed Zepbound at about 660,000 total prescriptions and the whole Wegovy franchise at about 448,500, with the overall GLP-1 market down 5.1% week over week after the July 4 holiday [7].

Novo Nordisk published its own version of the same week a week later. For the week ending July 17, 2026, Novo said total Wegovy prescriptions in the US were around 575,000, made up of more than 265,000 for the pill and about 310,000 for the injection [5]. Of those injectable scripts, about 120,000 were filled in the self-pay channel through retail pharmacies, NovoCare Pharmacy and telehealth partners [5].

Those two figures, 448,500 and 575,000, are for adjacent weeks and describe the same brand. The gap is the single most useful thing in this article, and it is explained in the next section.

On market share, the summer 2026 weekly splits ran roughly:

• Lilly (Zepbound plus Foundayo): about 57% to 60% [7]
• Novo (Wegovy injection plus Wegovy pill): about 40% to 43% [7]

At the end of 2025, before the pills, Zepbound alone had held about 60.5% of the US obesity market [8]. So Novo clawed back a few points with the pill and then held roughly flat.

Novo makes a different claim using a different metric: measured by new patient starts rather than total prescriptions, it says the Wegovy franchise remained the market leader among branded obesity medicines in the US as of the second quarter of 2026 [5]. In the first quarter, Novo’s CEO told CNBC that Wegovy had 65% of all new US prescriptions in the category [4]. Both things can be true at once if Lilly has a larger installed base of continuing patients and Novo is winning more of the new ones.

Why do the numbers disagree?

Prescription trackers count what they can see. In 2026, a large and growing share of GLP-1 volume moved through channels that traditional pharmacy-claims tracking captures poorly or late:

• Manufacturer-direct pharmacies such as NovoCare Pharmacy and LillyDirect
• Telehealth platforms with their own dispensing arrangements
• Cash-pay transactions that never touch an insurance claim

Novo stated plainly in its half-year report that external data providers were “still expected to gradually improve their capture rate of prescriptions for Wegovy pill across channels during the coming quarters” [5]. Lilly told Reuters that early weekly figures “can be volatile and are best interpreted over time rather than as a complete count” [3].

So when you read a headline saying one drug beat another in a given week, treat it as a directional signal, not a scoreboard. Trends over eight to twelve weeks are far more reliable than any single week.

The revenue picture, quarter by quarter

Prescription counts tell you about demand. Revenue tells you what that demand is worth, and in 2026 the two moved in opposite directions.

Eli Lilly, second quarter 2026

Lilly reported worldwide revenue of USD 22.97 billion, up 48% year over year [9]. Within that:

Product	Q2 2026	Q2 2025	Change
Mounjaro (worldwide)	USD 9,943 million	USD 5,199 million	+91%
Zepbound (worldwide)	USD 4,928 million	USD 3,381 million	+46%
Foundayo (worldwide)	USD 98 million	—	first quarter

Source: Lilly Q2 2026 earnings release [9].

Two labeling details matter here, because they are the ones secondary coverage gets wrong. The USD 4,928 million Zepbound line is worldwide, not US-only: tirzepatide is sold for obesity as Zepbound in Canada and Japan as well as the United States. Lilly’s narrative gives the US figure separately at USD 4.9 billion, up 44% [9]. Mounjaro’s USD 9,943 million likewise splits into USD 4.8 billion in the US, up 45%, and USD 5.2 billion outside the US, up 172% [9].

For the first half of 2026, Mounjaro reached USD 18,605 million, up 106%, and Zepbound reached USD 9,088 million, up 60% [9].

The number that tells the real 2026 story is buried in the same release: worldwide volume rose 60% while realized prices fell 13% [9]. In the US specifically, revenue rose 33% on a 37% increase in volume and a 3% decrease in realized prices; Lilly states that excluding favorable adjustments to rebate and discount estimates, US price would have declined by approximately 9% [9]. Outside the US, revenue rose 80% on a 113% volume increase, with prices down 36%, driven mostly by Mounjaro’s addition to China’s National Reimbursement Drug List [9].

Novo Nordisk, second quarter 2026

Novo reported total sales of DKK 78.5 billion, up 3% at constant exchange rates [5]. Within obesity care:

Product	Q2 2026	Growth at constant rates, reported	Growth at constant rates, adjusted
Wegovy injectable (worldwide)	DKK 19,484 million	0%	+1%
Wegovy pill (worldwide)	DKK 3,218 million	first full quarters	first full quarters
Saxenda	DKK 450 million	-48%	-47%
Total obesity care	DKK 23,152 million	+15%	+16%

Source: Novo Nordisk financial report for January-June 2026 [5]. “Adjusted” strips out reversals of rebate provisions tied to the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, explained below. Q2 2026 itself carried no 340B reversal, so the two columns differ only because the Q2 2025 comparison base did.

In the US specifically, Novo reported that Wegovy injectable sales fell 22% at constant exchange rates in the quarter, “driven by lower realised prices, partly countered by increased volumes” [5]. That single sentence captures the entire 2026 American GLP-1 market: more patients, less money per patient.

Novo’s headline figures are complicated by one-off accounting. A DKK 26.8 billion reversal of rebate provisions tied to the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program landed in the first quarter of 2026, and a DKK 2.6 billion reversal landed in the second quarter of 2025 [5]. Reported first-half growth was 18% at constant rates; adjusted growth was 2% [5]. If you are comparing Novo to Lilly, use the adjusted numbers.

Who is actually writing these prescriptions?

One of the quieter shifts in the data is who prescribes. Endocrinologists and internists accounted for 93% of GLP-1 prescribing in 2020 and 83% by 2025 [10]. IQVIA reported that while those specialists grew their GLP-1 prescribing 500% in 2025, non-diabetes specialists grew theirs about 900% [10].

Adoption speed among prescribers was also unusual. Twelve months after launch, Mounjaro and Zepbound had roughly four times as many unique prescribers as the earlier Ozempic and Wegovy launches [1].

What the numbers suggest about where this goes

Three things stand out from the 2026 data.

The market is expanding, not just reshuffling. Two-thirds of Wegovy pill volume came from GLP-1-naive patients [6]. J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott made the same observation about the oral launch: the market appeared to be expanding rather than eating into Zepbound injections [3].

Price is falling faster than volume is rising, in dollar terms per prescription. Lilly’s US realized prices fell while volume climbed 37%; Novo’s US Wegovy injectable revenue fell 22% on constant rates even with higher volumes [5][9]. Analysts responded by cutting 2030 market forecasts about 30%, to roughly USD 100 billion, even though nobody cut their patient-volume assumptions [11]. Goldman Sachs specifically moved its 2030 global obesity drug sales estimate to USD 105 billion from USD 130 billion, citing steeper price erosion, and for some firms the USD 150 billion milestone slid from 2030 to 2035 [11]. IQVIA, working from list prices rather than net, sized the global obesity medicines market at USD 66 billion in 2025 and forecast USD 92 billion for 2026 [6].

The cash channel is now a major share of volume. By Novo’s own count, roughly 120,000 of about 310,000 weekly injectable Wegovy prescriptions in mid-July 2026, about 39%, were filled self-pay [5]. Most Wegovy pill volume also flowed through cash-pay channels [6]. That is a structural change in how Americans buy these drugs, and it is why retail chains and telehealth platforms fought so hard for the prescription in 2026.

How to read future numbers yourself

A few practical rules:

1. Check whether a figure is total prescriptions (TRx) or new-to-brand prescriptions (NBRx). They tell different stories, and both companies pick the one that flatters them.
2. Check whether revenue is reported or adjusted. Novo’s 2026 reported growth is inflated by 340B provision reversals.
3. Check whether a share figure is US-only or worldwide. Zepbound is a US-and-a-few-markets brand; Mounjaro is global and now heavily weighted to China.
4. Give any weekly figure at least a month before you believe it. Holidays, shipment timing and data-capture lags move weekly numbers by several percent on their own [7].

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Sources

1. IQVIA, “Obesity Deep Dive: The Unparalleled Launch Success of Mounjaro and Zepbound,” September 23, 2025. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/united-states/blogs/2025/09/obesity-deep-dive-the-unparalleled-launch-success-of-mounjaro-and-zepbound
2. IQVIA, “GLP-1 Impact: How GLP-1s Are Changing the Diabetes Treatment Paradigm,” November 2025. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/united-states/blogs/2025/11/glp-1-impact-how-glp-1s-are-changing-the-diabetes-treatment-paradigm
3. USA Today / Reuters, “Lilly weight-loss pill Foundayo shows strong first-week demand,” April 17, 2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2026/04/17/eli-lilly-foundayo-demand/89663290007
4. CNBC, “Novo Nordisk (NVO) Q1 2026 earnings: Wegovy sales jump,” May 6, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/wegovy-glp1-weight-loss-novo-nordisk-earnings-stock-nvo-ozempic.html
5. Novo Nordisk, “Financial report for the period 1 January 2026 to 30 June 2026,” August 4, 2026. https://attachment.news.eu.nasdaq.com/a0078e15b379bff5e3b0ffdbddb3d5075
6. IQVIA, “The outlook for obesity from 2026 to 2030,” April 21, 2026. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/emea/blogs/2026/04/the-outlook-for-obesity-from-2026-to-2030
7. Fierce Pharma, “The Oral GLP-1 Tracker: Novo’s Wegovy pill vs Lilly’s Foundayo,” updated through 2026. https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/oral-glp-1-tracker-launch-trajectories-lilly-foundayo-novo-wegovy-pill
8. FinancialContent / MarketMinute, “The Great GLP-1 Divergence,” February 5, 2026. https://markets.financialcontent.com/wral/article/marketminute-2026-2-5-the-great-glp-1-divergence-eli-lilly-surges-toward-trillion-dollar-dominance-as-novo-nordisk-falters-on-us-price-cuts
9. Eli Lilly and Company, “Lilly reports second-quarter 2026 financial results,” August 5, 2026. https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lilly-reports-second-quarter-2026-financial-results-raises-full
10. IQVIA, “GLP-1s: The Swiss Army Knife Tackling More Than Obesity,” November 2025. https://www.iqvia.com/locations/united-states/blogs/2025/11/glp-1s-the-swiss-army-knife-tackling-more-than-obesity
11. Reuters, “Obesity market sales potential tightens as Novo and Lilly enter new era,” February 2, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/obesity-market-sales-potential-tightens-novo-lilly-enter-new-era-2026-02-02
12. Novo Nordisk, “FDA approves Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, the first and only oral GLP-1 for weight loss in adults,” December 22, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fda-approves-novo-nordisks-wegovy-pill-the-first-and-only-oral-glp-1-for-weight-loss-in-adults-302648344.html
13. Eli Lilly and Company, “FDA approves Lilly’s Foundayo (orforglipron), the only GLP-1 pill for weight loss that can be taken any time of day without food or water restrictions,” April 1, 2026. https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fda-approves-lillys-foundayotm-orforglipron-only-glp-1-pill