Journal · Updated 2026-08-11
Start Price vs Maintenance Price: Anatomy of the Oldest Trick in GLP-1 Advertising
By the GLP1ProviderFinder Research Desk · Medically reviewed by Dr. A. Goher, MD · Last reviewed 2026-08-11 · How we verify
The short answer
The oldest trick in GLP-1 advertising is one sentence long: quote the price of a month the buyer passes through as if it were the price of the months the buyer lives in. It runs in four variants, and our database holds a live specimen of each. Starter-dose pricing: Fifty 410 advertises tirzepatide at one hundred thirty-three dollars — a start-only figure with no published maintenance price behind it, which is why methodology §4 records it but refuses to rank it. First-month promos: intro rates a hundred or more dollars below the ongoing figure, honest only when the reversion is printed beside them. Microdose tiers: Noom's one-hundred-seventy-nine-dollar tier caps at six-tenths of a milligram — a real product at a real price that is not the maintenance product, which is why our record carries a basis correction and ranks the two-forty-nine standard tier instead. Funnel-gated maintenance: programs whose higher-dose prices exist only inside checkout, unrankable by definition. All four variants die to the same two questions: what is the all-in monthly price at the maintenance dose, and where is it published?
Why the trick works, and what it costs
It works because the trajectory of this medication class runs opposite to the trajectory of its advertising: doses climb by design — the label's own escalation puts most patients at maintenance by month four — while ads are built around month one. A buyer comparing Program A's starter figure against Program B's maintenance figure isn't comparing prices; they're comparing calendar positions. The cost of falling for it is the gap between the advertised month and the lived year: the titration-year math shows a starter-priced tiered program losing to a "more expensive" flat one by hundreds of dollars across twelve months, and the Zealthy entry on our price-change ledger shows the adjacent membership variant — an advertised one hundred fifty-one dollars that becomes roughly two hundred ninety-seven all-in once the excluded fee is counted. None of these figures is a lie, exactly. Each is a true number about the wrong month.
The two-question test, and how this site enforces it
Question one: what is the all-in monthly price at the maintenance dose — medication, membership, provider access, and shipping folded in, at the dose you'll actually hold. Question two: where is that number published — on a page you can screenshot, or only behind intake. A program with good answers to both is comparable; a program without them is a pitch. The enforcement is structural on this site: every ranking runs at the maintenance basis with membership folded in; start-only listings are recorded and marked unrankable; promotional figures carry their end dates and reversion cards; microdose and starter tiers are labeled as what they are; and the head-to-head pages print both programs' figures on the identical basis so the calendar positions can't be mismatched. When an advertised number and a rankable number diverge, the provider's record says so in its watch field — the database is, in a sense, a catalog of this one trick defeated thirty-nine times.
Questions people ask
What's the difference between a start price and a maintenance price?
The start price covers the low-dose month or two you pass through; the maintenance price covers the dose you hold for the rest of the year — and the label's own escalation puts most patients at maintenance by month four. Comparing one program's start against another's maintenance compares calendar positions, not programs.
Is a low starter price ever legitimate?
Yes — when the maintenance price is published beside it. An intro rate with a printed reversion is a discount; an intro rate with a hidden reversion is the trick. Our rule: if the maintenance figure isn't published, the program is recorded but unrankable per methodology §4.
What two questions defeat every version of this?
First: what is the all-in monthly price at the maintenance dose — medication, membership, and shipping included? Second: where is that number published, in writing, outside the checkout funnel? Screenshot the answer; the capture, not the ad, is your reference.
This article is pricing research, not medical advice. Verify figures at the provider's checkout. Nothing here is medical advice.