Switching from Ozempic to Wegovy: what the dose conversion looks like

You're partway through Ozempic and someone's mentioned Wegovy, here's the starting point

Lots of people land on this question from a specific place: they've been on Ozempic for their diabetes, their weight has become a separate clinical priority, and now they want to understand what a switch to Wegovy would actually involve. That feeling of being caught between two conversations (the diabetes one and the weight one) is understandable. The good news is that the pharmacology is familiar; the important detail is that the products are not simply rebadged versions of each other.

Ozempic and Wegovy both contain semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist that slows gastric emptying, reduces appetite signals and helps regulate blood sugar. The molecule is the same. But the UK licensed indication for Ozempic is type 2 diabetes, it is not approved for weight management. Wegovy's licence is the reverse: weight management in adults with a BMI of 30 or above, or 27 and above with at least one weight-related condition. The distinction matters legally and clinically. A prescriber prescribing Wegovy for weight loss is working within its licensed indication; prescribing Ozempic for weight loss would be off-label. For a thorough explanation of how these two products relate to each other, the Wegovy and Ozempic comparison page covers the overlap in full.

The NHS medicines pages for both products confirm that the active ingredient is semaglutide in each case, but they document the products separately, because the dose ladders, the licensed populations, and the clinical pathways differ.

Why an Ozempic-to-Wegovy conversion chart can't be a simple table

Search for an Ozempic semaglutide dose comparison and you'll find various charts circulating online. They have a surface logic: Ozempic doses (0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 2 mg) sit alongside Wegovy doses (0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg, 2.4 mg, and now 7.2 mg), and the lower steps look identical. The issue is that a chart can only show milligrams, it cannot capture where you are in your titration, how well you have tolerated each step, whether your diabetes management would be affected by switching, or whether the weight management indication is clinically appropriate for you specifically.

The NHS guidance on Wegovy notes that the titration schedule exists partly because gastrointestinal side effects (nausea, reflux, changes in bowel habit) are most likely during dose increases. Someone already stable on 1 mg of Ozempic may tolerate stepping to 1.7 mg Wegovy without the discomfort they'd have felt starting fresh. Someone who struggled at 0.5 mg may need to hold longer. A chart doesn't know any of that. What a prescriber does is treat the chart as a starting reference, then adjust based on your history.

There is a related but distinct question about moving in the other direction or between other GLP-1 products, the Saxenda-to-Wegovy conversion involves a different molecule entirely (liraglutide), which is a more substantive switch than staying within semaglutide. If you are exploring the broader landscape of product changes, this page on Wegovy and semaglutide conversion adds further context on how prescribers think about the switch. According to the NHS semaglutide medicines page, both Ozempic and Wegovy use the same titration principle of starting low and increasing cautiously, so the rhythm of a switch is familiar, but the destination dose range is higher with Wegovy.

What is actually licensed in the UK for weight loss, and what this means for you

Ozempic is not licensed for weight management in the UK. That point is worth sitting with for a moment, because plenty of people have read about it being used that way, and some have been offered it off-label. The MHRA's position is clear: for weight management, the licensed semaglutide product is Wegovy. For those looking at the broader weight-loss medicine landscape, the treatment overview page sets out what is currently approved and how each option works.

Wegovy is one of two injectable weight-loss medicines with a UK licence. Tirzepatide (Mounjaro) is the other, a dual GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist with a different mechanism and a different set of trial results. NICE has appraised both. The clinical trial programme for semaglutide at the 2.4 mg dose, known as the STEP trials, produced an average weight reduction of around 15% over 68 weeks, findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine (STEP 1). Whether Wegovy or Mounjaro is the right starting point depends on your medical background, not on a headline percentage. A prescriber makes that call.

If you are considering switching to Wegovy from Ozempic, or starting Wegovy for the first time, the first step is a clinical assessment. At nume, every consultation is personally read by a GPhC-registered Independent Prescriber on the same day, not a triage algorithm. You can also find answers to common questions about the process on our FAQs page, or get in touch directly.

To check whether Wegovy is appropriate for your circumstances, start a free consultation and our clinical team will review your history the same day.