Mounjaro®
Starting from £179.99/mo
Start journey Learn moreStep by step: from your first search to your first dose
Imagine it's Tuesday morning and you want semaglutide by Thursday
You find a handful of sites, some with suspiciously low prices, some with no mention of a prescriber anywhere. This is the moment where the decision matters most. Wegovy (the brand of semaglutide licensed in the UK for weight management) is a Prescription-Only Medicine. UK law under the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 means it cannot legally be sold, supplied, or even advertised to you without a valid prescription from a qualified prescriber who has carried out a proper assessment. If a website offers to send it without that step, that is a red flag, not a shortcut.
The correct route is straightforward. You complete a clinical consultation — at a regulated online pharmacy like nume, that is a structured questionnaire reviewed personally by a GPhC-registered Independent Prescriber. They look at your full picture: BMI, health history, existing medications, contraindications. If the medicine is suitable for you, a prescription is issued and your treatment is dispensed from our GPhC-registered pharmacy. You can verify any online pharmacy on the GPhC register, our registration number is 9012878. If a pharmacy isn't listed there, do not use it. For orders placed before 12pm Monday to Friday, dispatch goes out the same day, and DPD delivers the next working day. If you would rather collect in person, our guide to finding a pharmacy near you that stocks Wegovy explains what to look for and how to check availability locally. Your pen arrives in plain packaging. It goes straight in the fridge door next to anything else you're keeping cold, ready for your first injection day.
The full guide to Wegovy in the UK covers what to expect from treatment in more detail.
What the MHRA wants you to know about fake pens
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has made this a public priority. Counterfeit weight-loss pens have been sold through social media and unofficial websites, and some have contained insulin rather than the medicine on the label. Hospitalisations followed. In October 2025, enforcement teams raided the first illicit UK manufacturing site producing counterfeit tirzepatide pens; across 2025, roughly 20 million doses of illegally traded weight-loss medicines, valued at around £45 million, were seized. Those are not abstract statistics, they reflect the scale of the risk to people who buy from unverified sellers.
The warning signs are consistent: sellers offering prescription medicines without requiring a consultation, prices far below anything a legitimate pharmacy can offer, discount codes for POMs from sources you have never heard of. You can report a suspect seller directly through the MHRA's Yellow Card scheme. The MHRA's own public guidance on GLP-1 medicines makes this point clearly: these are serious medicines that require proper clinical oversight, not quick purchases. If you're unsure whether a pharmacy is legitimate, choosing a verified Wegovy pharmacy registered with the GPhC takes about 30 seconds to confirm and tells you everything you need to know.
Who is actually eligible for semaglutide for weight loss in the UK?
Wegovy's UK licence covers adults with a BMI of 30 or above, or a BMI of 27 or above alongside at least one weight-related condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, or obstructive sleep apnoea. Lower BMI thresholds apply for some ethnic backgrounds under UK clinical guidance. A BMI that meets the threshold is a starting point, not a guarantee, the prescriber's job is to assess the full picture, including whether there are any reasons the medicine is not appropriate for you.
Semaglutide is not recommended during pregnancy, breastfeeding, or when actively trying to conceive, and it is not licensed for anyone under 18. Certain conditions (including a history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or pancreatitis) require careful prescriber discussion before any GLP-1 medicine is considered. NICE recommends semaglutide (Wegovy) for NHS use within specialist weight management services, with a maximum treatment duration of two years under that pathway; NHS waiting lists for those services can be substantial. For people who don't meet the current NHS criteria or prefer not to wait, a private prescription through a regulated pharmacy is the alternative. Our explainer on prescribing routes sets out what that means in practice, and the consultation page is where you start if you want a same-day clinical review.
Why the pharmacy you choose matters as much as the medicine
A clinical consultation fee, a prescription fee, delivery, and aftercare support are all part of what legitimate treatment costs. Some advertised prices exclude several of those. At nume, one transparent price covers everything: the consultation, the prescription, the medicine, free next-working-day DPD delivery, and priority aftercare seven days a week. We don't run discount codes or promotional pricing for prescription medicines, and we don't auto-renew orders, every repeat prescription goes through a fresh clinical review. That is not a marketing position; it is what responsible dispensing of a POM looks like.
Our clinical team, led by our clinical director, reviews consultations personally. Every patient who transfers from another provider, or requests a dose increase, provides evidence for clinical review before anything is dispensed. The semaglutide online pharmacy page has more on how to assess any online provider, and you can read about the full Wegovy online pharmacy process if you want to compare routes before deciding. When you're ready, check your eligibility and our prescribers will take it from there.
Looking to start your weight loss journey?
Take a quick eligibility quiz to explore your options and see how we can support you.