How to get Wegovy in the UK

Until 2026 this question had one answer, because Wegovy was one product. It now has two, and conflating them is the commonest mistake in this market.

The weekly injection is the original: a pre-filled pen, escalated over about sixteen weeks to a 2.4 mg maintenance dose, with a higher 7.2 mg option added to the licence in 2026 for weight management in obesity. It needs a fridge before first use and has an in-use period of six weeks afterwards.

The tablet is oral semaglutide, licensed for weight management and taken once daily. It is escalated through 1.5 mg, 4 mg and 9 mg to a 25 mg maintenance dose, and it carries administration conditions the pen does not: swallowed on an empty stomach after at least eight hours without food, with no more than half a glass of water, and nothing eaten, drunk or taken by mouth for the next thirty minutes.

Those conditions are the deciding factor for most people, not the efficacy figures. A tablet that fits your morning is better than a pen you resent; a pen is better than a tablet whose rules you will lose a negotiation with every day. It is worth having that conversation during the assessment rather than after.

One thing that is not a route: Rybelsus. It is also oral semaglutide, at lower doses, and it is licensed for type 2 diabetes rather than weight management. It is a separate product, not a cheaper way to get the same thing.

Wegovy is a prescription-only medicine in both its forms, so every lawful supply runs through a prescriber who has assessed you.

Weight-management medicines are classed as high-risk, and the expectation is that a prescriber verifies what you report rather than accepting a form — by photograph, video call, or contact with your GP. A provider that omits that has not streamlined anything; it has removed the part that makes the supply lawful.

Expect questions about your medical history, everything you currently take, measured height and weight, and the specific exclusions: personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma, multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, previous pancreatitis, pregnancy or planning pregnancy. If you use contraception, expect that to be discussed too.

If the tablet is being considered, expect questions about your morning as well. The eight-hour fast and the thirty-minute wait are part of the prescription, not advice attached to it, and a prescriber who does not ask whether they fit your life has not finished assessing you.

Two minutes, and it is the most useful thing you can do before handing over money or medical history.

Every pharmacy in Great Britain is on the General Pharmaceutical Council register, which is public and searchable by name. Every registered online pharmacy displays the MHRA distance selling logo, and that logo should be a working link back to the regulator’s own entry — not a picture, and not a link to the seller’s own page.

Then the test no illegitimate seller passes: it will not supply without assessing you. Everything else can be copied from a real pharmacy’s website in an afternoon. That cannot, because not doing it is the whole business.

The licence provides for it in one direction explicitly: someone on 2.4 mg of the weekly injection can move to 25 mg tablets daily, starting a week after their last injection.

What you cannot do is work the conversion out yourself. Oral semaglutide is absorbed far more variably than the injected form, so the two cannot be matched milligram for milligram, and the numbers do not mean the same thing despite being the same units. A 25 mg tablet is not ten times a 2.4 mg injection.

Switching in either direction is a prescriber’s decision, and it is a reasonable thing to ask about at a review — particularly if the obstacle is the injection itself, or the fasting rules, rather than how the treatment is working.