Original research
Do UK providers show a price for Mounjaro before assessing you?
We looked, recorded what we found, and published it. This page is the data, the method, and what we concluded from it — including why we reached a different decision for our own pages.
What we found
Every provider we could observe displayed a price for Mounjaro before any medical questionnaire had been completed. Not most of them. All of them.
Two of the nine put the figure in the page title itself, which means the price appears in the search result before anyone has visited the site at all.
The prices displayed ranged from £124.99 to £539.97 depending on dose and pack, and several of the lowest figures were introductory or first-month rates rather than the ongoing cost.
This is not an accusation. The providers displaying prices include Boots, Superdrug and Asda — three of the most scrutinised pharmacy operators in the country, each with its own regulatory counsel. The reasonable inference is not that all of them are acting unlawfully. It is that the industry reads the advertising rule as not covering a price shown inside a regulated supply pathway. That reading is arguable, and it is the majority one.
The observations
| Provider | Price shown before assessment | Price in the page title | Range displayed |
|---|---|---|---|
| simpleonlinepharmacy.co.uk | Yes | Yes | £129 – £539.97 |
| onlinedoctor.boots.com | Yes | No | £179 – £339 |
| onlinedoctor.superdrug.com | Yes | No | £143.20 – £259 |
| onlinedoctor.asda.com | Yes | No | £148.97 – £287.47 |
| pharmacyplanet.com | Yes | No | £128 – £483 |
| thefamilychemist.co.uk | Yes | No | £124.99 |
| mylondonpharmacy.co.uk | Yes | Yes | £145 |
| well.co.uk | Not observable | No | — |
| oxfordonlinepharmacy.co.uk | Not observable | No | — |
- Observed on:
- Sample frame:
- “buy Mounjaro UK online pharmacy prescription”
What the rule actually says
Regulation 280 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 prohibits advertising a prescription-only medicine to the general public. The regulation does not define a displayed price as advertising, and no court has ruled on the specific question of a price shown alongside a mandatory assessment.
That gap is where the whole industry sits. One reading is that a price is simply information a patient needs, presented inside a process that still requires a prescriber to agree. The other is that a price is the single most persuasive element on any commercial page, and putting it in front of a clinical decision inverts the order those two things should come in.
Why our own pages show no price
We take the second reading. Not because the first is indefensible, but because of what a price does to the conversation before a prescriber has said anything.
A displayed price turns "is this appropriate for me" into "can I afford this", and those are different questions asked in a different order. Our assessment can end in no. A page that has already quoted you £129 has made that answer feel like a refused transaction rather than a clinical finding.
The practical cost of this decision is that our treatment pages look emptier than our competitors' and convert worse. We think that is the correct trade, and this page exists so the choice is visible rather than looking like an omission.
Method
Reproducible by anyone. Run the query below, take the organic results in the order returned, open each page, and record whether a price in pounds for Mounjaro appears anywhere before a questionnaire is completed.
Organic results for the sample-frame query were taken in the order returned. Each provider page was opened in a standard browser and the rendered text read for any price in pounds shown before a medical questionnaire was completed. No page was accessed behind a login, and no bot check was circumvented; sites presenting one are recorded as not observable.
Limitations
- Single query, single market, single day. Results pages differ by location and over time.
- Nine providers is enough to show that a practice is normal and not enough to estimate a precise proportion for the whole market.
- Two providers could not be observed, so the denominator for the headline figure is seven.
- Prices were read as displayed, including introductory and first-month rates, which are not always the ongoing price.
Using this data
Published under CC BY 4.0. Quote it, chart it, or repeat the study — all we ask is a link back so readers can check the method. If you repeat it and get a different answer, we would like to know.