Generic GLP-1s: Eleven for Liraglutide, and None You Can Buy for Semaglutide

One GLP‑1 has generics a pharmacy can dispense, and it is not the one you have heard of. Liraglutide has eleven approved generic applications, every one of them cleared for marketing. Tirzepatide and dulaglutide have none. Semaglutide has exactly one, and it carries a tentative approval, which in FDA’s own words does not allow it to be sold.^[2] Every figure here comes from FDA’s own application database, most recently read on October 17, 2026.^[1]

What FDA's database shows

A generic is approved through an Abbreviated New Drug Application. Counting those applications per molecule is the cleanest answer to “is there a generic yet”, because it does not depend on anybody’s announcement. Here is the count, by active ingredient.

The liraglutide generics arrived steadily rather than all at once. Hikma was first, approved December 23, 2024. Then Nanjing King Friend in April 2025, Lupin in July, Teva in August. Seven more followed through 2026: Orbicular in January, Biocon and Orbicular again in February, Biocon in March, Fresenius Kabi at the end of March, Mylan in June and Sandoz on July 1, 2026.^[1] Those eleven applications belong to nine companies, since Biocon and Orbicular hold two each. All eleven carry a marketing status of Prescription and a therapeutic-equivalence code, meaning a pharmacist can substitute them for the brand. Cheaper liraglutide does not close the gap with semaglutide on weight. STEP 8 compared the molecules in Saxenda and Ozempic head to head at their weight doses, and semaglutide 2.4 mg took off 15.8% against 6.4% on liraglutide 3.0 mg.

The word doing the work is “tentative”

Apotex holds an application for generic semaglutide injection, in 2 mg/3 mL, 4 mg/3 mL and 8 mg/3 mL. FDA recorded its status as tentative approval on April 7, 2026, and the marketing status on every one of those three strengths reads “None (Tentative Approval)”.^[3] That is not the approval the liraglutide products hold.

If a generic drug product is ready for approval before the expiration of any patents or exclusivities accorded to the reference listed drug product, FDA issues a tentative approval letter to the applicant … A tentative approval does not allow the applicant to market the generic drug product.

— FDA, Drugs@FDA Glossary of Terms

So the application cleared the science but not the patent and exclusivity position on the brand. Until that resolves, there is no generic semaglutide to dispense, whatever a headline says. A pharmacy cannot order it and a prescriber cannot write for it.

Drugs@FDA lists only applications FDA has acted on, so it is not the whole queue. Novo Nordisk’s half-year 2026 report discloses another: Cipla has filed an ANDA for a generic Ozempic, with Paragraph IV certifications challenging the listed patents, and Novo has sued Cipla for patent infringement in federal court in New Jersey.^[5] A filed application and a lawsuit are only the start of the road to a generic. Neither puts a product on a shelf.

A compounded preparation is at least something you can trace, if the seller tells you who made it. Jently names Precision Compounding Pharmacy, a 503A in New York, and DreamHug Medical names Belmar in Arizona. KIN Health and AJ Peptide also name their pharmacies. Trally Meds sells compounded semaglutide without naming one, so that is the first question to ask there.

Why eleven generics of one drug and none of another

Liraglutide is older. It reached the US market years before semaglutide and tirzepatide, so its patent and exclusivity protections ran out first, and a queue of manufacturers was waiting. That is the ordinary generic lifecycle: protection, then expiry, then competition.

Approval has not ended the shortage. FDA’s drug shortage database still lists liraglutide injection as currently in shortage, a status first posted on July 18, 2023. Victoza presentations show limited availability, and the Saxenda entry says it will be available until its discontinuation in January 2027.^[6] A generic on the books does not guarantee one at your pharmacy this week.

Tirzepatide and dulaglutide sit at the other end of that cycle, with no generic applications on file at all. Semaglutide is in the middle, with one application approved in principle and waiting on the patents. When that wait ends is not something we predict.

What it does change is how you read a price. Competition among nine suppliers of one molecule does not touch the price of a different molecule. For what any of this costs today, our live price tracker carries a dated figure for every seller we can find, and the methodology explains how each one is checked.

Generic liraglutide is also the one GLP-1 where an online pharmacy can show you the economics. Cost Plus Drugs lists generic liraglutide for Saxenda, prints the manufacturer cost, markup and labor fee behind its price, and lists no Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound or Mounjaro. It does no prescribing, so the prescription has to come from your own clinician. Sellers that do prescribe it, generic or compounded, are on our liraglutide providers board. For semaglutide, the choices remain the brand or a compounded version: Noom Med prescribes brand Wegovy and also runs a compounded semaglutide microdose program, and Prime Doctor RX sells compounded semaglutide as a weekly injection or a daily tablet, while SkyRx sells it as an injection or as oral drops on a 12-month plan paid up front.

What this does and does not mean for you

• A generic liraglutide is a real, substitutable product. Nine manufacturers hold eleven approvals to market one, though liraglutide injection is still on FDA’s shortage list.
• There is no generic semaglutide, tirzepatide or dulaglutide you can be dispensed today. A second semaglutide filing, Cipla’s, is tied up in patent litigation.
• “Tentative approval” is not a soft yes. FDA says plainly that it does not allow marketing.
• Anything sold online as “generic semaglutide” is a compounded preparation, not an FDA-approved generic.
• Liraglutide is a daily injection and its trial outcomes are not interchangeable with semaglutide’s or tirzepatide’s. A generic tells you about supply, not about which drug suits you; that conversation belongs with your prescriber.