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

One GLP‑1 has generics you can actually be dispensed, 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 was read from FDA’s own application database on 21 August 2026.^[1]

What FDA's database actually 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 23 December 2024. Then Nanjing King Friend in April 2025, Lupin in July, Teva in August. Six 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 1 July 2026.^[1] All eleven carry a marketing status of Prescription and a therapeutic-equivalence code, meaning a pharmacist can substitute them for the brand.

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 7 April 2026, and the marketing status on every one of those three strengths reads “None (Tentative Approval)”.^[3] That is a different thing from the approval the liraglutide products hold, and the difference is the whole point.

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. What it has not cleared is 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.

Why eleven generics of one drug and none of another

Liraglutide is simply 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 lifecycle of a small-molecule-style approval pathway working exactly as designed: protection, then expiry, then competition.

Tirzepatide and dulaglutide sit at the other end of that cycle, with no generic applications on file at all. Semaglutide is in the middle: somebody has done the work and is waiting at the door. None of that is a prediction about when it opens, and this register will not make one.

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

What this does and does not mean for you

• A generic liraglutide is a real, substitutable product. Eleven manufacturers hold approval to market one.
• There is no generic semaglutide, tirzepatide or dulaglutide you can be dispensed today.
• “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. That a generic exists is a fact about supply, not advice about which drug suits you. That conversation belongs with your prescriber.