Wegovy dosage: chart, schedule, and maximum dose

Wegovy dosage chart

Everyone starts at the bottom of the same ladder. Per the FDA label, Wegovy begins at 0.25 mg once weekly and steps up every four weeks until you reach the 2.4 mg maintenance dose at the start of week 17:

The four-month ramp isn’t bureaucracy — it’s the mechanism for outrunning the GI side effects that cluster around every dose increase. The doses below 2.4 mg aren’t where the trial results came from; they’re the on-ramp.

What is the starting dose of Wegovy?

0.25 mg once weekly, for the first four weeks. The label is explicit that this is an acclimation dose, not a treatment dose — it exists to let your gut adjust, and it isn’t intended for long-term use. Some appetite quieting can show up even here, but don’t judge the medication by month one: most people are months away from the dose that produced the 14.9% average in STEP 1.

Practical notes for the pen: inject on the same day each week (any day works), in the stomach, thigh, or back of the arm, rotating sites. If you want to change your injection day later, the label allows it as long as at least 2 days pass between doses (⚠ verify 48-hour rule).

Maintenance and maximum dose

The full maintenance dose — and the labeled maximum for the standard pens — is 2.4 mg once weekly, from week 17 onward. That’s the dose behind the headline trial numbers.

Two escape valves worth knowing:

• The 1.7 mg fallback. If 2.4 mg proves hard to tolerate, the label sanctions dropping back to 1.7 mg weekly (⚠ verify wording) — and plenty of people maintain there long-term. A tolerable dose you stay on beats a maximal dose you quit.
• Wegovy HD. Novo has introduced a higher-dose option marketed as Wegovy HD for people who plateau at 2.4 mg (⚠ verify status and doses). Availability is still uneven — if you’ve stalled at the top of the standard ladder, it’s a question for your prescriber, not a pharmacy request.

Wegovy pill dosage

The daily pill runs on a different clock. The oral version of Wegovy is dosed at 25 mg once daily (⚠ verify dose), and it follows its own label-defined escalation schedule rather than the pen’s five-step weekly ladder (⚠ verify pill titration). Daily dosing also brings the label’s rules on timing and food — the trade for skipping needles is a medication you manage every morning instead of once a week.

The strengths don’t map one-to-one between formats — 2.4 mg injected weekly and 25 mg swallowed daily reach comparable effects by very different routes, because far less of an oral dose survives digestion. Which is why switching between pen and pill is a prescriber decision, not arithmetic.

What happens if you miss a dose?

Two formats, two rules — don’t mix them up:

• Pen (weekly): per the label, if your next scheduled dose is more than 2 days away, take the missed dose as soon as you can; if it’s less than 2 days away, skip it and stay on schedule (⚠ verify). Miss more than two consecutive weeks and your prescriber may restart the ramp at a lower dose (⚠ verify).
• Pill (daily): the oral label carries its own rule — generally, skip the missed day and take your next dose at the regular time the following day (⚠ verify pill missed-dose rule).

The one universal: never double up to catch up, in either format.

Slower titration for side effects

The schedule above is the label’s default pace, not a deadline. If a step up brings side effects that aren’t fading, the label allows delaying the next escalation — typically holding the current dose an extra four weeks before moving up (⚠ verify allowance wording). Nothing about a slower climb reduces where you end up; it only changes how it feels getting there.

Worth knowing while you plan: a slower ramp doesn’t cost less, because every pen strength carries the same price — the budget math is about months on the drug, not milligrams in the pen.