CheqUp Review UK 2026: Prices, Safety & Is It Legit?

You've probably met CheqUp the way most people do. An advert appears while you're scrolling, a smiling before-and-after, a price that looks lower than you expected, and a promise that you can skip the GP entirely. Then comes the pause. Is this a proper pharmacy, or is it a subscription trap with a clinical veneer?

It's a fair question to ask, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sales pitch. Here's what CheqUp actually is, what it costs, what the public regulatory record says about it, and where it fits alongside the other ways of getting weight loss medication in the UK.

What is CheqUp?

CheqUp is an online weight-management service. You complete a questionnaire, a clinician reviews it, and if they're happy to prescribe, medication is posted to you on a rolling monthly subscription. The company behind it is CheqUp Health Limited, with a registered office in London and an operating address in Chippenham.

That much is unremarkable. Dozens of UK providers now do the same thing. What sets CheqUp apart is what it wraps around the prescription: one-to-one sessions with a health coach are included in the programme rather than sold as an upsell, and you can message a clinician through your account without paying extra. In a market where plenty of providers post you a pen and wish you luck, that matters more than it sounds.

The medication on offer is the same medication everyone else offers, because there is no secret supply. Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Wegovy (semaglutide) are the two injectables, with the oral semaglutide pill and orlistat as alternatives.

How much does CheqUp cost?

CheqUp publishes its starting prices openly, which is more than some competitors manage. As of July 2026, its treatments page lists:

Read the word "from" carefully. It's doing a lot of work. With every GLP-1 provider in the UK, the price you pay depends on the dose you're on, and doses go up over the first few months. The figure that gets you through the door is rarely the figure you pay in month five. Before you commit, find the price of the dose you're likely to end up on, not just the starting one.

Do the annual arithmetic too, because nobody in the adverts will do it for you. £169 a month is a shade over £2,000 a year, and that's at the entry price, before any dose increases. Set against a weekly figure it sounds manageable. Set against your actual budget for the next twelve months, it's a real commitment, and one you'll want to make with your eyes open rather than discover in the spring.

The subscription structure deserves the same scrutiny. CheqUp bills monthly and states that you can pause or cancel in your account before your next order is approved. Practically, that means the cancellation deadline is tied to your order cycle, not the calendar month. If you're going to stop, stop early rather than on the day.

£169 for Mounjaro sits in the middle of the UK market rather than at the bottom of it. If price is your single deciding factor, our guide to the best Mounjaro provider in the UK compares the main options side by side, and the individual breakdowns for Boots, Asda and Numan give you the dose-by-dose detail.

Is CheqUp legit?

Yes, in the sense that matters most: it's a real, regulated company, not a scam.

CheqUp Health Limited is registered with the Care Quality Commission for the regulated activity "treatment of disease, disorder or injury". That registration is the baseline requirement for a service like this, and CheqUp has it. One caveat: the CQC has not yet published an inspection report or rating for the provider. Registration means they're on the register and subject to inspection. It isn't the same as a "Good" rating, and no provider should imply that it is.

There's one more thing on the public record, and you should hear it from us rather than stumble on it later. In July 2025 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a CheqUp Meta advert. The ad had promised "the UK's most effective weight loss treatment" from £37.25 a week with "no GP or pharmacy visit", and it linked to a landing page headed "Mounjaro Weight Loss Injections". Because Mounjaro is a prescription-only medicine, and UK rules forbid advertising prescription-only medicines to the public, the ASA ruled it had breached the code.

Now, the fair reading. That ruling was explicitly part of a wider ASA investigation into the whole weight-loss sector, not a CheqUp-specific scandal, and other providers were caught in the same sweep. CheqUp pulled the ads, removed the landing page, audited its marketing and put a new sign-off process in place. Regulators exist precisely so that this happens. A company that gets pulled up, fixes it, and stays on the register is behaving differently from one that vanishes.

What it should tell you is simpler than a verdict on CheqUp. It's that adverts in this space are the least reliable place to learn what a medicine does, and that the sector has been marketing prescription drugs harder than the rules allow.

Is CheqUp NHS approved?

No, and neither is any other private online provider. The phrase doesn't really exist.

The NHS doesn't accredit private weight-loss companies. It commissions its own services, and it prescribes tirzepatide through its own pathway, on its own criteria. Buying from CheqUp is a private transaction, the same as buying from Boots Online Doctor or from us.

Which raises the obvious question: could you get it on the NHS instead, for nothing?

Possibly, but the queue is long and the door is narrow. NICE recommends tirzepatide for adults with a BMI of at least 35 and at least one weight-related health condition, with a threshold 2.5 points lower for people from South Asian, Chinese, other Asian, Middle Eastern, Black African or African-Caribbean backgrounds. Even then, NHS England is rolling it out in phases over three years to manage demand. In the current phase you generally need a BMI of 35 or above and four or more qualifying conditions, such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnoea, abnormal blood fats or cardiovascular disease.

Four conditions is a high bar. It's why so many people who clearly meet the licensed criteria for the medication still end up paying privately, and it's the honest reason this market exists at all. Our guide to NHS eligibility for weight loss injections sets out where you're likely to stand.

Does CheqUp tell your GP?

This is one of the most-asked questions about CheqUp, and it's a good instinct.

Most online providers ask for your consent to notify your GP, and treat it as optional. You can usually decline. But think carefully before you do. Your GP holds your full record: the other medicines you take, the conditions you've been treated for, the results that never made it into an online questionnaire. Tirzepatide interacts with other drugs, delays how quickly your stomach empties, and carries warnings around pancreatitis and gallbladder disease that a full record helps put in context.

If you're going to take a serious prescription medicine for a year or more, the doctor who knows your history should probably know you're taking it. That's true whichever provider you choose.

What the medication actually does

Separate the service from the drug for a moment. The drug is identical wherever you buy it, and its evidence base is strong.

In the SURMOUNT-1 trial, people taking tirzepatide at the top 15mg dose lost an average of 20.9% of their body weight over 72 weeks, against 3.1% on placebo. That's the source of the "up to 21%" figure you'll see quoted across the industry, including on CheqUp's own site. It's an accurate number, taken from a real trial, and it's a big one.

Two caveats sit alongside it, and they get quoted far less often.

The first is that 20.9% is an average at the maximum dose over 72 weeks. Plenty of people lose less, some lose more, and the average includes people who tolerated a dose you might not. The second is that these are chronic treatments. Trial data and clinical experience both show that weight tends to return when the medication stops, which is the uncomfortable arithmetic behind every "from £109" headline. We've written about what happens when you stop taking Mounjaro. Read it before you start, not after.

One more thing about eligibility, because it trips people up. The licensed criteria and the NHS criteria are not the same thing. Mounjaro's licence covers weight management in adults with a BMI of 30 or more, or 27 and above with a weight-related condition such as high blood pressure, sleep apnoea or prediabetes. NHS funding, as above, currently starts at a BMI of 35 plus four qualifying conditions. That gap, between who the medicine is licensed for and who the NHS can afford to treat, is the entire private market in one sentence. It's also why a private provider can legitimately prescribe to someone the NHS has turned away.

Side effects are common and mostly manageable. Per the Mounjaro SmPC, around a quarter to a third of people in the weight-management trials reported nausea, and roughly a fifth reported diarrhoea, with symptoms concentrated in the dose-escalation period and easing over time. There's a specific warning many people miss entirely: if you take an oral contraceptive pill, you're advised to add a barrier method or switch to a non-oral method for four weeks when you start tirzepatide and for four weeks after each dose increase.

Our fuller guides cover Mounjaro side effects, the dosing schedule and how Mounjaro compares with Wegovy.

Who CheqUp suits, and who it doesn't

Every provider in this market has a shape. CheqUp's is fairly clear once you look past the advertising.

It suits you if you want the human element. The included coaching is not a gimmick, and if you know from experience that you do better with someone checking in on you, that's worth paying for. It also suits people who like the tidiness of a subscription: the medication arrives, the dose gets reviewed, you don't have to think about reordering.

It suits you less well if you're optimising hard on price. £169 is a reasonable mid-market price for Mounjaro, but it isn't the cheapest in the UK, and if you're going to be on this for a year, the difference between providers compounds. It also suits you less well if you dislike subscriptions on principle, or if you know you're the sort of person who forgets to cancel things.

And it won't suit you at all if you're hoping the medication does the work on its own. It doesn't. It quietens the food noise and makes a calorie deficit feel possible instead of punishing, which for many people is the thing that has been missing. The rest is still yours to do.

How to judge any provider, including this one

Four questions cut through most of the marketing.

What does the dose I'll actually be on cost, not the starting dose? Who reviews my prescription, and can I reach a clinician when something goes wrong at 9pm on a Sunday? How do I cancel, and by when? And is the provider registered with the CQC and dispensing from a GPhC-registered pharmacy?

If a provider answers all four plainly, you're in reasonable hands. If any answer requires digging, take that as information. Our overview of weight loss medication in the UK walks through the options if you want to widen the search first.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before starting any treatment.