Tirzepatide dosage chart: the six approved dose steps

Tirzepatide climbs one ladder under both of its brand names: 2.5 → 5 → 7.5 → 10 → 12.5 → 15 mg once weekly, with a minimum of four weeks on every step. Mounjaro and Zepbound share those six rungs exactly; what differs is the label around them. Below is each step with its role, every presentation, and where the dates come from.

Tirzepatide dosage chart#

Tirzepatide is a dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist injected once a week. Its ladder moves in even 2.5 mg increments, and the 2.5 mg rung exists to begin treatment rather than to stay on. Sources: the FDA prescribing information for Mounjaro and Zepbound (checked 2026-08-18).

Six rungs at four weeks apiece is why this ladder takes so much longer than any semaglutide one: 20 weeks of injections stand between a first 2.5 mg dose and a first 15 mg dose, and that is the fastest the label allows rather than the usual pace.

Mounjaro vs Zepbound: same ladder, different label#

The two products are the same molecule with the same increments and the same four-week floor. Everything that separates them sits around the ladder — approval year, approved use, and which dosages the label names as maintenance (both labels checked 2026-08-18).

Two of those rows have moved since this chart first went up. The presentations row used to separate the brands, because vials read as the weight-management format; it no longer does, since both labels now list the same four containers. And the Zepbound approved-use row now carries a second indication, obstructive sleep apnea, with its own named maintenance dosages — a fact about what the label covers, not a claim about how well it works.

What still differs is the wording around maintenance. Zepbound names its maintenance dosages outright for each indication, while the Mounjaro label raises the dosage in 2.5 mg increments only if additional glycemic control is needed, up to 15 mg once weekly in adults — so a dosage below the maximum is simply continued.

Presentations: pens, vials, and KwikPens#

Tirzepatide comes in four containers and both brands list all four. Every strength exists as its own single-dose pen and as its own single-dose vial, so the container is the dose and there is nothing to dial. Above those sit two multi-dose formats — the multi-dose vial and the single-patient-use KwikPen — each holding four weekly doses at a higher concentration, which is why the same milligrams occupy a different volume there. From the Mounjaro label and the Zepbound label (checked 2026-08-18).

The multi-dose containers are where a strength on the carton stops matching the number in the prescription, so both labels print the mapping outright.

Vials of either kind arrive without the hardware to use them. Both labels state that the needle and syringe are not included, and instruct patients to use a syringe appropriate for the dose — for example a 1 mL syringe able to measure a 0.5 mL or 0.6 mL dose — with a new syringe and needle for every injection (checked 2026-08-18).

Which container you were dispensed changes the weekly routine more than the milligrams do. The Mounjaro tracker setup and Zepbound tracker setup pages cover each one, and the tirzepatide tracker page covers what both formats share.

Compounded tirzepatide: same milligrams, different measurement#

A compounded multi-dose vial is prescribed in milligrams like everything above, but the number you read at injection time is syringe units, and units mean nothing without the concentration printed on the vial. The units calculator converts a dose in mg to units at a stated mg/mL, and the reconstitution calculator works out that concentration when a vial is mixed. The ladder above does not carry over automatically either: a compounded schedule is whatever your prescriber wrote.

Where the dates come from#

The chart holds intervals, not dates. Converting “at least four weeks” into real days needs the one number no chart contains — your own first injection date. The titration date planner takes that date and returns the earliest day each of the six steps could begin. Those dates are boundaries, not appointments; the schedule your prescriber confirms is the one to set reminders on.

What a dosage chart cannot tell you#

This page lists what is approved, not what is prescribed for you, and the gap between those two matters. A chart cannot tell you when to move up a step: that call depends on tolerability and response, and it belongs to your prescriber. It cannot tell you what to do about an injection that did not happen when planned, or about any change to your dosing — those are questions for the practice that wrote the prescription, not for a table. It cannot tell you which product suits you, because indication, history, coverage, and clinical judgment decide that, and no chart holds any of them.

Two kinds of conversion are worth refusing separately. Across molecules, semaglutide runs a different ladder in different increments, set out in the semaglutide dosage chart, and no label publishes a dose equivalence between the two. Within tirzepatide itself, one dose now lives in four containers at different concentrations: 10 mg is 0.5 mL out of a single-dose pen and 0.6 mL out of a 40 mg / 2.4 mL multi-dose vial. Those numbers are not interchangeable, switching between containers is a prescribing decision with its own training, and this page does not do the arithmetic between them.

What the chart does well is recognition — locating your dose, seeing what the label calls it, and knowing how many rungs sit above and below. Remembering which rung started on which date is a different job, and one a GLP-1 shot tracker app or a plain notebook handles better than any table.

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