Is there a once-a-month GLP-1 injection yet?

Weekly injections are the norm for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound are all taken once a week, which adds up to about 52 injections a year. A once-a-month shot would cut that to roughly 12, so the idea is easy to understand and has started to show up in headlines and search queries. So is a monthly GLP-1 injection actually available yet?

Is there a monthly GLP-1 shot yet?

No. As of 2026, no once-a-month GLP-1 injection is approved or sold in any country. Every GLP-1 medicine on the market, including the newer oral pills, is dosed weekly or more often. One investigational drug, berobenatide, is being developed specifically for monthly injection, but it is still in clinical trials and cannot be prescribed. Anyone offering a monthly shot today is describing a trial drug, not an approved medicine.

What is berobenatide?

Berobenatide is an investigational, ultra-long-acting GLP-1 receptor agonist designed to be injected once a month. It carries two names in the research: MET-097i, the code used by Metsera, the biotechnology company that first developed it, and PF-08653944, the code used by Pfizer, which completed its acquisition of Metsera in November 2025.5 Pfizer describes the compound as a weekly and monthly injectable GLP-1 agonist that is moving into phase 3 development.5

The design goal is to make the drug stay active in the body long enough to space injections a month apart instead of a week apart. That is a pharmacology problem, not a settled result: whether monthly dosing holds up on effectiveness and side effects is exactly what the current trials are built to find out.

What has berobenatide actually shown?

Less than the headlines suggest, and only for weekly dosing. The only trial results posted to the public registry come from a completed phase 2b study (NCT06712836) that tested the drug once a week, not once a month. In that study, the highest weekly dose produced a 12.45% drop in body weight at 28 weeks, compared with a 1.67% gain on placebo.1

That weekly result is where the "12%" and "14%" figures circulating in the news come from. No results from monthly dosing have been published or posted anywhere yet, so how well berobenatide works on a once-a-month schedule remains an open question the phase 3 trials are designed to answer.

Which trials are testing monthly dosing?

Pfizer has launched a broad phase 3 program to test berobenatide given once a month. These trials are recruiting now, and their main results are not expected until 2028.2

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov, verified October 2026. "People" is the planned enrollment; "Main results" is the estimated primary-completion year.234

One of these trials is worth singling out. NCT07845500 is testing whether people already losing weight on weekly semaglutide or tirzepatide can switch to monthly berobenatide and hold that weight off.3 That switch-and-maintain question is the practical one for most readers: not "does a brand-new drug work," but "could I trade my weekly injection for a monthly one without losing ground."

"No monthly GLP-1 injection is approved anywhere in 2026. One candidate is in phase 3, and the numbers in the news so far come from weekly dosing."

Why would a monthly shot matter?

The main appeal is convenience, and with it, staying on treatment. Fewer injections can mean fewer missed doses, less injection fatigue, and an easier routine, all of which tend to help people keep taking a long-term medicine. For a drug that only works while you take it, better adherence is a genuine advantage, not a cosmetic one.

There is a trade-off, though, and the trials are built to study it. A medicine designed to stay active for a month cannot simply be stopped week to week. If side effects such as nausea appear, a monthly depot keeps working until it clears on its own, rather than being paused at the next weekly dose. Whether that changes the real-world side-effect experience is one of the questions phase 3 still has to answer.

When could a monthly GLP-1 arrive?

Not soon. The monthly phase 3 trials are not expected to reach their main results until 2028, and a drug normally needs those results reviewed and then approved by regulators before it reaches pharmacies.2 That pushes any realistic availability for a monthly GLP-1 toward the end of the decade at the earliest, and only if the trials succeed. Promising timelines shorter than that are guesses, not facts.

Is berobenatide the only monthly option?

No. Berobenatide is the furthest along, but it is not the only drug aiming for less-frequent dosing. Amgen's MariTide is also designed for monthly or even less frequent injection, though it is being studied with a different emphasis, including heart and metabolic outcomes.Our MariTide explainer covers that one. The two are separate compounds, so the monthly race has more than one entrant.

In one sentence: no once-a-month GLP-1 injection is approved yet, one candidate (berobenatide) is in phase 3 testing for monthly dosing with results due in 2028, and the weight-loss numbers so far come from weekly, not monthly, dosing.