Affiliate disclosure
The Amazon links on this page are affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This never influences my recommendations — everything here is kit I have actually bought. The clinic links further down are not affiliate links and earn me nothing.
Medical disclaimer
This page lists equipment, not medication, and documents personal experience rather than medical advice. Consult a healthcare professional before starting any medication.
The essentials
Seven items. That's genuinely it. Anything beyond this list is optional, and most of it is unnecessary.
Precision Peptides Reusable Peptide Pen Kit
The most important item on the list, and — to my genuine surprise — not the most expensive. A reusable pen takes a 3ml cartridge and lets you dial an exact dose, which matters enormously when you're titrating upward in small steps. The alternative, drawing from a vial with syringes, is marginally cheaper but far easier to get wrong. UK seller, refillable, adjustable dosing.
£15.75 — what I paid
View on AmazonRuiunchu 3ml pen cartridges — 15 pack
These are what your reconstituted peptide lives in, and what the pen actually loads. Check the cartridge diameter matches your specific pen before ordering — this is the most common and most annoying mistake people make. These are the ones that fit the Precision Peptides pen above.
£9.99 for 15 — what I paid
View on AmazonPen needles — 31G, 4mm, 100 pack
4mm is short enough to sit in subcutaneous fat rather than muscle, and 31G is thin enough that you largely don't feel it. A box of 100 lasts around two years at one injection a week. Do not reuse them — they blunt after a single use, and that's when injections start to hurt.
£16.99 per 100 — what I paid
View on Amazon1ml dispensing syringes — 31G, 100 pack
Not for injecting — these are for transferring liquid from the reconstituted vial into the pen cartridge. You could manage without them, but the transfer is fiddly and wasteful if you try. A pack of 100 is far more than you'll ever need, which is fine given what they cost.
£21.95 per 100 — what I paid
View on AmazonHealand Labs bacteriostatic water — 30ml
Sterile water containing benzyl alcohol, which is what stops bacterial growth once a vial has been opened. This is what you reconstitute freeze-dried powder with. Plain sterile water is not a substitute — it has no preservative, so a reconstituted vial won't keep. Multi-use vial, so one bottle covers several reconstitutions.
£21.99 — what I paid
View on AmazonOptiPro pre-injection wipes — 100 pack
70% isopropyl, individually wrapped. Wipe the vial stopper before every draw and the injection site before every jab. They cost almost nothing and they are the main thing standing between you and an infection. Buy a box and stop thinking about it.
£3.49 per 100 — what I paid
View on AmazonSharpsguard sharps bin — 1 litre
Not optional, and not something to improvise with a drinks bottle. Used needles must go in a proper sharps container. A 1-litre bin lasts most people a year or more, and many local councils and pharmacies will take a full one for disposal — check yours before you need to, not after.
£4.22 — what I paid
View on AmazonThe complete starter kit checklist
Print it, tick it off, and you're ready.
Quantities matter as much as the items — that's where the money leaks.
- Reusable peptide pen — one (check the cartridge size it takes)
- 3ml cartridges — a 15 pack, matching your pen
- Pen needles, 31G 4mm — box of 100
- 1ml dispensing syringes — a 10 pack, not 100
- Bacteriostatic water — 10ml, not 30ml. And not plain sterile water
- Alcohol swabs, 70% isopropyl — box of 100
- Sharps bin — 1 litre
- Peptide — compare on price per mg, never price per vial
- Digital scale for weigh-ins (you almost certainly own one)
- A note of your council's sharps disposal arrangement
Here's exactly what I paid, to the penny — alongside what I'd actually tell you to buy. They aren't the same, because I over-bought on two things.
| Item | What I paid | Leaner option |
|---|---|---|
| Precision Peptides reusable pen | £15.75 | £15.75 — same |
| Ruiunchu 3ml cartridges (15) | £9.99 | £9.99 — same |
| Pen needles 31G 4mm (100) | £16.99 | £16.99 — same |
| 1ml dispensing syringes | £21.95 (100) | £5.48 (10) |
| Bacteriostatic water | £21.99 (30ml) | £11.99 (10ml) |
| Pre-injection wipes (100) | £3.49 | £3.49 — same |
| Sharps bin 1L | £4.22 | £4.22 — same |
| Equipment total | £94.38 | £67.91 |
| Retatrutide — 200mg, delivered | £168.63 (2 × 100mg kits) | £140.00 (1 × 200mg kit) |
| Total to get started | £263.01 | £207.91 |
So you can start for £207.91 rather than the £263.01 I spent. I'd rather tell you that than quietly present my own receipt as the going rate.
That peptide line covers a full year at a 4mg maintenance dose, so unlike the equipment it isn't really a "starting" cost — it's the year. More on that below.
Where I over-bought — and where I didn't
Bacteriostatic water. I bought a 30ml vial for £21.99. At the volumes you actually reconstitute with, 10ml will comfortably see you through a year — and the same product in 10ml is £11.99. Straight £10 wasted. Buy the small one; you can always buy another.
Dispensing syringes. I bought 100 for £21.95. You use one per cartridge refill, which is roughly monthly — so 100 is about eight years' supply. A 10-pack of the identical 31G 8mm tool is £5.48. That's £16.47 I didn't need to spend.
The peptide is where I actually left money on the table, and it took me until I wrote this page to see it. Here is the receipt in full: $155 for 200mg, $50 postage, plus a 5% PayPal handling fee — $215.25 in total, which came off my card as £168.63. That's £0.84 per milligram, all in.
The supplier prices by kit, and every kit is ten vials — what changes is how many milligrams are in each vial. This was the list I was quoted:
Read this as arithmetic, not a shopping list
These are the prices I was given, converted at what I actually paid. They're here so you can do the per-milligram sum yourself instead of guessing — not as a recommendation to buy any particular quantity. Read the storage note underneath before you draw a conclusion from the right-hand column.
| Kit | Per vial | Total | Delivered | £ per mg | One vial lasts* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50mg | 5mg | 50mg | £94.71 | £1.89 | 1¼ weeks |
| 100mg | 10mg | 100mg | £111.18 | £1.11 | 2½ weeks |
| 150mg | 15mg | 150mg | £123.53 | £0.82 | 3¾ weeks |
| 200mg | 20mg | 200mg | £140.00 | £0.70 | 5 weeks |
| 300mg | 30mg | 300mg | £168.83 | £0.56 | 7½ weeks — too long |
| 400mg | 40mg | 400mg | £193.53 | £0.48 | 10 weeks — too long |
| 1000mg | 100mg | 1000mg | £288.24 | £0.29 | 25 weeks — far too long |
*At a 4mg weekly maintenance dose. Delivered prices include the flat postage and the PayPal fee, spread across a single order. The cost calculator will work this out for any dose and duration.
Why the cheapest column is not the answer
Reconstituted peptide keeps four to six weeks in the fridge, as set out in the mixing guide. That puts a hard ceiling on vial size. At 4mg a week a 20mg vial lasts exactly five weeks and a 30mg vial lasts seven and a half — so the 300mg kit and everything below it on that table means throwing peptide away, and the 1000mg kit at 29p a milligram is a false economy several times over.
At a 4mg maintenance dose the largest vial that fits the window is 20mg. At 8mg a week it's 40mg. The cheapest workable option is not the cheapest option.
What I got wrong. I bought two 100mg kits rather than one 200mg kit. Same 200 milligrams, and the 200mg kit lists at £140 delivered against the £168.63 I paid — so convenience cost me about £29. What I bought in exchange was margin: a 10mg vial lasts two and a half weeks against the storage window, where a 20mg vial uses all five. That is a real trade and I'd probably still take it while I'm learning. It just isn't free, and I'd rather show you the £29 than pretend I optimised.
Always compare peptide on price per mg, not price per vial — bounded by how long a vial survives once it's mixed. That is the single most useful habit in this whole process, and price per vial is how a small pack is made to look cheap. My £168.63 delivered works out at £0.84 per mg; the 200mg kit would have been £0.70. That's the number to beat when you're comparing anyone else.
The needles I've left as a 100-pack in both columns. At one injection a week that's roughly two years' supply, but they're cheap, they don't expire in any meaningful way, and running out mid-titration is genuinely annoying. That one I'd call fair.
What it works out at per month
The equipment is almost entirely one-off. After the first purchase, your ongoing cost is essentially just the peptide.
Year one, honestly
On the common titration schedule — building up over twelve weeks, then holding at 4mg a week — you use about 188mg in the first year. You can't buy 188mg, so a 200mg order covers the year with a little spare.
That's £168.63 of peptide as I bought it, or £140.00 in a single 200mg kit — roughly £14 a month against £12. Add the one-off equipment and year one comes to £263.01 as I bought it, or £207.91 on the leaner kit throughout. A private UK clinic prescribing Mounjaro over the same twelve months would run to £2,400–£3,400 — the clinic pricing is broken down dose by dose further down this page.
£207.91 up front is still a meaningful outlay, and it's more than most articles on this subject will admit to. It is also less than a single month at a private clinic — and it's the whole year.
What you don't need
Things I either bought and regretted, or nearly bought and am glad I didn't:
- Insulin syringes for injecting — if you've got a pen, you don't need them too. (Not to be confused with the 1ml dispensing syringes above, which are for transferring liquid into the cartridge, not for injecting.)
- A dedicated peptide fridge — your kitchen fridge is fine. It needs to be 2–8°C, which it already is.
- Reconstitution calculators sold as apps — the maths is one division. Free calculators do it perfectly well.
- Branded "peptide starter bundles" — almost always the same items above at a significant markup.
Licensed UK clinics
If the research peptide route isn't for you — and for a great many people it sensibly isn't — the alternative is a licensed prescription through a UK clinic. You'll pay considerably more, and in exchange you get a regulated supply chain, a prescriber who knows your medical history, and someone to ring when something goes wrong. That is not a small thing.
These clinics prescribe licensed medications such as Mounjaro and Wegovy. None of them prescribe Retatrutide, which is not licensed in the UK.
Both price by dose, and the price goes up as you titrate. That is the detail the "from £X a month" headline everywhere else on the internet quietly leaves out — the advertised figure is the lowest dose, which almost nobody stays on. Here is what each actually charges, taken from their own pricing pages:
| Mounjaro dose | Numan | Juniper |
|---|---|---|
| 2.5mg (starting) | £219 | £199 |
| 5mg | £249 | £229 |
| 7.5mg | £299 | £279 |
| 10mg | £319 | £304 |
| 12.5mg | £339 | £329 |
| 15mg | £359 | £339 |
Per month. Juniper also prescribes Wegovy, which is cheaper — £164 at the two lowest doses, rising to £229 at 2.4mg. Health coaching is an optional £40/month on top. Numan runs a £20 first month for first-time users on a 90-day plan. Checked 01/08/2026 against both clinics' own published pricing.
What a year actually costs
Titrating 2.5 → 5 → 7.5 → 10mg over four months and holding at 10mg comes to roughly £3,400 a year at Juniper's prices. Staying at the 2.5mg starting dose for a full twelve months — which is the cheapest anyone could realistically do it — is still about £2,400. Juniper's Wegovy programme runs nearer £2,100–£2,550.
Set that against £207.91 for a year on the route this site documents, equipment included. That gap is the whole reason this site exists — and it is considerably wider than the "£130–200 a month" figure I originally quoted, which was too low.
Numan
UK men's health service offering licensed weight loss prescriptions with ongoing clinical support. Includes an initial consultation and regular check-ins as part of the subscription.
Mounjaro — £219–359/month by dose
Visit NumanJuniper
UK weight loss programme pairing licensed medication with a structured health coaching plan. Aimed at people who want the behavioural side handled alongside the prescription.
Mounjaro — £199–339/month · Wegovy from £164
Visit JuniperNeither of these is an affiliate link and neither pays me anything — they're here because they're the honest alternative, not because they earn.
One last time
Equipment is the easy part. The compound is not. Sourcing unlicensed peptides from unregulated suppliers carries genuine risks around purity, dosing and contamination, and no amount of good kit changes that. Speak to a qualified healthcare professional before starting anything.