Why there are no prices on the homepage or in the app

Visitors sometimes ask why the homepage of a price comparison site shows no prices, and why the Dose Club app sends them to the website to see most of them. The answer is the UK rules on advertising prescription only medicines, and the way The Dose Club has chosen to stay inside them.

The rule

The CAP Code, the UK's code for non-broadcast advertising written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and administered by the Advertising Standards Authority, says in rule 12.12: "Prescription-only medicines or prescription-only medical treatments may not be advertised to the public." Rule 12.11 adds that medicines must have a licence from the MHRA before they are marketed. The Human Medicines Regulations 2012, which the MHRA enforces, carry the same prohibition in law.

Wegovy and Mounjaro are prescription only. A website that promoted them to the public, with claims about what they do or offers to make them cheaper to buy, would be advertising them. A factual list of what registered pharmacies charge is a different thing, and the line between the two is drawn by what the page says and where it sits.

How the rule shapes this site

• Prices appear on the prices pages and on provider pages, and monthly averages on the Price Index page. They never appear on the homepage, in page titles or descriptions, in link previews or in anything that could be lifted out and used as an advert.
• Wording is neutral. The table marks the lowest listed price. It never describes a provider as a bargain, never calls one medicine better than another and never makes a claim about what a medicine does.
• There are no promotions. No codes, no offers, no sponsored rows and no paid rankings. The figures are standard prices.
• No article carries a medicine price. Articles explain how the figures are built and point to the pages that hold them.
• A disclaimer sits under every price table saying that prices change, that the provider's website is the place to confirm them, that The Dose Club neither sells nor prescribes and that the comparison is information and not medical advice.

Why the app links to the website

The app follows a second rule as well. Apple's App Review Guidelines require permission to display content from a third party service, so the app shows a provider's prices natively only where that provider has agreed in writing. For every other provider the app links to the prices page on the website, where the full table lives. The website shows every tracked provider; the app shows the ones that have agreed, and links for the rest.

Prices also never appear in push notifications, in the app's store screenshots or in anything the app sends to a lock screen.

Independence makes the rule easy to keep

The Dose Club takes no payment from pharmacies: no commission, no paid placement, no codes that earn anything. Its only revenue is Dose Club Plus, the app subscription. Because no pharmacy pays for position, there is nothing to promote and no reason to dress a price up as an offer.

What you see instead

The homepage describes what the site does and where to find the prices. One click takes you to the Wegovy or Mounjaro tab, where the table shows the complete monthly cost for each dose at each registered pharmacy with the time of the last check. The provider pages hold the 90 day history, and the Price Index page holds the monthly averages. Everything is there, one page further in than a homepage banner would be.

Sources

• CAP Code, section 12 (Medicines, medical devices, health-related products and beauty products), rules 12.11 and 12.12, Committee of Advertising Practice
• The Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and MHRA guidance on advertising medicines: gov.uk
• Apple App Review Guidelines, section 5.2.2

This article is information, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber about your treatment.