The ipamorelin figure on every dosage chart is not the dose from the ipamorelin trial. The trial gave many times more, into a vein, in hospital, and it failed.1 The number people inject came from somewhere else, and the chart you are reading does not say where.
Ipamorelin is the ordinary case, not the exception. Dosage charts print figures for approved medicines and untested compounds in the same table, in the same typeface, with nothing to tell them apart, and four very different things are mixed together in there. An approved label, where a regulator reviewed trials and set the dose. A human trial, where a figure was tested but never approved. Community practice, where a number spread because people repeated it. Then nothing at all, where no human has been given the compound on record.
Each figure in the table is recorded with which of those four it is. None of it is a recommendation.
What each number rests on
| Compound | Figure charts commonly print | Where the number comes from | What it rests on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semaglutide | 0.25 mg weekly rising to 2.4 mg | Approved label2 | Phase 3 trials; the escalation ladder is printed in the label2 |
| Tirzepatide | 2.5 mg weekly rising to 15 mg | Approved label3 | Label sets the start, the step size and the maximum3 |
| Tesamorelin | 2 mg daily | Approved label, older formulation4 | The current 2 mg vial is dosed at 1.4 mg daily4 |
| PT-141 (bremelanotide) | 1.75 mg per dose | Approved label5 | The Vyleesi label, for a much narrower use than it is sold for5 |
| Retatrutide | 1 to 12 mg weekly | Human trial, no approval6 | Phase 2 tested 1, 4, 8 and 12 mg weekly with escalation6 |
| Oxytocin | 18 to 40 IU per dose | Human trial protocol5 | Trial protocols, in international units; 1 IU is about 1.7 mcg5 |
| Semax | 200 to 600 mcg daily | Published human research5 | Russian clinical work; no Western approval5 |
| Selank | 250 to 500 mcg daily | Published human research5 | Russian clinical work; no Western approval5 |
| MK-677 (ibutamoren) | 10 to 25 mg daily, oral | Published human research7 | A two-year trial in older adults; a small molecule, not a peptide7 |
| Tesofensine | 250 to 500 mcg daily, oral | Published human research5 | Obesity trials; a small molecule, not a peptide5 |
| Glutathione | 250 to 1,000 mg daily, oral | Published human research5 | A peer-reviewed oral trial; the injected figure is separate5 |
| Thymosin alpha-1 | 1.6 mg per dose | Clinical practice abroad5 | Dosing from use in countries where it is registered5 |
| Sermorelin | 200 to 500 mcg nightly | Practice, not the label8 | The approved product was withdrawn in 2008 and dosed by weight in children8 |
| CJC-1295 with DAC | 1 to 2 mg weekly | Practice; one trial, converted9 | The trial gave weight-based single doses9 |
| CJC-1295 without DAC | 100 mcg per dose | Community practice5 | No human trial of this version5 |
| Ipamorelin | 200 to 300 mcg per dose | Community practice1 | The only phase 2 gave 0.03 mg/kg intravenously and missed its endpoint1 |
| GHRP-2 and GHRP-6 | 100 to 300 mcg per dose | Community practice5 | Old pharmaceutical research, no modern dosing trial5 |
| Hexarelin | 100 mcg per dose | Community practice5 | No dosing trial behind the figure5 |
| IGF-1 LR3 | 20 to 50 mcg daily | Community practice5 | No human trial of the LR3 analogue5 |
| BPC-157 | 250 to 500 mcg daily | Nothing published10 | No human absorption data by any route and no completed trial10 |
| TB-500 | 2 to 5 mg weekly | Nothing for the fragment11 | The research belongs to full-length thymosin beta-411 |
| KPV | 200 to 500 mcg daily | Community practice11 | No published human dosing study11 |
| LL-37 | 100 to 500 mcg per dose | Community practice11 | No published human dosing study11 |
| GHK-Cu, injectable | No figure recorded11 | Nothing published11 | The human evidence for GHK-Cu is topical11 |
| MOTS-c | 5 to 10 mg weekly | Community practice11 | No published human dosing study11 |
| Epitalon | 5 to 10 mg daily | Community practice5 | Russian work, mostly not in a form that sets a dose5 |
| DSIP | 100 to 200 mcg per dose | Community practice5 | 1980s human work; the FDA panel declined this one in 20265 |
| Melanotan II | 250 mcg to 1 mg per dose | Community practice5 | No approval anywhere; no dosing trial5 |
| AOD-9604 | 300 mcg daily | Community practice5 | Human obesity trials exist; the sold figure is not from them5 |
| HGH fragment 176-191 | 250 to 500 mcg daily | Community practice5 | No human dosing trial5 |
| 5-amino-1MQ | 150 mcg to 5 mg daily, oral | Community practice5 | No human trial; a small molecule, not a peptide5 |
| NAD+ | 50 to 100 mg per dose | Clinic and community practice5 | Not a peptide; injected use rests on clinic practice5 |
The figures in the first column are what the widely circulated dosage charts print, sampled from three of them and checked against the figure recorded for each compound on this site.125 They are recorded as what is published, not as a recommendation. Rows run in order of source type, strongest first.
The compounds here are the ones people search for. If yours is not among them, the full chart covers all 233, including the ones no vendor sells.5
Why everyone ends up on a chart
Nobody goes looking for a dosage chart for fun. If a compound has no label, the seller cannot legally tell you anything, and your doctor has never heard of it, a chart is the only thing that will give you a number at all. Reaching for one is not naive.
The trouble is that the chart does not say which of its figures it can stand behind, and the gap between two rows of the same table is far wider than the gap between any two charts.
How many peptides have a dose from a human study?
Fewer than half. Across the 233 compounds on this site, 32 have a dose from an approved label and another 52 from some other published human source, usually a trial or a foreign drug register. 44 come from community practice, 36 are sold as a fixed course, 26 are topical, and 38 have never been given to a person on record at all.5
So for roughly one compound in six, a chart prints a dose for something no human has knowingly taken in a study. That does not make the number dangerous by itself. It means nobody can tell you whether half of it would work as well, or whether twice it would do anything at all, because the comparison has never been run.
A weak source type does not make every number under it weak. GW501516, sold as cardarine, sits in the community bucket with trial doses behind it of 2.5 to 10 mg a day from a 2012 lipid study, and glutathione has 250 to 1,000 mg a day orally from a peer-reviewed human trial.5
Is there a standard BPC-157 dose?
No. The 250 to 500 mcg figure that appears on nearly every chart has no human study behind it. BPC-157 and TB-500 are examined together here.
The FDA reviewed BPC-157 in 2026 and found no human pharmacokinetic data after oral, subcutaneous, nasal or transdermal use, and no completed efficacy trial. The only controlled study in patients gave it as an enema and was published as a conference abstract.10 A registered phase 1 study of BPC-157 tablets has posted no results.10
That does not make the figure random. It became the convention because early work used it and everyone since has copied it. It does mean the number was never tested against another number in people. That comparison is what a dose-finding trial does.
Why do peptide dosage charts disagree?
Because most of them copy each other, and the errors travel.
Weight-based doses get printed as flat ones. The human work on CJC-1295 with DAC gave single doses calculated per kilogram of body weight, and reported that the two lower levels were the better tolerated.9 Charts print a flat weekly milligram figure that cannot be the same amount for two people of different sizes. The same conversion has happened with kisspeptin, where human dosing was weight-based and intravenous and the printed figure is a flat microgram amount.5
Doses migrate between routes. The only phase 2 trial of ipamorelin infused 0.03 mg/kg intravenously twice daily for up to a week after bowel surgery, and it did not beat placebo.1 The figure sold today is a much smaller amount injected under the skin. Whatever the subcutaneous number is based on, it is not that trial.
Label figures get superseded and keep circulating anyway. Tesamorelin is approved, so it should be the easy case. The original product, supplied as 1 mg vials, was dosed at 2 mg daily. The later 2 mg vial formulation is dosed at 1.4 mg daily. Charts print 2 mg.4
Some labels cannot be read at all any more. Sermorelin was approved in 1997 and withdrawn in 2008 for commercial reasons, and its label is no longer posted.8 Two dosing sites now give figures for it that differ by about a hundredfold, one saying 0.03 mg per kilogram and the other 0.2 to 0.3 mcg per kilogram.8 The adult figures printed today were never on any label.
Does an approved dose transfer to a grey-market vial?
Only if the vial contains what the label says, and the GLP-1 rows of any chart leave that out.
A dose on an approved label is a statement about a specific product made to a specific standard. The 2.4 mg in the semaglutide row means 2.4 mg of semaglutide, in a pen that delivers it reliably.2 The same figure written on a research-labelled vial means 2.4 mg of whatever is in your vial, at whatever purity, reconstituted to a concentration you worked out yourself.
Two unknowns sit underneath that. A certificate of analysis is meant to establish what the powder contains, and the amount of water added sets the concentration. Our guides on reading a COA and on how much water to add cover each.
So an approved dose is the best-sourced number on any chart, and it still describes a different product from the one in your fridge.
Some figures are real and still do not transfer
A number can be properly sourced and still be of no use to you as printed.
Weight-based and infusion doses are the commonest example. ACE-031 was given at 0.02 to 3 mg per kilogram in phase 1, adipotide at 0.03 mg per kilogram per day in a four-person study, and AICAR as a 42 mg per kilogram infusion during cardiac surgery.5 None of those becomes a fixed amount you can draw into a syringe, and the same is true of approved drugs given by weight or by drip, such as teduglutide and bimagrumab.
Units cause the same trouble. Oxytocin is labelled in international units in some products and in milligrams in others, where one unit is about 1.7 micrograms.5 A figure with no unit system attached tells you very little, and our guide on mcg and mg covers where that goes wrong.
Occasionally one name covers two molecules. Community reports for humanin converge on a range, and we do not publish it, because vendors sell both native humanin and the much more potent analogue HNG under the same name.5 One number across both would be wrong for one of them.
When the answer is that nobody has looked
A sweep of the compounds carrying no dose, finished on 22 September 2026, found that 11 of them are sold by no vendor we track, so the question rarely comes up in practice. For the others the record now says what was searched and not found.5
SR9009 and FOXO4-DRI have nothing in people. Follistatin figures come from gene therapy work, not from an injected peptide. Orexin A was given in three controlled trials by spray volume, with no milligram figure published at all, so a chart that prints micrograms for it has invented them.
What is a vendor's suggested dose based on?
Usually the same charts. Vendors selling research-labelled peptides cannot give dosing instructions for human use. The number arrives indirectly instead, in a blog post, a calculator or a "typical research dose" line on the product page, with no source attached.
Checking the figure your vendor gave you against a trial takes about five minutes. In our own source checks, the 500 mg twice daily quoted for ATX-304 traces to no study we could find. The figure with a trial behind it is 400 mg a day, from a phase 1b.5 Davunetide has a clean published dose, 30 mg per administration, from a phase 2/3 trial that failed to meet its endpoint. A dose that was tested is not a dose that worked.5
Does "research use only" mean the dose is research-backed?
It means the opposite, in most cases. The label is a legal position about what the seller claims to be selling, not a statement about evidence. Compounds sold that way are the least likely to have a dose from a trial. One with trial evidence behind it usually has an approval, a label and a prescription route instead.
Our guide on what research use only actually means covers the legal side.
How to check a number yourself
Find out whether an approved product exists. Search DailyMed or the FDA's label database for your compound. If a label exists, section 2 gives the dose a regulator accepted.
Look for the trial, not the write-up. Search ClinicalTrials.gov for your compound. The intervention field usually names the dose. A registered trial that never posted results tells you something too.
Check the route and the units. A figure given intravenously in a hospital is not a subcutaneous figure at home, and a dose per kilogram is not a flat dose. Our guide on mcg and mg covers the unit error that sends doses wrong by a thousandfold.
Check who published it. A number on a page that also sells the compound is not independent, whatever it says.
Check the date and the formulation. As tesamorelin shows, an approved dose can change when the product changes, and the old figure keeps circulating.
Our research index holds the published record for whatever you are looking at, including its registered trials and whether they ever reported results. The dosage chart records the source type for every compound tracked.
Common questions
Is there a standard BPC-157 dose?
No. No human trial has compared one dose against another, and the FDA found no human absorption data for any route. The 250 to 500 mcg figure is convention, repeated from chart to chart.
Why do peptide dosage charts disagree with each other?
Most copy from each other instead of from sources. Common faults are a weight-based trial dose printed as a flat number, a dose from a different route, and a label figure that has since been superseded.
What is a peptide vendor's recommended dose based on?
Usually the same circulating charts. Vendors selling research-labelled material cannot give human dosing instructions, so the figure tends to appear in marketing copy or a calculator, with no source attached.
How many peptides have a dose that came from a human study?
Of the 233 compounds tracked in our dosage chart, 32 have a dose from an approved label and 52 from another published human source. 44 are community practice, 36 are sold as a fixed course, and 38 have never been given to a person on record.
Is the tesamorelin dose 2 mg or 1.4 mg?
Both are label figures, for different products. The original formulation supplied in 1 mg vials is dosed at 2 mg daily. The later 2 mg vial formulation is dosed at 1.4 mg daily. Charts that print one figure without naming the formulation are incomplete.
Are the retatrutide doses on charts approved doses?
No. Retatrutide is not approved anywhere. The figures come from trials, where 1, 4, 8 and 12 mg weekly were tested with a gradual increase over the first 12 weeks.
Why does a chart show no dose for some compounds?
Because none has been published. 38 of the 233 compounds tracked here have never been given to a person on record, and for several more the human work exists in a form that produces no milligram figure at all.
Can a trial dose given by infusion or by body weight be used as a fixed dose?
No. A dose per kilogram is a different amount for every person, and an infusion given over hours in hospital is not a subcutaneous injection. Charts that convert either one into a flat figure are inventing the conversion.
What does "community protocol" mean on a dosage chart?
It means people arrived at the number by use and discussion rather than by a trial. It can still reflect real experience, but nobody has compared it with a higher or lower amount under controlled conditions.
Does a dose from a trial mean the compound works?
No. Davunetide has a clear trial dose, from a phase 2/3 trial that missed its endpoint.
Should I follow a dosage chart?
None of these figures is a recommendation, including the ones in the table. Anything you plan to put in your body should be discussed with a clinician, and our guide on telling your doctor covers how that conversation tends to go.
Sources
- US Food and Drug Administration. FDA briefing document, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, ipamorelin, 2024. [fda.gov/media/182088/download](https://www.fda.gov/media/182088/download). *Regulator review, passage read via search result excerpt of the briefing: 114 subjects received intravenous ipamorelin 0.03 mg/kg or placebo twice daily from postoperative day 1 until day 7 or discharge, and the reduction in time to tolerating a meal was not statistically significant. The published report is Beck et al., International Journal of Colorectal Disease, 2014.* ↩
- Novo Nordisk. Wegovy (semaglutide) injection, US prescribing information, section 2. [accessdata.fda.gov](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2025/215256s024lbl.pdf). *FDA-held label, dosing table read via search result excerpt of the label itself: 0.25 mg weekly for weeks 1 to 4, then 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg and a 2.4 mg maintenance dose from week 17. Recorded here as the origin of the figure, not as instruction.* ↩
- Eli Lilly. Mounjaro (tirzepatide) injection, US prescribing information, section 2.1. [accessdata.fda.gov](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2026/215866s009lbl.pdf). *FDA-held label, section 2.1 read via search result excerpt: 2.5 mg once weekly to start, increased to 5 mg after 4 weeks, then in 2.5 mg steps no sooner than every 4 weeks, to a maximum of 15 mg in adults.* ↩
- Theratechnologies. Egrifta (tesamorelin for injection), US prescribing information, section 2.1, both formulations. [1 mg vial label](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/022505s004lbl.pdf) and [2 mg vial label](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2019/022505Orig1s010lbl.pdf). *FDA-held labels, sections read via search result excerpts. The 1 mg per vial product is dosed at 2 mg subcutaneously once daily. The 2 mg per vial formulation is dosed at 1.4 mg once daily, and its label states that the dosing section applies only to that formulation.* ↩
- Peptide Decoding dosage chart. [peptidedecoding.com/dosage-chart](https://peptidedecoding.com/dosage-chart). *The site's own audit of every compound it tracks, recording the cited dose and the type of source behind it. Counts as at 23 September 2026: 32 approved label, 52 other published human source, 44 community practice, 36 sold as a fixed course, 38 never dosed in a person, 26 topical, 2 blends, 3 discontinued products, across 233 compounds. The ATX-304, davunetide and kisspeptin findings come from the source checks of 20 September; the GW501516, AICAR, adipotide, orexin A, follistatin, SR9009, FOXO4-DRI and humanin findings from the community-figure sweep completed 22 September; the glutathione figure (Richie 2015) and the oxytocin unit reconciliation from the review-flag pass of the same day. Each compound page carries its own citation for the figure. Re-run the counts against live data before publishing.* ↩
- Jastreboff AM, et al. Triple-hormone-receptor agonist retatrutide for obesity: a phase 2 trial. *New England Journal of Medicine*, 2023. [doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2301972](https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2301972). *Peer-reviewed trial, abstract and study design schematic read via search results. Participants received 1, 4, 8 or 12 mg weekly, with the 4 mg and higher groups starting at 2 or 4 mg and escalating every 4 weeks for up to 12 weeks. Retatrutide has no approval in any country, so no label dose exists.* ↩
- Nass R, et al. Effects of an oral ghrelin mimetic on body composition and clinical outcomes in healthy older adults: a randomized trial. *Annals of Internal Medicine*, 2008. [doi:10.7326/0003-4819-149-9-200811040-00003](https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-149-9-200811040-00003). *Peer-reviewed randomised trial, abstract read via search results. 65 adults aged 60 to 81 took oral MK-677 or placebo daily for two years; growth hormone and IGF-1 rose, fat-free mass increased, strength and function did not change. MK-677 is a small molecule, not a peptide, which is why it works when swallowed.* ↩
- Sermorelin (Geref), approved 1997 and discontinued 2008. *No current label is posted on DailyMed. The discontinuation for commercial rather than safety reasons is recorded in the Federal Register determination and summarised on GoodRx, read via search result. Two dosing sites publish different figures for the same withdrawn label: FormBlends gives 0.2 to 0.3 mcg/kg per day for the approved paediatric indication, while Peptides Institute gives 30 mcg/kg, both read via search results. The discrepancy is the reason no label figure is asserted in the table above.* ↩
- Teichman SL, et al. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. *Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism*, 2006. [PMID 16352683](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16352683/). *Peer-reviewed phase 1, abstract read via search results. Single subcutaneous doses produced dose-dependent GH and IGF-1 increases and were described as safe and relatively well tolerated, particularly at 30 or 60 mcg/kg. Secondary sources disagree about which weight-based doses were tested, quoting ranges from 1 to 30 mcg/kg up to 250 mcg/kg, which is itself a reason to treat converted flat figures carefully.* ↩
- US Food and Drug Administration. FDA briefing document, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting of 23 to 24 July 2026: evaluation of BPC-157. [fda.gov/media/193343/download](https://www.fda.gov/media/193343/download). *Regulator review, read at source. No human pharmacokinetic data after oral, subcutaneous, nasal or transdermal administration; one controlled trial in 53 patients with ulcerative colitis given as an enema, published only as a 2005 meeting abstract and judged inadequate; a registered phase 1 oral tablet study with no posted results and no publication found.* ↩
- Peptide Decoding research index and compound pages. [peptidedecoding.com/research](https://peptidedecoding.com/research). *The site's own index of Europe PMC and ClinicalTrials.gov records, used here for the absence of published human dosing studies for TB-500, injectable GHK-Cu, MOTS-c and KPV. FDA scientific staff opposed compounding all four in 2026 on the grounds of insufficient safety and efficacy evidence, as reported by Medscape and Time, read via search results. Re-read the live figures before publishing.* ↩
- Published peptide dosage charts, sampled 22 September 2026: [peptidesinsider.com](https://peptidesinsider.com/blog/peptide-dosage-chart-2026), [seekpeptides.com](https://www.seekpeptides.com/blog/articles/peptide-dosage-chart) and [peptidesexplorer.com](https://peptidesexplorer.com/blog/peptide-dosage-chart). *Commercial sites, tables read via search results. Cited only as evidence of which figures are in circulation. Their numbers agree closely with each other, which is consistent with copying rather than with independent sourcing.* ↩