Budget labs — what's the minimum viable panel?

Ulta Lab Tests or Marek Health, cash pay:

• CBC: ~$18
• CMP: ~$22
• Lipid + ApoB: ~$30
• HbA1c: ~$20
• Fasting insulin: ~$28

Total: ~$118. That's your 'minimum viable GLP-1 panel'. Pull once at baseline, once at ~12 weeks, once at 24 weeks. Under $400 for a year of solid tracking.

Great breakdown. I'd add Lp(a) as a ONE-TIME pull ($22-ish) since it's genetic. You do it once in your life and you know for good.

Perfect, this is exactly what I needed. Thank you.

One caveat — 'cheap' labs use the same assays and LabCorp/Quest facilities as the expensive ones. You're not trading accuracy for price, you're trading doctor-consultation-time for price.

Honestly the $118 baseline sounds solid but I'm still nervous about missing something. Like, should I be checking liver function too if I'm running GLP-1s long-term? I see people talk about pancreatitis risk and that makes me want to get AST/ALT in there. Anyone pulling liver panels alongside this or is that overkill for just GLP use.

@cautious_ox wrote: Cash-pay, no insurance angle here. What's the absolute cheapest sensible panel for someone on GLP-1s?

Solid panel. Honestly this is pretty close to the minimum set I’d personally want if I was tracking GLP-1s over time.

DO NOT BUY WITH QUEST OR LABCORP directly, you're paying much more than you need. Even Ulta (huge markup they pay to ads).

Mito's all-in raw cost for that basket you have: ~$23.79. vs what you see above total: ~$118.

Quick disclosure: I run Mito Health, which is building in this space and we're at least 50-80% cheaper than most, so obviously I’m not a neutral observer here. But I think the pricing mechanics are worth understanding regardless of who you use.

Most people don’t realize the prices you see from cash-pay lab marketplaces already include a markup on top of the underlying lab cost. The actual wholesale pricing for many common Quest tests is much lower. Things like CBC, CMP, A1c, lipid panels, fasting insulin, ApoB etc. are often just a few dollars each at scale.

So when a basket costs ~$100+, a meaningful portion of that usually isn’t the lab itself. It’s the layer on top: physician ordering, requisitions, software, support, results delivery, etc. Those things do have real operational costs, but the model often ends up being a markup per test rather than a simple flat fee.

That difference matters more if you’re someone doing frequent tracking (e.g. every few months on GLP-1s), because it compounds over time.

Appreciate the transparency but this reads like an ad. You literally just disclosed you run Mito and then spent 3 paragraphs explaining why everyone else is overpriced. That's not really a neutral take no matter how many times you say it isn't. That said, the underlying point about markup layers is real and worth knowing, just strip out the company context and it lands better.

@cagrisema wrote: Appreciate the transparency but this reads like an ad. You literally just disclosed you run Mito and then spent 3 paragraphs explaining why everyone else is overpriced. That's not really a neutral take no matter how many times you say it isn't. That said, the underlying point about markup layers is real and worth knowing, just strip out the company context and it lands better.

yup it's not a neutral take, but i just wanted to share in transparency of where i'm coming from

And im doing a community service.

Honestly we're at least 50-80% cheaper

Look, you can be transparent AND still be running marketing. The two aren't mutually exclusive. But cool that you're being upfront about it instead of the usual astroturfing. The actual useful part here is just knowing that retail lab markups exist, which yeah, most people don't think about. Beyond that I'm gonna shop around myself instead of taking anyone's word that they're the cheapest.