Noom bills by the quarter, not the month: what $199/mo really charges

Noom advertises its Microdose GLP-1Rx plan at $199 a month. The same line on Noom's pricing page says the plan is "billed quarterly", and Noom's own cost guide puts a number on it: $597 every 12 weeks, after an introductory $79. Both pages were checked on 21 September 2026. The monthly figure is a unit price, and the quarterly figure is what reaches your card. This audit works through what that difference means in dates and dollars, using Noom's published terms, the federal subscription statute and Federal Trade Commission records.

DoseTruth is a price-comparison publisher: it is not a pharmacy, not a telehealth provider, and it does not prescribe or dispense any medication. Nothing in this article is medical advice, and it is not a substitute for a conversation with a licensed clinician who knows your history. We did not buy the plan, so every charge date below is derived from Noom's written terms and not from a card statement.

• Headline: $199 a month after a $79 entry payment, per Noom's pricing card checked on 21 September 2026.
• Actual charge: $597 every 12 weeks plus tax, per Noom's cost guide dated 26 August 2026.
• Calendar-month equivalent if the 12-week cycle holds: about $216, which is 8.6% above the headline.
• Refund position: Noom's policy says renewal charges are not eligible for refunds.

What does Noom actually charge when it says $199 a month?

Noom charges a single payment of about $597 for each 12-week term, not $199 each month, according to its own cost guide as checked on 21 September 2026. The pricing card shows "$79 to get started" and then "$199/mo after the first 4-week supply (billed quarterly)". The cost guide, which Noom dates 26 August 2026, describes a low-dose tirzepatide plan at $79 for the first 4-week supply, "then $597 every 12 weeks ($199 per month)". The same guide lists a low-dose semaglutide plan at $49 to begin, "then $537 every 12 weeks ($179 per month)".

These are seller pages, which makes them the primary source for Noom's own price list and for nothing else. No regulator publishes a private telehealth company's prices, so there is no higher tier to check them against. The four pages do not fully agree. The pricing card shows one Microdose plan at $79 then $199, the cost guide splits the range into a semaglutide plan and a tirzepatide plan, and one footnote pairs the $79 entry price with $179 a month. We could not reconcile that mismatch, so treat the checkout screen as the only binding figure.

The same pattern runs across the pricing card. Five of the six plans on it quote a monthly price and bill by the quarter, so the first renewal is three times the headline. The quarterly amounts below are our multiplication, not Noom's wording, except for the Microdose row. Noom's cost guide also lists the GLP-1Rx plan at $279 a month where the pricing card shows $249, and we do not know which is current.

Is 12 weeks the same as a quarter?

No. Twelve weeks is 84 days, while a calendar quarter averages about 91 days, so a 12-week cycle comes round 4.35 times a year instead of 4. At $597 per cycle, that is about $2,594 over 365 days, or roughly $216 per calendar month. The headline implies $199 times 12, which is $2,388. If Noom bills every 12 weeks, "$199 per month" really means $199 per four weeks, which is about 8.6% more per calendar year than the headline suggests.

There is a real uncertainty here. Noom's pricing card says "quarterly" and its cost guide and footnotes say "12 weeks", and those are not the same schedule. If renewals actually fall every three calendar months, the 8.6% gap disappears and only the lump-sum timing remains. We did not make a test purchase, so we cannot say which schedule Noom's billing system follows. Our own tables on this site normalise prices to a monthly figure too, because that is how sellers quote them, and this case shows the limit of that habit.

How much leaves your account in the first 365 days?

Between $2,467 and $3,064 before tax, depending on which of Noom's stated schedules applies, against the $2,268 a literal reading of the headline would predict. The literal reading is $79 plus eleven payments of $199. The schedules below replace those eleven payments with four or five payments of $597. Noom's footnote describes an "initial 3 week subscription" with four weeks of medication, which would put the first $597 charge three weeks after sign-up.

The fifth payment in the 12-week schedules is not an extra cost for the same service. It pays for weeks that fall after day 365, so the price per week is unchanged at $49.75. In schedule B the fifth charge lands on day 364, so it falls inside the first year by a single day. What changes is cash flow: more money leaves earlier, and it leaves in blocks that cannot be unwound. Someone who stops after four renewals has paid $2,467 before tax under any of the three schedules. Noom's footnotes say "plus tax", and we have no basis for estimating that tax, so every figure here excludes it. A related audit applies the same first-year method to what a low first-month price actually costs over a year.

What happens if you cancel a day late?

Under Noom's published policy, a day late costs the full quarter. The refund policy states that "Renewal charges are not eligible for refunds". Noom's terms of use, last updated 9 December 2025, set the cancellation deadline in section 6.6 at one minute before midnight Eastern time on the day before the next recurring billing date. Section 6.13 adds that all fees are non-refundable "except as expressly promoted by Noom". With monthly billing a missed deadline would cost $199, and with quarterly billing it costs $597.

Two details soften this slightly. For a first Noom Med purchase, the policy says refunds "may be available unless a prescription has already been written". After a renewal, cancelling does not end access at once, because the subscription "remains active until the end of that billing cycle". Section 6.7 of the terms gives California residents a right to rescind within three business days by post. None of these reverses a renewal charge that has already gone through. Dates worth writing down on the day of purchase:

• The sign-up date and the exact date of the first renewal shown at checkout, which may be three weeks later and not four.
• Each later renewal date, counted in 12-week steps unless the checkout screen says otherwise.
• The day before each renewal, which is the last day a cancellation avoids the next $597 under section 6.6.
• The date any prescription is written, because Noom's policy ties first-purchase refunds to it.

Is quarterly billing against the rules?

No, not on anything we found. Charging in advance for a multi-month term is lawful in the United States when the terms are disclosed and consented to. The federal baseline for online subscriptions is the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, at 15 USC 8403. It sets three conditions for any seller using automatic renewal online:

• The seller "clearly and conspicuously discloses all material terms of the transaction before obtaining the consumer's billing information".
• The seller "obtains a consumer's express informed consent before charging".
• The seller "provides simple mechanisms for a consumer to stop recurring charges".

Noom's pricing card does print "billed quarterly" beside the monthly figure, and this article does not allege that Noom breaches the statute. The stricter federal rule many readers have heard of, the 2024 "click-to-cancel" amendment to the Negative Option Rule, is not in force. The Eighth Circuit vacated it on 8 July 2025 in Custom Communications v FTC, on the procedural ground that the agency skipped a required preliminary regulatory analysis. On 11 March 2026 the FTC announced an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that asks, among other things, whether to adopt provisions of the vacated 2024 rule. Until that process ends, the statute, the older rule and state auto-renewal laws are what protect a subscriber.

For contrast, the FTC's case against the telehealth firm NextMed shows what the agency treats as inadequate disclosure. In its July 2025 complaint the FTC alleged that NextMed advertised a monthly price, "typically at $138 or $188", that left out the GLP-1 drug, the lab work and the medical consultation. It also alleged a one-year commitment with early termination fees that was not adequately disclosed. The final order, approved 2 to 0 and announced on 3 December 2025, requires a $150,000 payment and clear disclosure of costs and cancellation terms before payment is requested. These are allegations and order terms, not court findings, and they concern a different company. Noom's headline price does include the medication, and its card does name the billing term.

Noom has its own history on this subject. Reuters reported on 14 February 2022 that Noom agreed to pay $56 million in cash plus $6 million in subscription credits to settle a class action over trial sign-ups that rolled into automatic renewals that were hard to cancel. Noom denied wrongdoing and said its disclosures complied with the law. That case concerned the Noom weight-loss app and predates Noom Med, so it says nothing direct about the Microdose plan. The plaintiffs' law firm reports that a federal judge in the Southern District of New York gave final approval in July 2022, and that firm is not a neutral source.

What does the price not tell you about the medication?

It does not tell you that the drug in this plan is compounded, and compounded drugs are not FDA-approved. The FDA's page on unapproved GLP-1 drugs, marked current as of 1 September 2026, says the agency "does not review compounded drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed". The same page says the FDA has received reports of adverse events, some requiring hospitalisation, that may be related to dosing errors with compounded injectable semaglutide. Noom's own page carries a matching disclaimer that its compounded semaglutide "has not been reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality".

We make no claim about whether a microdose regimen does anything. The FDA page does not use the word microdose, and in this session we found no government document or peer-reviewed trial that evaluates the regimens sold under that label. The weight-loss figures on Noom's pricing page are, by Noom's own footnote, self-reported data from the top 25th percentile of users. That is marketing data, not trial evidence, and nothing in this article relies on it. We can verify the billing terms, and we cannot verify the clinical case for the product.

Price routes for FDA-approved products follow different rules and different deadlines. Our related audits cover the GLP-1 price routes that reset on 31 December 2026, the LillyDirect 45-day rule in real numbers, the oral Wegovy 4 mg price change and GoodRx against buying Wegovy direct. Whether any of these medicines is appropriate is a question for a prescriber, not for a price table.

What did we not check?

We did not check anything that needs a purchase, a login or a card statement. The list below is the honest boundary of this audit.

• We did not buy a plan, so no charge date or amount here was observed on a statement.
• We did not see the checkout screen, which may disclose the term more or less clearly than the public pages do.
• We did not estimate sales tax, which Noom's footnotes say is added.
• We did not survey other telehealth sellers, so we cannot say whether quarterly billing is common or unusual.
• We did not assess any clinical outcome.

Prices and terms change. If a figure here no longer matches Noom's pages, the date beside it tells you when it was true. Read the billing term before the monthly price, because the term is the amount you are agreeing to pay.

How strong is each claim in this article?

Most of the claims about written terms are strong, and the claims about what actually lands on a card are weaker than they look. The table grades each one. Where we derived a number and did not observe it, the grade says so.

What else do readers ask about Noom's billing?

Does Noom charge $199 every month?

No. After the introductory payment, Noom's pages describe one charge per term, stated as $597 every 12 weeks for the $199 plan in the cost guide checked on 21 September 2026. The monthly figure is that charge divided by three.

Does the $199 include the medication?

Yes, according to Noom's pages checked on 21 September 2026, which say the Microdose plan includes compounded medication if it is prescribed. The exception on the pricing card is the telehealth plan for branded medicines, where Noom states that "the cost of medication is not included". Whether a prescription is written at all is a clinician's decision.

When does the first $597 charge arrive?

Noom's written terms point to three or four weeks after sign-up, and they are not consistent. The pricing card refers to "the first 4-week supply", while a footnote describes an "initial 3 week subscription" with four weeks of medication. The renewal date shown at checkout is the one that counts.

Can a renewal charge be refunded?

Not under the published policy, which says renewal charges are not eligible for refunds. First-purchase refunds "may be available unless a prescription has already been written". We have not tested how Noom handles exceptions in practice.

Does cancelling stop the service straight away?

No. Noom's policy says that after a renewal the subscription "remains active until the end of that billing cycle". Cancelling stops the next charge, not the term already paid for.

Is the medication in the Microdose plan FDA-approved?

No. It is a compounded product, and the FDA states that it does not review compounded drugs for safety, effectiveness or quality before they are marketed. Noom's page says the compounded drug is produced in an FDA-registered facility, which is a statement about the facility and not an approval of the drug.

Which sources did we use?

We used the sources below, each opened on 21 September 2026, and ranked them by type. Seller pages are cited only for the seller's own prices and terms. Two documents could not be read in the session and are not relied on: the Eighth Circuit opinion file, which opened as a PDF our tools could not parse, and the court record of the Noom settlement, which returned an access error.

1. Government: FDA, FDA's Concerns with Unapproved GLP-1 Drugs Used for Weight Loss, content current as of 1 September 2026
2. Government: FTC press release on the NextMed complaint, 14 July 2025
3. Government: FTC press release on the NextMed final order, 3 December 2025
4. Government: FTC press release on the negative option advance notice of proposed rulemaking, 11 March 2026
5. Government: FTC, Negative Option Rule, 16 CFR Part 425
6. Government: FTC, Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act summary
7. Statute text through a legal republisher: 15 USC 8403, Cornell Legal Information Institute
8. Professional analysis, not a primary source: Mayer Brown on the Eighth Circuit vacating the revised Negative Option Rule, July 2025
9. News report: Reuters report on the Noom settlement, carried by Euronews, 14 February 2022
10. Party to the case, not neutral: WMP Law, plaintiffs' counsel page on the Noom class action
11. Seller page, primary for Noom's own prices only: Noom Med plans and pricing
12. Seller page, primary for Noom's own prices only: Noom cost guide, dated 26 August 2026
13. Seller page, primary for Noom's own prices only: Noom article on microdosing GLP-1, dated 3 September 2026
14. Seller page, primary for Noom's own prices only: Noom Microdose GLP-1Rx landing page
15. Seller page, primary for Noom's own terms only: Noom refund policy
16. Seller page, primary for Noom's own terms only: Noom terms and conditions of use, last updated 9 December 2025