These two get sold as flavors of the same thing — a peptide that raises growth hormone, pick one. They aren’t. They reach the pituitary through different receptors, they clear at very different speeds, and only one of them has ever held an FDA approval to lose. Each of those is a separate distinction, and each changes something worth knowing before paying for a month of injections.
Elena Marchetti writes about peptide therapeutics and drug development. Last reviewed 4 September 2026.
Citation status, counted from the records behind this page rather than typed: 9 of 9 pharmacological figures on it are recorded in this site’s data but not yet traced to a published source, and they are marked [needs citation] where they appear. Where the writing below restates one of those figures, it rests on the same unsourced record. The open sourcing work is listed in the repository’s content to-do. This line counts itself down as sources land.
Attributes down, molecules across, and the table keeps both columns at every screen width — two molecules fit on a phone where five do not.
| Attribute | SermorelinSER | IpamorelinIPA |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanism | GHRH analog [needs citation] | ghrelin mimetic [needs citation] |
| Half-life | 10–20 min [needs citation] | ~2 hours [needs citation] |
| Cortisol / prolactin | not recorded | does not raise cortisol or prolactin [needs citation] |
| FDA status | withdrawn [needs citation] | not approved [needs citation] |
| Commonly sold as | single agent, nightly [needs citation] | stacked with CJC-1295 [needs citation] |
| Typical monthly cost | no price we have read | no price we have read |
On cost: 0 of 3 seller records on this site are real — the rest are placeholders carrying fictional figures — so there is no monthly price here that anyone has read off a seller’s own page. The cost row says so rather than quoting a number we made up. This sentence is computed from the records and will change on its own when real ones land.
Half-life shapes a dosing schedule more than anything else on this page. A molecule cleared in minutes and one cleared in hours aren’t two doses of the same product; they’re two different propositions about how often you inject and how long each injection is doing anything at all. The scale below is the same logarithmic one used on the site’s full matrix, deliberately — the distance between these two bars means the same thing here as it does there.
Sermorelin is recorded as 10–20 min and Ipamorelin as ~2 hours. Where a figure is a span, it is printed and drawn as a span; neither the bar nor the label is collapsed to a middle number, because the middle number is not a thing anyone measured.
The mechanism row is why the half-life row isn’t the whole story. The two molecules are recorded here under different mechanism classes, and that difference sits upstream of everything else on the page: a comparison that treats them as one input to the same system is pricing two different things against each other.
The selectivity row is where that shows up in a form a buyer can act on. Ipamorelin carries a selectivity claim in these records; sermorelin carries nothing. That is a statement about what this site has written down, not a finding that sermorelin lacks the property. An unfilled cell is an open question, and it is printed as one rather than left blank for a reader to fill in with an assumption.
Sermorelin’s status is recorded here as withdrawn and ipamorelin’s as not approved. Those are different facts and neither is a verdict. Withdrawn describes a product that once held an approval and no longer does; not approved describes one the agency has not cleared for US marketing. Why sermorelin’s approval ended is not something this site has verified, and we’re not going to guess at it.
What the two statuses have in common is the more immediately useful part. On the statuses as recorded, neither molecule reaches a US buyer as an approved, off-the-shelf product — so whatever you are quoted is being compounded, and who compounds it, at what strength, and under what oversight are questions for the seller and for a clinician who knows your history. Nothing here is medical advice.
Every figure in the table above shows whether it has been traced to a source. The ones marked [needs citation] come from this project’s own reference notes and have not yet been matched to a published document. They are printed with the marker rather than held back, so you can see exactly which parts of this comparison are load-bearing and which are still owed. Corrections are published, dated and signed on the corrections page, and the method is on the editorial policy page.
3 sellers in this site’s records sell Sermorelin or Ipamorelin. 2 of them pay us a commission; 1 does not. Both kinds appear here in the same format, and the line under each button says which it is. The full accounting is on the disclosure page.
3 of the 3 records below are a placeholder with a fictional price, kept here only to exercise the outbound mechanics. Nothing in those rows describes a real company. This notice is computed from the records, so it clears itself when they are replaced.
$189 per month — 300 mcg nightly · read 2026-09-02
Placeholder record. Prints a standing month-to-month rate before the intake and names its compounding pharmacy on the peptide page rather than only on the GLP-1 one.
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from $99 per month — dose not stated · read 2026-09-02
Placeholder record, and not a partner. Leads with a floor price whose dose is not stated, so it is not comparable to a rate quoted against a dose.
Visit sellerWe are paid nothing if you sign up through this link.
$205 per month — CJC-1295 + ipamorelin, 300 mcg nightly · read 2026-09-02
Placeholder record. Sells the stack rather than either molecule alone, so the figure is for the combination and is not comparable to a single-agent price.
Visit sellerWe may be paid if you sign up through this link.