The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a new weight-loss pill, the latest addition to a fast-growing field of powerful obesity drugs.
The pill, orforglipron, will be sold by Eli Lilly under the brand name Foundayo. In the company’s clinical trials, people with obesity lost an average of around 12 percent of their body weight after 72 weeks on the highest dose.
Orforglipron is the second daily weight-loss pill to hit the market. The first was the Wegovy pill, from Novo Nordisk, which was approved in December 2025 and contains the same substance as Ozempic. The two pills lead to comparable amounts of weight loss in people with obesity.
Orforglipron could offer a more convenient option for patients who want to avoid injections. It can be taken with or without food at any time of day, whereas patients must take the Wegovy pill in the morning, on an empty stomach.
“If you have to be very strict about the timing of your medications, that makes it a whole lot less convenient,” said Dr. Melanie Jay, the director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity.
The lowest dose of the pill will cost $149 without insurance, a price set in a deal the Trump administration announced last fall. Medicare will cover the pill for some patients, and experts expect that many insurance plans will also cover it.
Orforglipron works by mimicking a hormone that naturally occurs in the body to blunt appetite and regulate blood sugar. In a clinical trial of people with Type 2 diabetes, those who took the highest dose of orforglipron saw their hemoglobin A1C value, a measure of blood sugar, drop by an average of 2.2 percentage points. Eli Lilly also plans to ask the F.D.A. to approve the drug for diabetes later this year.
Patients taking the medication had similar side effects to people taking injectable weight-loss drugs, most commonly gastrointestinal issues such as nausea and diarrhea.
The approval comes at a moment when patients have more options than ever for weight loss, said Dr. Kristina Henderson Lewis, a member of the board of directors for the American Board of Obesity Medicine. That means people can weigh which medication might work best for them in terms of convenience, side-effect profiles and price, among other factors.
“People can really start to have good conversations with their doctor about not just what’s the newest medicine, but what’s the right medicine for me?” she said.
Dani Blum is a health reporter for The Times.
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