FDA-Approved Peptides: Complete 2026 List (88 Drugs, FDA-Verified)

Most peptides sold online are not on this list. The FDA has approved 88 peptide drugs that you can still get in the US today, from the semaglutide in Wegovy to a 1950s antibiotic, and every row below was checked against the agency's own Drugs@FDA records. Five of them were approved in 2026 alone. BPC-157, TB-500 and retatrutide are not among them.

You have probably seen a peptide called "FDA-approved" on a vendor page or in a video. Sometimes it is true. Often the drug was approved for one disease and is being sold for another, or the approval belongs to a different molecule with a similar name, or it was approved decades ago and quietly discontinued. The only way to know is to look the drug up in FDA's records, which is what we did for every entry here.

What counts as an FDA-approved peptide

The FDA draws a hard line at 40 amino acids.

A chain of 40 amino acids or fewer is a peptide and is approved as a drug through a New Drug Application. Anything longer is a protein, and since March 23, 2020 it is regulated as a biologic under a Biologics License Application (85 FR 10057, 21 CFR 600.3(h)(6)). That is why insulin (51 amino acids), hCG, tesamorelin (44) and the GLP-1 drug lixisenatide (44) moved to biologic status in 2020 even though nothing about the medicines changed. We kept them on the list because most readers think of them as peptides, and marked each one with a †.

Three other rules shaped the list:

• Approved means approved as a drug. A peptide that is legal to compound, or sold as a cosmetic ingredient, is not on this list. Those lanes are covered further down.
• One row per active ingredient. Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy are all semaglutide, so they share a row. The first approval year is the earliest original approval FDA has on file for that ingredient.
• Peptide-based drugs count. We included cyclic and modified peptides (cyclosporine, vancomycin, the echinocandin antifungals) and peptide-guided radioligands, the same way FDA's own peptide guidance and published reviews group them.

How many peptides has the FDA approved?

103 active ingredients, by our count.

88 are on the US market today and 15 were approved and later discontinued or withdrawn. The pace has picked up: the 2000s and 2010s each added about two dozen, and the 2020s were already close behind by October 2026. A 2021 review in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery counted "more than 80" peptide drugs on the market worldwide (PMID 33536635); the US list has grown past that since.

Here is how the drugs still on the market split by what they treat:

The complete list of FDA-approved peptide drugs

Grouped by what each drug is approved for, A to Z inside each group. A linked name goes to our full guide for that peptide. † marks drugs over 40 amino acids that FDA now regulates as biologics. Amber notes flag anything not simply available.

Diabetes, weight and blood sugar (9)

This is the group most people mean when they search the term. Every GLP-1 drug you can get from a pharmacy is a peptide, and so is the insulin many of them replace. For a side-by-side of the weekly shots and pills, see our GLP-1 medications guide.

Growth, pituitary and adrenal (12)

Hormones that control growth, the pituitary and the adrenal glands. Several are tests rather than treatments: a doctor injects them once to see how a gland responds.

Sex hormones, fertility and hormone-driven cancers (11)

GnRH drugs make up most of this group. They switch the testosterone and estrogen axis down, which is why the same molecule treats prostate cancer, endometriosis and early puberty. PT-141 is here too, approved as Vyleesi.

Blood pressure, shock and water balance (4)

Small hormones that hold blood pressure up and keep water in the body. Most are hospital drugs given through a drip.

Bone, calcium and parathyroid (5)

Two of these build bone instead of only slowing its loss, which is rare among osteoporosis drugs. The full evidence comparison is on our peptides for osteoporosis page.

Gut and digestion (5)

Two of these are pills that act inside the gut and barely enter the blood. The third is a daily injection that helps the remaining bowel absorb more in short bowel syndrome.

Heart, blood and cholesterol (8)

A mixed group: blood thinners used in the cath lab, two drugs for swelling attacks in hereditary angioedema, and 2026's first pill that blocks PCSK9.

Immune, skin, nerves and rare disease (10)

Cyclosporine is the old giant here, a ring-shaped peptide from a soil fungus that made organ transplants routine in the 1980s. The rest are recent, rare-disease drugs.

Infections (13)

Many of the strongest last-line antibiotics are peptides made by bacteria and fungi. They are hospital drugs, often kept back for infections that resist everything else.

Cancer treatment and tumor imaging (11)

Two kinds here. Radioligands use a peptide as a homing device to carry a radioactive atom to tumor cells, either to scan them or to kill them. Proteasome inhibitors are small peptide-based molecules that starve myeloma cells.

New FDA-approved peptides in 2025 and 2026

The last two years brought pills.

For most of their history peptide drugs had to be injected, because the gut digests them like food. Of the five new peptides approved in 2026, two are once-a-day tablets: icotrokinra for psoriasis and enlicitide for cholesterol. They join oral semaglutide, which became the first GLP-1 pill for weight loss in December 2025.

One of these will be familiar to anyone who has browsed peptide vendors. Elamipretide is the compound sold online as SS-31. Its approval covers one rare inherited disease, Barth syndrome, under the accelerated pathway, which means the company still has to confirm the benefit in further trials. It does not make vendor SS-31 an approved product. Our SS-31 review covers what the trials showed.

One more 2026 approval often gets lumped in with these. Orforglipron (Foundayo), Lilly's weight-loss pill approved April 1, 2026, works on the same GLP-1 receptor but is a small molecule, not a peptide, so it is not on the list.

FDA-approved peptides that were later discontinued

Approval is not permanent.

These drugs passed FDA review and then left US pharmacies. Some went for business reasons, a few for safety or manufacturing problems. Two of them matter to people shopping for peptides today: sermorelin and gonadorelin were real approved drugs once, which is where the "FDA-approved" claim on compounded versions comes from. The approved products are gone; what pharmacies make now has not been through FDA review.

Popular peptides with no FDA approval

None of these is an approved drug in the US.

That includes everything sold online as loose vials without a prescription. In July 2026 an FDA advisory committee voted in favor of letting pharmacies compound six of them (BPC-157, TB-500, MOTS-c, epitalon, Semax and KPV) and against a seventh, DSIP. That vote was about the compounding bulk-substance list, not drug approval, it was non-binding, and FDA staff had opposed all seven. The details are in our FDA peptide vote report.

Approved, compounded or sold online: what the label actually buys you

The same peptide name can sit in three very different lanes.

An approved drug has a trial record, a fixed dose and a factory FDA inspects. A compounded version is made by a pharmacy for one patient from a listed ingredient, with no FDA review of whether that product works; compounded semaglutide is the best-known example. A vial bought online without a prescription has none of those checks, whatever the website says.

Price is usually what pushes people out of the first lane. The approved GLP-1 pens and pills now have cash-pay programs that cost far less than list price, and our breakdown of the cheapest GLP-1 options compares them, including the Wegovy pill, which starts at $149 a month on self-pay.

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How to check a peptide's FDA status yourself

It takes about two minutes.

1. Search Drugs@FDA for the generic name. An approved drug shows an application number (NDA or BLA), the approval date and the marketing status. No result means no approval.
2. Check the marketing status. "Discontinued" means it is no longer sold under that application, even if it was approved.
3. Read the label on DailyMed. Section 1, "Indications and Usage", lists exactly what the drug is approved for. Anything else is off-label.
4. For biologics (insulin, hCG, tesamorelin and other † drugs), the Purple Book lists licensed products and biosimilars.
5. Be suspicious of "FDA-registered" or "made in an FDA-registered facility". Registration is a listing, not an approval, and says nothing about the product in the vial.

Frequently Asked Questions

For the wider picture of peptides people actually use, approved or not, see our list of peptides and their uses, and for a side-by-side of the approved drugs against the most-hyped vendor peptides, what is FDA-approved vs hype.

Sources

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Drugs@FDA database. accessdata.fda.gov; full data file via openFDA drugsfda endpoint, data update October 23, 2026.
• FDA. Definition of the Term "Biological Product". Final rule. Federal Register 85 FR 10057, February 21, 2020. govinfo.gov
• FDA prescribing information (Section 1, Indications and Usage) for Icotyde, Mimrylo, Yuviwel, Hepcludex, Forzinity, Daybue, Aphexda, Zilbrysq, Yorvipath, Zepbound and Foundayo, via DailyMed and openFDA.
• TCTMD. FDA approves enlicitide, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor, for LDL-lowering. July 2026. tctmd.com
• FDA. Determination that Bacitracin for Injection, 10,000 Units/Vial and 50,000 Units/Vial, was withdrawn from sale for reasons of safety or effectiveness. Federal Register, September 15, 2022. federalregister.gov
• Takeda. Takeda to discontinue manufacturing of NATPAR/NATPARA at the end of 2024. October 2022. takeda.com
• Muttenthaler M, King GF, Adams DJ, Alewood PF. Trends in peptide drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2021;20:309-325. PMID 33536635
• Levine DP. Vancomycin: a history. Clin Infect Dis. 2006;42 Suppl 1:S5-12. PMID 16323120