Oral semaglutide tracker: why a tablet isn't charted as mg taken

A semaglutide tablet and a semaglutide injection are the same molecule, and a dose log that charts them the same way is wrong by a factor of about a hundred. Peptrend logs the tablet as an oral dose and counts only the share of it that is absorbed. This post covers how to set that up, where the app’s number comes from, and the formulations it does not fit.

How do you log a semaglutide tablet in Peptrend?

Pick the preset, then log each tablet in milligrams. In Settings › Medication, Change Main Medication › Semaglutide (tablet) sets four things at once:

Once the route is oral, the app renames itself to match. Shots become doses, the tab icon becomes a pill, the history becomes the Dose Log, and the add sheet reads “Add Dose”. The injection site, the vial and the pain rating disappear from the dose editor, and switching an existing dose to oral clears all three. Nothing in the rename touches stored data, so changing the route back changes the words back.

Then log each tablet with the milligrams printed on it and the time you took it. The half-life the app ships, 6.5 days, sits inside the label’s “approximately one week” and matches the 153 to 161 hour terminal half-life noted in the app’s source. In version 1.3.3 the Peaks-after stepper prints whole hours, so it shows the preset’s 1.5 hours as “1 h” while the model uses 1.5; version 1.4.0 and later print the half hour.

Why isn’t a 14 mg tablet charted as 14 mg?

Because almost none of it is absorbed. The semaglutide tablet label puts absolute bioavailability at approximately 0.4% to 1% for the 3, 7 and 14 mg tablets, against 89% for the injection. So Peptrend multiplies each oral dose by the absorbed share before the dose enters the decay model. Weekly versus daily dosing covers the definition, the line of code that does it, and why the route is read off each dose.

At the preset’s 0.8%, a 14 mg tablet adds 14 × 0.008 = 0.112 mg to the curve. The card title changes to match, from “Estimated Dose In Your System” to “In Your System”, and its info sheet spells out the arithmetic with your own number, “a 14mg tablet contributes about 0.11mg”.

That figure is still a modelled amount in milligrams. It has no volume of distribution and no concentration in it, and the app tells you to read it “as a shape, not a measurement.”

Which semaglutide tablets does the 0.8% preset fit?

The older tablets, and not the newer ones. The labels describe two formulations with different absorption, and the preset was set from the first:

The label also says the two formulations are not substitutable on a milligram-for-milligram basis.

Here is what the setting does to the curve. At a steady 25 mg tablet a day, the model settles into a daily ripple between these values:

The whole curve scales in proportion. The Absorbed stepper is in Settings › Medication whenever the route is oral, and it takes 0.1% to 100% in steps of 0.1. The setting changes the model and nothing else. Choosing the preset again under Change Main Medication overwrites the value, and the app says what it will replace before it does.

Absorption also varies from day to day for one person. Overgaard and colleagues, modelling six clinical pharmacology trials in healthy volunteers and people with kidney or liver impairment, put that within-subject variability at 137%, falling to 33% in steady-state exposure with a tablet every day; weekly versus daily dosing explains the fall. It is the reason the app warns that the curve is a shape.

What does a tablet’s curve look like?

A slow climb with a small daily ripple on it. A tablet a day against a 6.5-day half-life means about 90% of the level survives from one dose to the next, so each tablet nearly replaces what the day took away, and the curve peaks about an hour after each one. The climb takes about three weeks to reach 90% of its plateau, about as long as an injection’s, because the half-life sets it and the interval does not. The label gives steady-state exposure after 4 to 5 weeks.

Weekly versus daily dosing works through the size of the ripple and the plateau figures, and how long a GLP-1 takes to reach steady state builds the plateau step by step.

What happens if you switch from injections to tablets?

The history stays in one piece, and each dose is scaled by its own route. Both semaglutide presets write the same medication name, so injections and tablets sit on one curve. The route is read off each dose rather than off your current setting: an injection logged last spring counts in full, and a tablet logged today counts at its absorbed share. The info sheet says so whenever both routes are present.

One limit applies. The half-life and time to peak are single settings for the whole curve. Once you switch to the tablet preset, past injections are drawn with the tablet’s 6.5-day half-life and 1.5-hour rise, so their humps come out sharper than the injection model would draw them. The totals are close, since the two half-lives differ by half a day, but the shape of the injection era changes.

What does the app not do for tablets?

It logs and models. It does not advise. It will not tell you which strength to take, when to step up, or what to do after a missed tablet. It does not time the wait after a tablet, and it has no food logging, so it never knows when you ate. Doses are in milligrams only. The reminder is one local notification when the next dose is due.

The app has one more oral preset, orforglipron, a non-peptide tablet whose absorption is far higher, and the orforglipron tracker post covers it. For everything that stays free while you log, see what stays free, and for the injection side of the same model, how much is still in your system. Rybelsus, Ozempic and Wegovy are trademarks of their owner, and Peptrend is not affiliated with any drug manufacturer. If your log does not match the arithmetic here, support is where to say so.