Head to head
Cagrilintide vs MOTS-c
Side-by-side on metabolic health, dosing, kinetics and evidence — with an honest verdict at the end.
Verdict
No winner in this data
What you are actually choosing between
Both are classed here as metabolic compounds, so this is a within-class choice: the mechanism is broadly shared and what separates them is kinetics, route, and how much has actually been tested.
The overlap is metabolic health and fat loss. On this site's goal weighting — an editorial priority score, not a measure of effect size — Cagrilintide rates 3/5 for metabolic health and MOTS-c rates 5/5. Outside that overlap they diverge: Cagrilintide also carries weight for appetite control, MOTS-c for longevity.
The evidence
Cagrilintide sits one step firmer: controlled human trials behind it, without an approval — investigational; standalone long-term data does not exist yet. MOTS-c has some human data, but it is small, old, or uncontrolled — the human data is observational, not interventional. One tier is a real difference but not a decisive one; it should not on its own settle the choice.
How they differ in practice
Cagrilintide has a characterized half-life of 7.5 days; MOTS-c does not have one published here at all. That asymmetry is worth more than it looks — it usually tracks how much formal pharmacology has been done on a compound.
One of these has an end date and the other does not: Cagrilintide runs no fixed cycle, MOTS-c runs 8 weeks. An open-ended compound is a standing commitment, not a course you finish. Cagrilintide also escalates through a titration schedule rather than holding one dose, so its first weeks are not its steady state.
Source notes
What the evidence actually says
Verbatim, so you can check the verdict above against what it was built from.
Cagrilintide
Long-acting amylin analogue, not a GLP-1. Phase 2 randomized human trials dosed 0.3 to 4.5 mg once weekly with 4-week step-ups, and it is in phase 3 combined with semaglutide as CagriSema. It is investigational and NOT approved anywhere as a standalone product. Amylin analogues act on satiety through a different receptor to GLP-1, which is the rationale for the combination, but standalone long-term data does not yet exist.
MOTS-c
A 16-amino-acid mitochondrial-derived peptide encoded within the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene. Mechanistically it is linked to AMPK activation and the folate / one-carbon pathway. The strong data are preclinical: injected MOTS-c improved insulin sensitivity, reduced diet-induced obesity and improved physical capacity in mice, including in aged animals. Human data is limited and mostly observational rather than interventional — circulating MOTS-c levels have been measured in relation to exercise, age, insulin resistance and a longevity-associated mitochondrial variant, but there is no established human dosing trial and no approved product. The figures here are compounding-pharmacy and community convention scaled off the 10 mg vial that is the usual market size, not trial-derived doses. The starting point is 2.5 mg twice a week; 5 mg once a week is the same weekly total and is run the same way. Vendor guides also describe a daily 0.5-1 mg microdose pattern, which reaches comparable weekly exposure by a different route. Human half-life has not been characterized, so it is left null rather than estimated.
Side by side
The numbers
| Attribute | Cagrilintide | MOTS-c |
|---|---|---|
| Class | Metabolic | Metabolic |
| Routes | Subcutaneous | Subcutaneous |
| Dose range | 300 mcg–4.5 mg (typical 2.4 mg) | 2.5 mg–5 mg (typical 2.5 mg) |
| Frequency | Once a week | Twice a week |
| Half-life | 7.5 days | Not characterized |
| Cycle length | No fixed cycle | 8 weeks |
| Experience | Advanced | Advanced |
| Evidence | Controlled human trials | Limited human data |
| Contraindications |
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| Side effects |
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Turn a typical dose into a mark on the syringe: CagrilintideMOTS-c
Goals
Where they overlap, and where they do not
| Goal | Cagrilintide | MOTS-c |
|---|---|---|
| metabolic health | Cagrilintide: 3/5 | MOTS-c: 5/5 |
| fat loss | Cagrilintide: 4/5 | MOTS-c: 4/5 |
| appetite controlone only | Cagrilintide: 5/5 | MOTS-c: — |
| longevityone only | Cagrilintide: — | MOTS-c: 4/5 |
| muscle growthone only | Cagrilintide: — | MOTS-c: 2/5 |
| recovery and sleepone only | Cagrilintide: — | MOTS-c: 2/5 |
They overlap on 2 goals and diverge on 4. Weights are this site’s editorial priority score out of 5 — how central a goal is to why people use a compound. They are not effect sizes and two 5s do not mean two equal results.
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Educational information only, not medical advice. Talk to a licensed clinician before starting, changing, or stopping anything.