Hims delivers real, FDA-approved medications for hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and weight loss through an online subscription model. Whether it’s worth the cost depends on what you’re treating and how you value convenience over price. The medications themselves work, but you’ll pay a premium compared to other options for essentially the same drugs.
What Hims Actually Sells
Hims is a telehealth platform that connects you with a licensed provider, gets you a prescription, and ships medication to your door. The core offerings cover three categories: hair loss (finasteride and minoxidil), erectile dysfunction (sildenafil and tadalafil), and weight loss (compounded semaglutide). You also get access to add-ons like biotin gummies, thickening shampoos, and skincare products.
The telehealth consultation is asynchronous for most conditions, meaning you fill out a questionnaire and a provider reviews it rather than hopping on a video call. This makes the process fast, sometimes resulting in a prescription within hours. But it also means the medical evaluation is lighter than what you’d get at an in-person visit.
Hair Loss: The Strongest Case for Hims
Hair loss treatment is where Hims built its brand, and the underlying medications have solid clinical support. A 12-month study of 502 men taking a daily oral combination of minoxidil and finasteride found that 92.4% were stable or improved, with 57.4% showing clear regrowth. Those are strong numbers, and they reflect what most dermatologists already prescribe for male pattern baldness.
Hims offers the widest product range in this category among direct-to-consumer competitors. It’s the only major platform selling a topical finasteride combined with 6% minoxidil, which appeals to men who want to avoid oral finasteride’s potential sexual side effects. The “Hair Power Pack” bundles oral finasteride, 5% minoxidil, biotin gummies, and thickening shampoo into one subscription.
The trade-off is price. Hims is the most expensive of the three major telehealth hair loss platforms for both finasteride and minoxidil individually. Keeps is the cheapest for those same medications and also offers ketoconazole shampoo, which Hims doesn’t carry. Roman falls in the middle on price but has fewer hair-specific products and focuses more broadly on men’s health. If cost matters more than product variety, Keeps will get you the same active ingredients for less.
Erectile Dysfunction Pricing
Hims sells generic sildenafil (the active ingredient in Viagra) starting at $26 per month for four 25mg pills, which works out to $6.50 per pill. Generic tadalafil (the active ingredient in Cialis) starts at $30 per month for four 10mg pills at $7.50 each. You can bring the per-pill price down by committing to larger quantities and longer subscriptions. The cheapest sildenafil price drops to $4.00 per pill, but that requires a 12-month commitment for 16 pills per month, totaling $768 for the year. A full year of tadalafil at the highest quantity runs $1,284.
These prices are significantly higher than what you’d pay at a discount pharmacy with a GoodRx coupon or through a cost-plus pharmacy model. Generic sildenafil can cost under $1 per pill at some outlets. The markup you’re paying at Hims covers the convenience of the online consultation, automatic refills, and discreet packaging. For some people that privacy and simplicity is worth the premium. For others, a single visit to their regular doctor and a trip to the pharmacy would save hundreds of dollars annually.
Weight Loss: Proceed With Caution
Hims entered the weight loss space with compounded semaglutide, the same active ingredient found in Wegovy and Ozempic, priced at $49 per month. That’s dramatically cheaper than the $1,000-plus monthly cost of brand-name semaglutide, which is why it attracted attention quickly.
However, this product sits on uncertain ground. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved, and Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy, has filed a lawsuit over the product. The FDA has also raised concerns about compounded semaglutide products broadly. Customer reviews on the Better Business Bureau are mixed, with some users reporting the medication worked as advertised and others saying it didn’t help with weight loss at all. The low price is appealing, but the regulatory uncertainty makes this the riskiest part of the Hims product lineup.
The Subscription Model
Everything on Hims runs through auto-renewing subscriptions. You can cancel through the app, your online account, or by calling customer support. The key detail: you need to cancel at least two days before your renewal date, or you’ll be charged for the next cycle. Hims does not offer refunds for partially used subscription periods, though they say exceptions can happen on a case-by-case basis.
The weight loss program has stricter refund rules. Once medication ships, you can’t get a refund. For initial orders, you have a 48-hour window after payment to cancel for a full refund. For renewals, you need to cancel two days before the billing date. The Better Business Bureau notes that a common complaint pattern involves difficulty canceling orders and getting refunds, which is worth factoring into your decision. If you’re unsure about committing, start with the shortest subscription term available rather than locking into a 12-month plan for a lower per-unit price.
Who Gets the Most Value
Hims works best for someone who wants a one-stop platform, hasn’t seen a doctor about their condition, and values the convenience of skipping an office visit. The medications are legitimate, the consultations are conducted by licensed providers, and the shipping is fast and discreet.
It’s a harder sell if you already have a doctor willing to prescribe these medications. A generic finasteride prescription filled at a local pharmacy or through a cost-plus service will be cheaper. The same goes for sildenafil and tadalafil. You’re paying a convenience tax, and depending on the product and subscription length, that tax can add up to hundreds of dollars per year.
For hair loss specifically, Hims offers the broadest product selection among telehealth competitors, including the unique topical finasteride option. For ED, the medications are identical to what you’d get elsewhere but at a higher price. For weight loss, the low cost is attractive but comes with meaningful regulatory and legal risk that the other categories don’t carry.