Stelo, Lingo and Libre: OTC CGMs vs a Prescription

The prescription monitors — Dexcom G7, Libre 2 and 3 — are built for people whose glucose can fall dangerously, and they add the features that population needs: real-time readings without delay, configurable alerts for lows and highs, sharing to a clinician's or family member's phone, and integration with insulin pumps and delivery software. For a person with type 1 diabetes or on insulin, those features are the reason the device exists and the reason it needs a prescription and a clinician.

For a person without diabetes, on no glucose-lowering medication, they are features they will not use. The on-a-GLP-1 page covers the one exception that applies to this practice — a person on a GLP-1 alongside a sulfonylurea or insulin, whose hypoglycemia risk is real — and the ADA guidance that a CGM is recommended for people on therapies that can cause hypoglycemia, not for the general population.

Not the sensor. The main page is candid that the device you get through us is comparable to one you could buy, and the comparison table there sets out the difference: a short intake assessment before you wear it, two weeks of real glucose data to set beside your lab panel, and written results at the end. If you are in a treatment program with us — a GLP-1, metformin or a weight program — your prescribing clinician also uses the data to guide what changes.

That is worth spelling out because it is the whole of the argument, and because it is narrower than some of the market claims. A two-week glucose trace in a person without diabetes is mostly normal variation, and the research on the main page — the 2026 reviews finding no health benefit from CGM in people without diabetes, and the warning that over-interpreting normal fluctuation causes unnecessary restriction and anxiety — is a description of what happens when a consumer app labels a normal post-meal rise a "spike" and a person changes their diet to avoid it. Set beside an A1c and a fasting insulin, the same trace has a subject. And inside a program, the clinician prescribing your treatment has a second signal besides the scale. Price matters too: what everything costs is on our pricing page, and for the healthy and curious an over-the-counter sensor is usually the cheaper route.

When you are curious, healthy, on no glucose-affecting medication, and want to see what your glucose does — without a clinical question behind it. An over-the-counter sensor answers that at lower cost and with no intake step, and the vs-A1c page will help you read it. We would rather say so than sell you a wear that does not need our labs beside it.

When you already have a clinician managing your metabolic health who will read the data. Buy the sensor; bring the trace to them.

When you have used a CGM before, know what your patterns look like, and want to check something specific — a new diet, a training block, a period of poor sleep — for yourself.

And when to come through us instead: when you have prediabetes or a family history and want the trace set beside a panel; when you are in a GLP-1, metformin or weight program and want your prescribing clinician to have the data; or when you want written results to go with the lab work rather than a dashboard alone. If a previous consumer CGM left you anxious or restricting, tell us — a wear may be the wrong instrument, and we will say so. That is what the CGM through ACT 2 is for, and it is a narrower group than the market would like.