PepRank

AOD-9604

Also: hGH fragment 177-191 (Tyr-modified) · Advanced Obesity Drug

RecoveryOral / Injection

GH C-terminal fragment that failed obesity trials; safe-looking but doesn't work.

Safety tier
Caution
strict bar
Positive
53%
of 26 reports
Per month
≈ €45–90
injected
Rank
#8
of 61 research peptides

At a glance

Access
Grey market
InjectionFelt in 2–4 weeks

Builds over days or weeks of regular use rather than with each dose.

Best effects
Fat loss (not supported by RCTs) · joint/cartilage claims (animal only)
Downsides
No measurable effect for most · cloudy/gelling reconstitution · injection sting
Typical use
250-500 mcg/day subQ, fasted, before cardio. In practice not worth it.
Stacked with
Stacked with
Tirzepatide or retatrutide: almost every success story; users add AOD to break a GLP-1 stall. · fasted cardio: injected on waking or at night, fasted, on the theory that released fat must be burned. · tesamorelin or CJC-1295/ipamorelin: common GH-axis add-ons that further confound any AOD effect.

Safety

Watch
Generic: grey-market purity; FDA noted serious adverse events of unclear causality and immunogenicity concerns for compounded forms
Tier by safety barStrict CautionBalanced CautionEvidence only Caution
  • Seen harm1 of 3
  • Mechanism0 of 3
  • Data gap1 of 3
  • Silent harm1 of 3
  • Product3 of 3
Never if
Pregnancy or breastfeeding (no human reproductive data)
Why each score
Seen harm 1/3
Six RCTs (n=893) found side effects matching placebo and no related SAEs, but FDA states it identified serious adverse events that may be associated, causality unclear. Stier et al. 2013: safety of AOD9604 across six RCTs, n=893 (J Endocrinol Metab) ↗FDA: bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks (category 2 and withdrawn nominations) ↗
Mechanism 0/3
A fragment of growth hormone (176-191) that in trials did not change IGF-1 or glucose; no pathway to serious harm is known. Stier et al. 2013: safety of AOD9604 across six RCTs, n=893 (J Endocrinol Metab) ↗
Data gap 1/3
Six RCTs with 893 people, oral up to 24 weeks, but nobody has trialled the subcutaneous injection people use. Stier et al. 2013: safety of AOD9604 across six RCTs, n=893 (J Endocrinol Metab) ↗
Silent harm 1/3
Reported effects (GI upset, injection sting) are noticed at once.
Product 3/3
Injected from grey-market or compounded vials; FDA flagged immunogenicity for compounded forms, and it is on WADA's prohibited list. FDA: bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks (category 2 and withdrawn nominations) ↗Mendias & Awan 2026 preprint: 6,441 grey-market peptide samples, 42-71% failed quality criteria, 15% had endotoxin ↗

User reports

All 27 reports →
Users report
About half of the reports claim fat loss or a broken stall, but almost every success story is confounded by tirzepatide/retatrutide plus a diet. Experienced users repeat that it lost to placebo and was scrapped in 2007 (those trials used oral doses; users inject). The most common practical complaint is vials going cloudy or gelling. Roughly 35-40% notice nothing, and a few say they stalled or regained weight while on it.
Positive 14Mixed 1Nothing 9Negative 2
  • r/Peptidesource· · 28 upvotesOriginal ↗

    i was on a bit of a stall with Tirzepatide and added this in...first in the morning...for 3 weeks, nothing. I changed it up 2 weeks ago to the evening. losing 1.5lbs/week!

    Positive300 mcg, 2 hours after the evening meal · Injection · 5 weeks

    added during a tirzepatide stall

  • r/Retatrutide· · 21 upvotesOriginal ↗

    In the 8 weeks since starting AOD, I have lost 12" total from chest/waist/navel/upper and lower hip/thigh. In the 8 weeks prior to AOD, I only lost 6" total from those same points.

    Positive250 mcg twice daily · Injection · 8 weeks

    on tirzepatide 15 mg throughout, 10 lb from goal; tracked tape measurements weekly

  • r/Peptidesource· · 13 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I'm honestly not sure if the AOD is working or if I will need to do it for longer amount of time.

    Negative0.04 ml daily, fasted · Injection · 1 month

    lean woman also running CJC-1295, a GHK/BPC/TB blend and NAD, so the GI effect is not pinned on AOD

Where to buy

All 10 offers →
Getting it
Research-peptide vendors and a few compounders; vials often go cloudy or gel in plain bacteriostatic water.

A month at 250–500 mcg/day costs ≈ €45–90 from XL Peptides at €5.98/mg, as no shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust lists it.

No trusted shop in the EU lists it; every listing is on the buy page.

Studies

Evidence
Human RCTs — Six double-blind trials, ~900 people: no IGF-1 or glucose effect, placebo-like tolerability, efficacy failed
2 sources

Sources

Molecule

Sequence
YLRIVQCRSVEGSCGF
Length
16 amino acids
Modifications
hGH 177-191 with added N-terminal Tyr; Cys7-Cys14 disulfide

Sequence

The peptide's chain of amino acids from its start (the N-terminus) to its end, one bead and one letter for each: A alanine, C cysteine, D aspartic acid, E glutamic acid, F phenylalanine, G glycine, H histidine, I isoleucine, K lysine, L leucine, M methionine, N asparagine, P proline, Q glutamine, R arginine, S serine, T threonine, V valine, W tryptophan, Y tyrosine. A modification such as an N-acetyl cap or a C-terminal amide changes how long it lasts in the body. Length tells related peptides apart, from a two-residue dipeptide like carnosine to a 43-residue protein like thymosin beta-4, and predicts neither effect nor safety.

Report grades

Every first-hand Reddit or X report is graded on its own, from glowing through positive, mixed, nothing and negative to bad reaction, and the bar shows how those grades split. Posts that look vendor-adjacent stay on the peptide's page but are left out of the counts.

GlowingPositiveMixedNothingNegativeBad reaction

% positive

The share of a peptide's graded Reddit and X reports that are glowing or positive, vendor-adjacent posts left out. A peptide with few reports is pulled toward the average of all reports, as if it had eight average ones besides its own, so two glowing posts cannot top the list. Peptides rank by this figure, those with no graded report yet after those with one, and Avoid ones after every other entry.

Researcher estimate

No first-hand report of this peptide has been graded yet, so the figure is the researchers' own rating out of 10 from what they read about it. It ranks after every peptide with graded reports until its own arrive.

Safety tier

Each peptide is tiered Clean, Caution or Avoid from its five risk axes under the chosen safety bar. An Avoid peptide carries a real risk of harm, a plausible route to serious harm rather than mere unpleasantness, so it stays listed with the reason but ranks behind every other entry, however good its reviews.

Safety bar

The safety bar sets how much risk it takes to rate a peptide Avoid. Strict: out on any serious mechanism with little human data, or any documented serious harm. Balanced: out on documented serious harm (unless it is obvious, reversible and from a regulated product), or a serious mechanism whose harm would be silent with no human data at all. Evidence only: out only on documented serious harm in humans that is lasting, delayed or from grey-market product.

Seen harm

Documented serious adverse events in humans, from 0 for none despite real exposure to 3 for deaths or several well-documented serious harms. Serious means a hospital or emergency visit or harm lasting weeks, so a headache or a bad night does not count.

Mechanism

A plausible biological route to serious harm at the doses people use, such as growth-factor signalling, hormone-axis suppression, heart or blood-pressure effects or immune activation. It runs from 0 when none is known to 3 when a dangerous pathway has been shown in living animals.

Data gap

How little human safety data exists for the molecule actually sold, from 0 for an approved drug with large trials and years of use to 3 for no human safety data at all. A modified analogue does not inherit its parent's trials.

Silent harm

Whether the feared harm would show quickly or stay hidden, from 0 when it is obvious and goes on stopping to 3 when it is silent and delayed, like tumour promotion or slow organ damage. User reports cannot reveal a harm that takes years to appear, so a high score here limits what good reviews can tell you.

Product

The risk of what people actually buy, from 0 for a regulated pharmacy or supplement product taken by mouth or on the skin to 3 for a grey-market injectable. In one dataset of 6,441 grey-market samples, 42–71% failed basic quality criteria and 15% carried endotoxin; taken by mouth or in the nose, a pack avoids the injection risks.

Evidence

The strongest kind of study behind the peptide's effects, from an approved drug through human controlled trials and small human studies to animal work or nothing of its own. Animal results often fail to carry over to people.

Access

How people get it: as an approved drug, a compounded prescription, an over-the-counter supplement or from the grey market, where nobody checks the vial. The channel decides both the legal position and the risk of a bad batch.

Price per month

Thirty days of the typical dose, from its low end to its high end, priced at the listing a careful buyer would choose: in stock, from a shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust (third-party tested where no score is set), failing that 3, a pure pack before a blend, a European shop first, then the cheapest per mg. The range is the dose's, not the shops'. A per-dose amount counts once a day unless the dose says otherwise. Prices are in euros at ECB rates of 2026-10-29, before shipping; the shop table keeps each listing's price per mg, per gram for bulk supplements. Where no listing can be priced the researchers' own estimate stands in, and says so.

Dose users report

The middle half of the daily doses stated in at least five first-hand reports, vendor posts left out. Where its middle sits more than twice above or below the declared dose, the month is priced at it as well, since what people take is what they pay for.

Shop trust

Each shop's trust on a 1–5 scale, read from its testing and its reputation: 1 for serious red flags (fabricated COAs, scam reports, impersonation, a closed shop), 2 for no public testing, a new shop or active complaints such as seized parcels, 3 for its own COAs or a short track record, 4 for verified third-party testing or a strong reputation, and 5 for third-party batch reports that name the shop, with years of good independent reputation. A shop without a score counts third-party batch testing as 4, its own COAs as 3 and no public tests as 2.

Best value

Within a category or a goal, a peptide that no other beats on both counts: none is rated more positively for the same or a lower monthly price, and none costs less for the same or a higher rating. The chart joins these into the best-value line; the cheapest of them and the best-rated of them both make it, so the line spans the trade-off from cheap to best. Avoid entries never count, and a peptide needs both a % positive and a price to be compared.

Testing

Whether the shop publishes lab results: third-party tested means an independent lab checks each batch, own COA means the shop's own certificate of analysis, and no public tests means neither. A certificate shows purity, not safety.

Added peptide

Some packs sold under one peptide's name hold a second one, such as 5 mg GHK-Cu in a nasal kit, stated only in the description. Sprayed in the nose or injected it reaches the blood like an injection, so it carries the risk of that route and is tiered as the injectable form, whatever its tier on the skin. A pack whose page gives no contents list may hold more than its name.