Why cost per milligram is the only comparable figure
Vials come in different sizes, so a price per vial says nothing until it is divided by what the vial holds. A 10 mg vial at ninety and a 5 mg vial at fifty are 9.00 and 10.00 per milligram respectively, and the cheaper-looking one is the more expensive.
Normalising to a milligram makes every offer directly comparable, and it is the minimum standardisation needed before any other consideration matters.
And why even that is not enough
A milligram of powder is not a milligram of peptide. Purity below 100 percent and a heavy counterion both reduce the peptide fraction, and the two together commonly account for fifteen to twenty-five percent.
Two vials at the same price per labelled milligram can differ by that much in actual peptide. Correcting both with the net peptide content calculator before comparing is what turns a price comparison into a value comparison.
The costs that are not on the price tag
Shipping, cold chain surcharges, customs duty and brokerage, and the cost of a failed delivery all attach to an order rather than to a vial, so they favour larger orders and penalise frequent small ones.
Against that, a larger order that outlives its shelf life is not a saving. The trade-off is between the fixed cost per order and the risk of holding more than the work will consume before it expires.
- •Shipping and any cold chain surcharge
- •Customs duty and brokerage, which vary by destination
- •The cost of a batch you reject on receiving its certificate
- •The value of material that expires before it is used
What a very low price usually indicates
Peptide synthesis has real costs: reagents, purification, analysis and quality systems. A price far below the market is usually explained by something that was not done, and the cheapest thing to omit is the analysis.
The specific things worth checking before treating a low price as a bargain are whether a batch-specific certificate exists, whether it comes from an independent laboratory, and what purity method it reports. A vendor competing purely on price has the strongest incentive to economise on exactly those.
Comparing like with like
Salt form, purity specification, quantity break and included analysis all have to match before two prices mean the same thing. An acetate salt costs more than a TFA salt because a salt exchange step was performed; that is a real difference in the product, not a markup.
The practical procedure is to correct both offers to peptide mass, add the per-order costs, and only then divide. Anything else compares two different things.
How cost per milligram is calculated
Total cost over total mass, with the per-unit figures derived from whatever combination of vial size, vial count and price you enter.
total mass = vial size (mg) x number of vials total cost = price per vial x number of vials cost/mg = total cost / total mass corrected = cost/mg / net peptide fraction
- Enter each offer. Vendor, vial size, price and quantity. Naming the vendor keeps a multi-way comparison readable when several offers are close.
- Compute total mass and total cost. Vial size times count, and price times count. Keeping them separate makes a quantity break visible as a change in cost per milligram.
- Divide for cost per milligram. The normalised figure. Every offer becomes directly comparable at this point, whatever vial size it came in.
- Correct to peptide mass. Divide by the net peptide fraction from the certificate. This is the step that turns a price per milligram of powder into a price per milligram of peptide.
- Identify the best value. The lowest corrected figure, highlighted. It is frequently not the offer with the lowest headline price.
What this method cannot tell you
- •It compares price, not quality. Two offers at the same corrected cost per milligram can differ in analysis, reliability and support.
- •It does not include shipping, customs or cold chain costs, which attach to an order rather than to a vial.
- •It uses the label mass unless you enter a corrected figure. Purity and salt form differences are invisible to it otherwise.
- •It does not account for shelf life. A large cheap order that expires unused was not cheap.
Cost per milligram calculator: frequently asked questions
Divide the total cost by the total milligrams. A 10 mg vial at ninety is 9.00 per milligram.
It is the only figure that makes offers in different vial sizes comparable.
Because vial sizes differ. A 5 mg vial at fifty is 10.00 per milligram, more expensive than a 10 mg vial at ninety.
Comparing headline prices compares vials rather than material.
For a meaningful comparison, yes. Purity and salt form together commonly account for fifteen to twenty-five percent of the weight.
A cheaper vial at lower purity in a heavier salt form can cost more per milligram of actual peptide than a dearer one.
Everything that attaches to the order rather than to the vial:
- •Shipping and cold chain surcharges
- •Customs duty and brokerage fees
- •The cost of a rejected batch
- •The value of anything that expires unused
Only if the material will be used within its shelf life. Beyond that point the discount is buying material that will be discarded.
A larger order also keeps a programme on one batch, which removes a variable from the data.
Because synthesis difficulty, purity specification, salt form, analysis included, scale and business model all differ, and each of them moves the price.
A longer peptide is genuinely harder to make, and a higher purity specification genuinely costs more to reach.
It is a reason to check the documentation carefully. Synthesis, purification and analysis have real costs, and the cheapest of the three to omit is the analysis.
Check for a batch-specific certificate from an independent laboratory. A vendor competing purely on price has the strongest incentive to economise there.
Because a salt exchange step was performed after purification, and it costs time and loses material.
It is a real difference in the product rather than a markup, and the acetate form also carries more peptide per milligram.
It varies by orders of magnitude with sequence length, difficulty and demand. There is no single benchmark.
The price index shows observed market ranges for common compounds, which is more useful than a general figure.
Not reliably. Price correlates with purity specification and with the depth of analysis provided, and it also reflects branding and market position.
The certificate is the evidence. The price is not.
Larger vials are cheaper per milligram and are only useful if a reconstituted vial can be used within its in-use life.
The vial calculator projects how long a given size lasts at your rate of use, which is the figure that decides it.
Convert at the rate your payment will actually settle at, including any card conversion fee, which is typically a few percent above the interbank rate.
For close comparisons that fee is large enough to change the ordering.
It is the right normalisation for material. It is not the right metric for potency, since two peptides can differ enormously in the amount required.
Within one peptide, cost per milligram is the comparison. Across peptides, it is not.
Yes, as a threshold rather than a price adjustment. An offer with no batch-specific certificate is not cheap, it is unverified.
No. Everything runs in your browser and is discarded when you close the page. Nothing is transmitted.
Three is usually enough to see the range. Beyond that the differences are mostly in service and documentation rather than in price.
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