Peptide pricing is quoted per vial, but vials differ in both strength and count, which makes headline prices close to meaningless for comparison. The only figure that compares cleanly across specifications is cost per milligram.
The arithmetic
cost per mg = price ÷ (mg per vial × number of vials)
A single 20 mg vial at $45.00 works out to $2.25/mg. A ten-vial pack of the same 20 mg strength at $125.00 contains 200 mg, which is $0.63/mg — roughly a quarter of the single-vial rate.
That ratio is typical across the catalog, and it is the entire economic argument for packs.
So why buy singles at all?
Because cost per milligram is not the only cost. A single vial exists to answer a different question: is this material, from this supplier, what you want to work with at all? Buying 200 mg to find out is an expensive way to learn the answer.
Single vials make sense when you are:
- evaluating a compound you have not worked with before
- evaluating a supplier you have not ordered from before
- running a short protocol that will not consume pack quantities before the material's useful life is up
- testing whether a specification — a particular strength — suits your workflow
Material you buy cheaply and then do not use is not cheap. Cost per milligram only counts the milligrams you actually consume.
Strength affects the rate too
Within a single compound, higher-strength packs are almost always cheaper per milligram than lower-strength packs, because a substantial share of the price is the vial, the fill and the handling rather than the material. A 5 mg × 10 pack and a 20 mg × 10 pack cost far less than 4× apart.
The practical implication: if you know you need the material, buying strength is usually better value than buying count.
Don't forget shipping
Shipping is a flat rate, not a percentage, which shifts the arithmetic on small orders. At Aegis Bio, carts made up entirely of single vials ship for $20.00; any cart containing a multi-vial pack ships for $60.00 standard, with single vials riding along free. A single $30.00 vial with $20.00 of shipping has an effective cost two-thirds higher than its sticker price. Consolidating an order matters more than it looks.
Comparing properly
Every compound page in the Aegis Bio catalog carries a cost-per-milligram table across all available specifications, so the comparison is done for you rather than left as arithmetic at checkout.