What Does a Peptide Actually Cost Per Dose?
The price on the vial is the least useful number in this whole hobby. A $59 vial can be more expensive than a $99 one, depending on how fast you go through it. Here is how to work out what you are actually spending.
The number that matters is cost per dose
Sticker price tells you what leaves your bank account today. Cost per dose tells you what the thing actually costs you to use. They are often very different, and the gap is where people get surprised three months in.
Working it out takes two steps.
Step one: how many doses are in the vial?
Divide the vial size by your dose. A 10 mg vial with a 0.5 mg dose gives you 20 doses. A 10 mg vial with a 2 mg dose gives you 5.
Step two: divide the price by the doses.
That $59 vial at 20 doses is $2.95 per dose. The same vial at 5 doses is $11.80 per dose. Same vial, same price, four times the cost, purely because of how much you use at a time.
Notice what did the work there. It was not the price. It was the dose.
Then multiply by how often
Cost per dose is only half the picture. What you feel every month is cost per dose times how often you take it.
Monthly doses are roughly your times per week multiplied by 4.345, which is the average number of weeks in a month. Daily works out to about 30 doses a month. Twice weekly is about 9. Once weekly is about 4.3.
So a $3 dose taken daily is about $90 a month. A $12 dose taken once a week is about $52 a month. The cheaper-per-dose option is the more expensive one to run.
This is the comparison almost nobody makes before they buy, and it is the one that actually determines whether something is sustainable for you.
Printed on the vial.
iPeptide Decoding does not recommend a dose. Enter the amount your clinician gave you, or pick a value from the reference range to model.
Same dose, different draw. Pick whichever is easiest to measure.
U-100 insulin syringe (1 mL = 100 units). Draw to the teal line.
Multi-vendor comparison is a Pro feature.
Daily is 7. Twice weekly is 2.
Your plan for Semaglutide
Why cheaper vials are sometimes more expensive
Vendors price by the vial, but value lives in the milligram. A 5 mg vial at $45 is $9 per mg. A 10 mg vial at $70 looks pricier but is $7 per mg. If your dose is the same either way, the bigger vial is the better deal by a comfortable margin.
Cost per mg is the honest way to compare two vendors or two vial sizes, because it strips out the packaging and leaves the actual thing you are buying. It is also the comparison our Pro vendor tool runs for you across everything you have entered.
Do not forget the supplies
Small, but real. Bacteriostatic water, syringes, and alcohol swabs are a few dollars a month. They do not change the picture much, but if you are budgeting properly, they exist.
Knowing when you run out
Once you know your doses per vial and how often you take them, you know exactly how long your supply lasts and when to reorder. Multiply your vials on hand by doses per vial, divide by monthly doses, and you have months of supply.
That matters for more than tidiness. Running out unexpectedly is how people end up buying in a hurry from whoever can ship fastest, which is exactly the wrong way to choose a source. Planning the reorder date is a quality decision, not just a budgeting one.
Let the tool do it
All of this is arithmetic, which means you should not be doing it on a napkin. Put your vial size, dose, price, and frequency into the calculator and it gives you cost per dose, monthly cost, how long your supply lasts, and the date to reorder by.
One last thing
Cost is the easiest thing to optimise and the worst thing to optimise first. Chasing the cheapest source is how people end up with a vial nobody has tested. Work out what a plan costs, then choose a source you can actually verify. The vetting guide covers how.