Where a per-vial price comes from.

The vial is the unit that ships, the unit that is counted at receiving, and the unit a lot number is printed on. It is also the unit the order list counts in, ten to a kit. Pricing anything else, per milligram, per gram of active material, per kit, would mean converting at some point, and every conversion is a place where two quotes stop being comparable. So the sheet states a figure per vial and the quote repeats it.

A per-vial figure is only meaningful when the vial is fully described. On this catalog that means the compound and the fill weight, because the same compound at two fill weights is two different vials with two different figures. When you read a price from any supplier, the first question is what fill weight it refers to; a lower number at a lower fill is not a lower price. The second question is what quantity the figure assumes, which is where the tiers come in.

The cost of a filled vial has two parts: the active material and everything around it. The vial, the stopper, the crimp, the label, the space in a lyophilization run and the share of a lot's testing all cost roughly the same whether the vial holds a little material or a lot. The active material scales with fill weight and with how hard the molecule is to make. Where the cost sits decides how the ladder from one fill weight to the next behaves.

For a long lipidated peptide, active material dominates. Each residue is a synthesis step, and the lipid chain and its spacer are steps on top. Doubling the fill weight comes close to doubling the material cost, so the ladder is steep and the larger fill saves less per milligram than a buyer expects. For a small molecule or a short peptide, vialing dominates. The material is a minor share of the cost, so a larger fill costs only a little more and the ladder is nearly flat.

The practical reading: with a long peptide, choose the fill weight your work actually uses and do not move up a size to reduce vial count. With a small molecule, a larger fill is often the better line if you can store it, because you are paying mostly for glass either way. Product pages state which fill weights are stocked, and the procurement section on each says which way its ladder leans.

The sheet publishes three per-vial figures for every line. The first applies from the 100-vial order minimum. The second starts at 1,000 vials. The third starts at 2,500. A line means one compound at a single fill weight; it reaches its tier on its own count. Two fill weights of the same compound are two lines, each counted alone. Two compounds on one order are two lines, each counted alone. Nothing pools.

That rule surprises buyers used to order-total discounts, so an example. An order of 600 vials of compound A at a single fill weight and 600 of compound B clears the minimum easily, but each line is priced at its first tier, because neither line reached 1,000 on its own. Move the whole 1,200 onto one line and that line reaches the second tier. The order total is the same count of vials; the per-vial figure is not.

The reason is that the tiers follow the material, not the paperwork: a line means one compound and one fill weight, quoted and supplied as one thing, and two half-lines of different compounds are two things. The pricing page states the three tiers, and the order-sizing guide covers how to build an order that reaches them without buying material you did not plan to.

A tier boundary creates a step. At 999 vials a line is on its first figure; at 1,000 it is on its second, lower one. Multiply out and there is a range of quantities just below the boundary where the line total at the higher figure exceeds the total for 1,000 vials at the lower one. Left alone, that would mean a buyer ordering 980 pays more than a buyer ordering 1,000, which is absurd.

This catalog does not leave it alone. Where a smaller quantity would cost more than the next tier's opening quantity, the quote applies the next tier's per-vial figure. No smaller quantity of a line is ever quoted above a larger quantity of the same line. You do not need to calculate this yourself or round your order up to catch it; the quote does it and shows the tier it applied. The same rule holds at the 2,500 boundary.

The published sheet stops at the third tier. Above 10,000 vials of one compound the figure is quoted directly, as contract pricing, because at that volume the figure is agreed directly rather than read off the sheet. The 10,000 is counted per compound, the same way the tiers are counted per line, so it is not reached by adding compounds together. Ask for it through the same order form; state the compound, its fill weight and the quantity you have in mind.

Between 2,500 and 10,000 vials the third tier applies and no separate request is needed. Made-to-order lines carry no sheet figure at any quantity; they are synthesized against the order and quoted against it, and their product pages say so. For those lines the quote is still per vial, still per line and still restated in writing, so everything in the next section applies to them as it does to a stocked compound.

Nothing above is applied silently. The written quote restates every line: compound, fill weight, quantity, the tier reached, the per-vial figure and the line total. Freight is a separate figure quoted against your delivery address, never folded into the per-vial number. If a line crossed a boundary by the rule above, the quote shows the tier it was moved to. If a line is above 10,000, the quote says contract and gives the figure.

Read the quote against this guide and every figure should be traceable to one of four things: the compound, the fill weight, the quantity on that line, or freight. Nothing else moves a price on this catalog, and nothing else should. The quote guide covers the document line by line, and how to order covers the steps from order list to quote.