MOTS-c Price: $7.50 per mg at List, $3.75 With a Code

A retatrutide buyer gets two vial sizes to compare. There is only one MOTS-c SKU, so the comparison runs vertically instead: the same $37.50 read at five different scales.

Every row describes the same transaction. $37.50 ÷ 10 mg is $3.75 per milligram. A 10 mg vial holds 10,000 mcg, so the vial contains one hundred 100 mcg portions and each of them costs $0.375.

The last row is the one price pages leave out, because it cannot be written down until somebody states a volume. Reconstituted with 2 mL of bacteriostatic water the vial is 5 mg/mL, which is 200 units on a U-100 barrel, and $37.50 ÷ 200 is $0.1875 per unit. Change the volume and that figure changes without a cent moving.

With two vial sizes on the shelf you can shop on concentration. With one, the diluent volume is the only variable in your hands, so it is worth being exact about what it changes.

Cost per unit halves every time the volume doubles. Cost per 100 mcg does not move at all. Nothing was saved by any of it: the vial still holds 10,000 mcg and it still cost $37.50.

What a larger volume buys is resolution. At 10 mg/mL the smallest graduation you can measure is 100 mcg. At 2.5 mg/mL it is 25 mcg, a fourfold finer slice off identical material. That is the whole trade. A larger fill gives finer arithmetic and a weaker solution to store; a smaller fill gives coarser arithmetic and less liquid in the fridge. Our reconstitution guide covers the mechanics, and the reconstitution calculator will run any volume you enter.

The practical consequence is that anyone quoting a MOTS-c cost per unit without stating the concentration is quoting a number that means nothing. Ask for the mg/mL first, then compare.

The search assumes a covered product with a cash fallback. MOTS-c has neither, and the reason sits well upstream of anything to do with plan design.

Coverage runs through an approved product. Approval brings a marketing authorisation, a national drug code, a labelled indication and a place on a formulary. MOTS-c holds none of those in the United States, the European Union or the United Kingdom. The FDA approved drug database is searchable and returns no MOTS-c entry.

There is also no dispensing event to bill. Research material is sold as a laboratory reagent against an order, not dispensed against a prescription, so there would be no claim for a pharmacy to submit even if a plan wanted to pay one. Every MOTS-c cost quoted anywhere is a cash price on a research listing.

It is worth being blunt about how early the science is, because that is what explains the absent approval rather than any regulatory backlog. The characterising work is cell and rodent work. The closest thing to a human programme was CohBar's CB4211, a MOTS-c analogue rather than MOTS-c itself, which completed a Phase 1a/1b study before the company wound down. There is no Phase 3 and no large human efficacy trial. Retatrutide at least has a Phase 3 programme sitting behind its research price. MOTS-c does not, and no price page should imply otherwise.

The published tiers take 3% off at three vials, 5% at five and 10% at ten, calculated from the $75.00 list price rather than from the discounted one. Set them beside a single vial bought with the code and the ranking is not close.

The best rung on that ladder is $6.75 per milligram, and it costs $675.00 to stand on. One vial with the code is $3.75 per milligram for $37.50. The tier rate is 80% higher for eighteen times the outlay, because a 10% discount cannot catch a 50% one.

Whether a checkout will apply a tier and the code at the same time is a cart rule, not a published one. Treat stacking as something to observe on the payment screen rather than something to build an order around, and price the order on the assumption that it does not happen. The coupon page walks through the checks that settle it.

Free carriage starts at $250. The code halves the number that threshold is measured against, which pushes the line further away than it first looks.

• 1 vial with the code is $37.50.
• 6 vials are $225.00, still short of it.
• 7 vials are $262.50 and clear it.
• At list price without the code, 4 vials are $300.00 and clear it on far less material.

Whether the threshold reads the subtotal before or after the discount is a checkout rule, and the checkout is the only place that can settle it. Assume the stricter reading when you plan.

Freight matters more on a small vial than on a large one, because it is a fixed cost divided by a small mass. Take a flat $10.00 charge as a worked example. On one 10 mg vial that is $1.00 per milligram, so a $3.75 rate lands at $4.75, an increase of 27%. Spread across seven vials the same charge would be $0.14 per milligram, except that seven vials do not pay it at all.

The honest input to any per-milligram comparison is therefore a cart total, not a product price. A hypothetical storefront advertising $3.50 per mg and charging $25.00 to ship one vial is selling at $6.00 per milligram landed, which is more expensive than $3.75 with free carriage. The listing rate is the one you are shown; the landed rate is the one you pay.

Cost per milligram quietly assumes that every labelled milligram reaches a syringe. Two things sit between the label and the bench, and both push the real rate up.

Residual volume. Solution stays in the vial shoulder and the needle hub after the final draw. Take 0.05 mL as unrecoverable. On a 2 mL fill that is 2.5% of the volume, or 0.25 mg, so $37.50 buys 9.75 usable milligrams and the effective rate moves from $3.75 to $3.85. On a 1 mL fill the same 0.05 mL is 5%, or 0.5 mg, and the rate moves to $3.95.

Notice which way that runs. The smaller fill carries the worse loss, because a fixed volume is a larger share of a smaller total. It is the same shape as the freight arithmetic above and the same general rule: fixed costs fall hardest on small denominators.

Labelled mass against peptide mass. Lyophilised peptide is weighed as a salt, so part of the mass in the vial is counterion and residual solvent rather than peptide. How much is a question for the certificate covering your batch, not for a price page. Ascension publishes two assays per batch, from Kovera Labs (batch #24-05260628) and MZ Biolabs (batch #24-01260229). Match the batch printed on the certificate to the batch printed on your vial, because the milligram figure the entire calculation rests on comes from that document rather than from the price.

Per-milligram rates across research peptides vary by more than an order of magnitude, and the drivers are mundane: chain length, how awkward the synthesis and purification are, and how many people want the compound.

MOTS-c is 16 residues and roughly 2,175 daltons. That is short. Longer incretin analogues run to 39 residues with lipid side chains attached and a harder purification behind them, which is part of why they cost more per milligram. On this site the retatrutide listings work out at $4.95 and $4.17 per mg, and MOTS-c at $3.75 per mg sits below both of them. Whether that ordering holds against any other compound is a question for that compound, and our guide to comparing tirzepatide costs applies the same method to a very different market.

What that comparison cannot tell you is anything about value. Retatrutide has Phase 3 data attached to it. MOTS-c has a well-cited 2015 mechanism paper, a body of rodent work and a discontinued Phase 1 analogue programme. A lower price per milligram on a less-studied compound is a lower price, not a better deal, and those two questions should never be answered with the same number.

If you are comparing suppliers rather than compounds, the method is three steps in a fixed order every time. Confirm the certificate covers the batch you will receive. Convert every listing to a landed cost per milligram, freight included. Then compare, and only then. Our source comparison handles the first step and our reference list covers what to read alongside it; this page handles the second.