How to Price Peptides for Profit

Most peptide brands price by looking at competitors and shaving 10 percent. That is how you end up with 80 percent gross margins and a business that loses money on every new customer. Price from your cost stack and your acquisition cost, then check the market, not the other way around.

build the full cost stack first

Your vial cost is maybe half of your true cost per order. The full stack for an RUO business, per order:

• —Landed product cost: $8 to $22 per vial including freight and duties.
• —Per-lot testing amortized: $0.15 to $0.80 per vial depending on lot size.
• —Packaging and labels: $0.60 to $2.00 per vial.
• —Fulfillment: $6 to $11 per order all-in domestic ground, more with cold chain.
• —Payment processing: 3.5 to 5.5 percent plus 25 to 35 cents.
• —Reserve exposure: 5 to 10 percent of revenue locked for 180 days. Not a cost, but it is a real cash charge on growth.
• —Returns, breakage, and reships: budget 2 to 4 percent of revenue.
• —Support cost: this category runs high. Budget $2 to $5 per order.

Now add blended customer acquisition cost, which in a competitive month lands at $45 to $70 for RUO and $150 to $400 for a clinical program. That is the number that decides your price.

the pricing floor formula

Your minimum viable first-order value is roughly: fully loaded COGS plus fulfillment plus processing plus CAC, divided by the share of that CAC you are willing to pay back on order one. If you insist on first-order profitability, that whole sum is your floor. If you are comfortable recovering CAC across two orders, you can price closer to the market and lean on retention.

1. 1.Calculate fully loaded COGS per unit. Assume $14 landed, $1.20 packaging and testing, so $15.20.
2. 2.Add fulfillment. One order, three vials: $9. Per vial that is $3.
3. 3.Add processing at 4.5 percent plus $0.30 on the order value.
4. 4.Add CAC of $55 spread across the order.
5. 5.Set retail so a typical three-vial order at, say, $165 covers roughly $46 in product, $9 fulfillment, $7.70 processing, and $55 CAC, leaving about $47 of contribution margin on order one.

That is the shape of a business that works. A single $55 vial as the typical first order is the shape of a business that does not.

price per milligram is how buyers compare you

Informed buyers in this category do not compare vial prices, they compare price per milligram. If your 5mg vial is $65 and a competitor sells 10mg at $95, you are the expensive option even though your sticker is lower. Two implications:

• —Publish price per milligram on the product page. If your number is good it converts. If it is bad, you need to know why before your customers tell you.
• —Offer larger sizes at a genuine per-milligram discount. It raises AOV and it makes the comparison shopper land on you.
• —If you are priced above the market, the justification has to be visible and specific: independent third-party lot testing, purity spec, shipping speed. Vague quality claims do not hold a premium here.

bundle architecture does the real work

Single-unit AOV almost never clears CAC in this category. Bundles are not a nice-to-have, they are the mechanism that makes paid acquisition viable.

1. 1.Anchor SKU: single vial at full price. It exists to make the bundles look correct, not to be your volume seller.
2. 2.3-pack at 12 to 15 percent off. This should be your hero offer and most of your volume.
3. 3.Category stack: three complementary compounds sold as a named kit at 15 to 20 percent off. Highest AOV, and it teaches customers the range.
4. 4.Subscribe and save at 10 to 15 percent. Lower headline discount than the bundle, but far higher lifetime value.
5. 5.Free shipping threshold set just above your target AOV. If your target AOV is $150, set the threshold at $149 and watch carts climb.

pricing a clinical program

If you are in the clinical lane, stop pricing product entirely. Price a program: evaluation, labs where appropriate, product, follow-ups, and support, billed monthly. Program pricing protects margin, resists comparison shopping, and matches how patients evaluate the decision.

• —Monthly program pricing typically runs $299 to $549 depending on market and product.
• —Charge $99 to $199 for the initial consult and credit it toward month one. It qualifies buyers without killing conversion.
• —Offer 3-month and 6-month prepay at 10 to 20 percent off. Cash flow improves and month-two churn drops sharply.
• —Never publish a per-vial price. The moment you do, you are competing with anonymous online sellers on a number you cannot win.
• —Build a maintenance tier at a lower monthly price so patients completing the program have somewhere to go instead of out.

when to raise prices

Almost every operator in this category is underpriced, because they set price at launch when they were scared and never revisited it. Signals it is time to move:

• —Conversion rate above 4 percent on cold traffic. That usually means you are leaving money on the table.
• —Fewer than 5 percent of support tickets mention price.
• —Your independent testing and shipping speed are genuinely better than the market and you are priced at parity.
• —CAC has risen and you have absorbed it out of margin twice already.

Test a 10 to 15 percent increase on new traffic only, hold existing customers at their price, and measure contribution margin rather than conversion rate. In most tests we run, a 10 percent price increase costs 2 to 4 points of conversion and nets meaningfully more profit.

if raising price 10 percent breaks your business, the problem was never your price. it was that you were buying customers you could not afford.

Not legal or financial advice. Pricing in regulated categories interacts with your legal lane, particularly for clinical programs where fee structures can implicate fee-splitting and anti-kickback rules. Have counsel review your program pricing structure.