Amino Axiom is a free research information platform in the same network as Amino Foundry. Its price comparison section, available at the Amino Axiom price comparison, publishes live per-compound price tables across every vendor the platform tracks. Each compound has its own table, and each row is a vendor listing with the pack size and the listed price.
For a mechanism-focused lab the tables are a budgeting reference, not a mechanism source. A mechanism project is usually built around a small set of compounds measured across several assays, and material cost is one of the line items that decides how many conditions, replicates and controls the project can afford. A single page that puts every tracked vendor side by side for one compound shortens that part of the planning.
How is a price table organized?
A table is organized around one compound. Rows are vendor listings, and the columns carry the details that make two listings comparable: the pack size, the listed price, and the vendor name. Because the same compound is sold in different pack sizes, the first step in reading a table is to normalize. A 5 mg listing and a 10 mg listing are not directly comparable by sticker price, and a per-milligram figure is the fairer common denominator for a mechanism project that will consume material across many wells.
Normalizing also exposes a pattern researchers see often: the cheapest pack is rarely the cheapest per milligram, and the largest pack is not always the best value if a project will not use that much material before storage limits matter. The table shows the raw listings, and the arithmetic is left to the reader.
What does a price table not tell a researcher?
A price is one attribute of a listing, and it says nothing about identity or purity. Two vendors can list the same compound name at a wide price gap, and the table cannot say whether the gap reflects synthesis scale, purification effort, shipping assumptions or margin. For mechanism work this matters more than usual, because an assay result is only interpretable if the material is what its label says it is.
The platform presents what the listings show and nothing beyond that. It does not verify a vendor's claims about a given lot. That step belongs to analytical documentation, and the Amino Foundry article on how to read a Certificate of Analysis covers what to look for in it. A low price paired with a thin or missing analytical report is a reason for caution, not a bargain.
What does a worked example look like for a short peptide?
BPC-157 is a good example because it is widely discussed in the preclinical literature and appears in many vendor catalogs. In the Amino Foundry catalog it is recorded as a synthetic pentadecapeptide with the formula C62H98N16O22, a molecular weight of 1419.56 g/mol and CAS 137525-51-0.
A researcher planning a mechanism study around it would open the BPC-157 table and sort the listings by per-milligram price within each pack size. The identity facts above then give the check that comes after the price check: whatever a vendor ships should be verifiable against that formula and molecular weight on an analytical report. The table narrows the vendor list on cost, and the identity facts narrow it again on whether the documentation can confirm the material.
What does a worked example look like for a cofactor?
NAD+ shows a different case. It is a dinucleotide cofactor, not a peptide, with the formula C21H27N7O14P2 and a molecular weight of 663.43 g/mol for the anhydrous free acid, catalogued under CAS 53-84-9 in the Amino Foundry catalog. Cofactor material often comes in larger pack sizes than peptide material, so a comparison table for it tends to be dominated by pack-size differences.
Here the per-milligram normalization does most of the work. A researcher running enzymology assays may need considerably more material than one running a receptor-binding panel, and the table makes the cost of that difference visible before any order is placed. It also shows a point that is easy to miss: the same platform feature supports very different compound classes, and the reading method adapts to the class.
How do the catalog facts line up for three compounds?
The table below sets the identity facts recorded in the Amino Foundry catalog for the three worked examples. These are the reference values that a vendor's documentation should be checked against after the price check is done. Epitalon is a short tetrapeptide, BPC-157 is a longer peptide, and NAD+ is a cofactor, so the three illustrate how the reading method adapts to compound class.
A larger molecular weight means more mass per mole, so per-milligram pricing and per-mole pricing diverge across these three. A researcher designing an assay around molar concentrations may want to convert the per-milligram figure into a per-micromole figure using the weights above before comparing compounds with each other.
How do you read a price table, step by step?
The routine below is the one a mechanism-focused researcher can repeat for every compound on a project list. It takes a few minutes per compound and produces a dated budget line.
Convert each listing to a per-milligram figure by dividing the listed price by the pack size in milligrams.
Discard listings that cannot be paired with an analytical report, since a price is not useful if the material cannot be confirmed.
Check the remaining vendors against the compound's recorded formula, molecular weight and CAS number from the catalog.
Record the lowest acceptable per-milligram figure, the vendor and the date as one line in the study budget.
How can the tables support a multi-compound study design?
Studies that compare several compounds, such as a screen of three or four peptides across the same cell model, multiply the budget question. A practical method is to open the table for each candidate, record the lowest per-milligram listing that has acceptable documentation, and build a one-line cost estimate for the full assay matrix. The result is a budget that was built from the listings instead of guessed.
A third catalog compound, Epitalon, illustrates the screening case. It is recorded in the catalog as a short tetrapeptide with the formula C14H22N4O9, a molecular weight of 390.35 g/mol and CAS 307297-39-8. Because it is a small molecule by peptide standards, a researcher can compare its table against a larger peptide such as BPC-157 and see how molecular size and synthesis complexity relate to the spread of listed prices. The relationship is a pattern to note, not a rule the table asserts.
How should the budget line be documented?
A budget line is only as useful as the record behind it. For each compound, write down the vendor, the pack size, the per-milligram figure, the date of viewing and the documentation reviewed. Months later, when a reviewer or collaborator asks why a source was chosen, the line answers the question without reconstruction. The Amino Foundry article on peptide purity explains why the documentation column matters as much as the price column.
How often should a researcher re-check a table?
Prices on the platform are described as live, which means they reflect what vendors list at the time of viewing. For a project that will run for months, a sensible habit is to record the date and the listing used when a budget is built, and to look again before any purchase. A listing that was available at the planning stage may change, and the vendor itself may change status. The platform has a companion section for that, covered in a separate walkthrough of the vendor status tracker.
What are the limits of a price comparison?
A price table compresses a market into rows. It cannot represent shipping terms, minimum orders, payment options, lead times or the quality of a vendor's analytical documentation, all of which affect the real cost of a study. The platform makes no claims beyond what each table visibly shows, and a researcher should treat the table as a first filter that is followed by direct review of the vendor's documentation.
Used that way, it is a time saver for the planning phase of mechanism work. Researchers who want a wider view of the network can start from the Amino Axiom homepage, and those who want to review Amino Foundry's own catalog can browse all compounds.
This article is for informational and laboratory research purposes only. The compounds discussed are research chemicals, not drugs, supplements, or food, and are not intended for human consumption. Amino Foundry does not sell products intended for human use. Researchers are responsible for compliance with all applicable local, state, and federal regulations.
Reference
Common questions
It shows one table per compound, with each row a vendor listing that gives the pack size, the listed price and the vendor name. The tables reflect what vendors list at the time of viewing. They describe listings only and do not verify identity, purity or lot quality for any vendor.
Convert every listing to a per-milligram figure by dividing the listed price by the pack size in milligrams. A 5 mg and a 10 mg listing cannot be compared by sticker price. Per-milligram normalization gives a common denominator, and it often shows that the cheapest pack is not the cheapest per milligram.
No. A price says nothing about identity or purity. Two vendors can list the same compound name at very different prices, and the table cannot explain the gap. Quality is judged from analytical documentation, such as a Certificate of Analysis checked against the compound's recorded formula and molecular weight.
Re-check before any purchase and record the date and listing used when a budget is built. The tables are described as live, so listings can change between planning and ordering. For a multi-month project, a dated record also makes it easier to explain later why a particular source was chosen.
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