Summary: We divided the live price of 132 supplements by the serving count printed on each product's own label. The cost of one serving ranges from $0.04 to $3.60 across our shelves — and in 10 of the 12 categories we could test, the cheapest-looking bottle was not the cheapest per serving. Here is the data, the method, and the 10-second math you can use on any supplement, in any store.
Why "price per bottle" misleads
Two bottles sit side by side at $10 and $36. The $10 bottle looks like the deal. But one bottle lasts 35 days and the other lasts 150, because "a serving" can be one tablet, two capsules, three capsules or a full scoop — and bottles hold anywhere from 30 to 300 of them. The only number that makes two products comparable is:
price ÷ servings per container = cost per serving.
Both numbers are printed on the package: the price on the shelf tag, the servings in the first two lines of the Supplement Facts panel.
What we measured
Over the past weeks we transcribed the printed Supplement Facts panel of the products in our catalog, label by label, from the products' own photographs — serving size and servings per container included. For this study we kept the 132 active products where that printed serving count was recorded, and divided each product's live 1-pack price (as of September 4, 2026) by it. Products whose panels we had not yet transcribed were excluded rather than estimated. This is our catalog, not the whole market — but the arithmetic works anywhere.
Finding 1: a 90-fold spread
Across all 132 products, one serving costs anywhere from $0.04 (a chewing gum sold by the piece-pair) to $3.60 (a specialty two-tablet formula). Even inside a single category the spread is wide:
| Category | Products | Median cost per serving | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitamin D | 13 | $0.25 | $0.09 – $0.92 |
| Zinc | 4 | $0.26 | $0.14 – $0.57 |
| Vitamin E | 3 | $0.29 | $0.08 – $0.42 |
| Vitamin C | 4 | $0.34 | $0.16 – $0.37 |
| B vitamins / B12 / biotin | 11 | $0.35 | $0.13 – $1.53 |
| Magnesium | 10 | $0.38 | $0.15 – $2.00 |
| Omega-3 / fish oil | 6 | $0.49 | $0.33 – $1.03 |
| Multivitamins | 15 | $0.50 | $0.08 – $2.67 |
| Herbal & botanical | 15 | $0.61 | $0.24 – $3.60 |
| Collagen | 3 | $1.13 | $0.94 – $1.16 |
| Protein & performance powders | 4 | $2.00 | $0.76 – $2.87 |
A magnesium serving can cost 15 cents or 2 dollars. A multivitamin serving can cost 8 cents or $2.67 — a 33× difference on the same shelf. The label, not the shelf price, is where that difference shows.
Finding 2: the cheapest bottle usually is not the cheapest serving
In 10 of the 12 categories with at least three comparable products, the product with the lowest bottle price was not the product with the lowest cost per serving. One example from our vitamin D shelf: the lowest-priced bottle is a $10.09 gummy that works out to $0.25 per serving, while another option on the same shelf works out to $0.09 per serving — the "cheap" bottle costs 2.7× more per day. (Formulas, doses and forms differ between products; that is exactly why the per-bottle ranking cannot be trusted on its own.)
Finding 3: on our vitamin D shelf, gummies run about 2.6× softgels and tablets
Within vitamin D products, the median gummy serving costs $0.58 against $0.22 for softgel and tablet forms (3 gummy vs 10 non-gummy products). Chewable convenience is real; so is its price. We measured this only inside our own catalog — check the two panel lines before assuming it elsewhere.
Do the math yourself — a worked example
A biotin bottle in our catalog: price $15.97, panel says Serving Size 1 Softgel, 120 softgels per bottle → 120 servings. $15.97 ÷ 120 = 13.3 cents per serving. Three things to watch while you do it:
- Serving size first. If a serving is 2 capsules, a "240 count" bottle holds 120 servings, not 240.
- Count vs servings. The big number on the front of the pack is usually the unit count, not the serving count — the servings line lives in the Supplement Facts panel.
- Multipacks change the input. Use the per-bottle price of the pack you actually buy; per-serving cost drops as pack size grows.
Method and limits
- Universe: 132 of the 267 active products in the mayrip.com catalog — those whose printed serving count had been transcribed from label photographs. No serving count was estimated.
- Prices: our live 1-pack prices on September 4, 2026. Prices change; the method does not.
- Categories were assigned by product title; comparisons within a category do not imply the products are interchangeable — doses, forms and formulas differ.
- This article is about arithmetic and label literacy only. It makes no statement about any product's effects. Raw data table available on request.
Browse the shelves this data came from: vitamin D, magnesium, multivitamins.