Choosing a Dosage Form: Cost, MOQ and What Each Format Can Carry

Start with what the format has to carry

Most format decisions get made on marketing grounds and then run into a formulation constraint. The constraint is almost always the same one: how much active the format can physically carry per dose.

A powder can carry grams. A capsule carries a few hundred milligrams to about a gram, depending on shell size and how well the blend flows. A tablet can go higher than a capsule because the material is compressed. A gummy carries the least of the four by a wide margin, because most of its mass is the gel system and there is a limit to how much active you can hide behind flavour before it tastes wrong.

So the first question is not which format your buyers prefer. It is whether your dose fits in the format your buyers prefer. If your formula needs five grams of active, gummies are not a difficult version of that product — they are a different product with a much lower dose, and the label has to say so.

Work out the dose first, then choose among the formats that can carry it.

Side by side

	Dose per unit	Tooling	Small-run floor	Main risk
Powder	Highest, grams	None	Lowest	Taste, and hard to differentiate
Tablet	High	Needed for custom shapes	Moderate	Tooling cost, compression issues
Capsule	Moderate	None	Moderate	Shell choice for vegetarian markets
Softgel	Moderate, oils only	Die roll setup	Highest	Gel mass minimum, longer setup
Gummy	Lowest	Mould set	Moderate to high	Sugar, stability, heat in transit
Drops	Low	None	Tank volume	Dosing accuracy in the consumer's hands

What our own catalogue shows on price

Rather than quote industry averages we cannot source, here is what our own ready-to-label listings start at. These are starting prices per listed unit before your packaging, and what counts as a unit differs between listings, so treat them as the shape of the difference rather than a quotation:

Format	Listings	Starting price, median	Range
Gummies	412	$1.50	$0.50 – $5.50
Capsules	479	$2.30	$1.00 – $17.47
Tablets	169	$2.50	$1.00 – $18.50
Powders	195	$3.00	$1.00 – $20.00

Two things in that table are worth more than the medians.

The first is the width of the ranges. Capsules run from $1.00 to over $17 — a seventeen-fold spread inside one format. Which means the format is not what determines your unit cost. The active is. A capsule of a common vitamin and a capsule of an expensive standardised extract are the same manufacturing operation at very different prices. If you are choosing a format to control cost, you are working on the smaller variable.

The second is that gummies show the lowest median. That is real, but it is partly because gummies carry less active per unit, and partly because a gummy unit in these listings is often a smaller pack. Compare cost per serving of your actual formula, not cost per listed unit across formats.

You can filter by format on our products page and see each listing's own figures.

Gummies: the format that looks simple and is not

Gummies sell. They are also the format where the most first-time briefs need revising, for four reasons that all show up after the decision is made.

Dose ceiling. Discussed above, and it is the one that changes products.

Sugar. A standard gummy is largely sugar. If your positioning is sugar-free, you are into sugar alcohols or high-intensity sweeteners, which changes the texture and the aftertaste and takes more sample rounds to get right. Budget for those rounds rather than being surprised by them.

Pectin or gelatin. Gelatin is easier to work with and gives the chew most consumers expect. Pectin is required for a vegetarian or halal-positioned product and behaves differently — different set time, different mouthfeel, usually a different acid system. This is a formulation decision with market consequences, so make it deliberately and early. It is not a substitution you make later without re-developing.

Heat. Gummies are the format most affected by transport and storage temperature. If your route or your warehouse gets hot, that belongs in the conversation before the formula is fixed, not after the first complaint.

None of this argues against gummies. It argues for deciding the sweetener system and the gel system at the brief stage, because those two choices determine most of what follows.

Capsules: the sensible default

Capsules are the most common format in our catalogue — 479 listings, the largest of any format — and that reflects what buyers ask for.

The reasons are practical. No tooling. Reasonable dose capacity. Powder blends that are simpler to keep stable than a gel system. Fast to fill, and the smallest number of things that can go wrong between the brief and the shipment.

The one decision that matters is the shell. Gelatin shells are standard. HPMC shells are needed for vegetarian, vegan and many halal-positioned products. Decide this on your market, not on cost, because switching later means new stability work and a new label.

Tablets: cheapest at volume, with a tooling caveat

Tablets compress well, carry a high dose and are the cheapest of the solid formats once volumes are large. Below that, two things complicate them.

Custom shapes and debossed logos need their own tooling, which is a one-off cost that only makes sense above a certain volume. A standard round tablet avoids it completely. If the shape is not doing commercial work for you, take the standard shape.

Some blends also do not compress cleanly, and fixing that means adjusting excipients — routine work, but work. A formula that fills into capsules without trouble is not automatically a formula that tablets without trouble.

Powders: highest dose, lowest floor, hardest to stand out

Powders carry the most active per serving, need no tooling and generally have the lowest equipment floor of the formats here. For anything with a gram-scale dose — protein, collagen, electrolytes, greens — they are usually the only sensible answer.

The difficulty is commercial rather than technical. Taste has nowhere to hide, and the shelf is crowded with products that look alike, so differentiation has to come from the formula, the flavour or the packaging rather than the format.

Softgels and drops, briefly

Softgels suit oils and oil-soluble actives, and nothing else. The gel mass cannot be made in small quantities and the die roll needs setting up, so this is the highest floor of the formats discussed here. Choose it when the active is an oil, not for appearance.

Drops put the dosing in the consumer's hands, which is a genuine trade-off rather than a feature: flexible dosing also means inconsistent dosing. The floor is set by tank volume, so the number of bottles you fill matters less than you would expect.

A sequence that works

1. Fix the dose per serving. This eliminates formats before you get attached to one.
2. Check the market requirement. Vegetarian, vegan or halal positioning decides shell and gel system, not preference.
3. Compare cost per serving of your formula, not cost per unit across formats.
4. Ask what tooling your choice implies, and whether a standard alternative removes it.
5. Only then weigh consumer appeal.

Most briefs arrive with step five done and step one still open. Doing them in this order avoids the common outcome: a gummy brief that has to become a capsule brief once the dose is calculated.

If you are unsure, send the formula or the dose you have in mind through our contact page and we will tell you which formats can carry it and what each implies for your first run. All of these formats run in the same building under the same quality system, described on our about page, so extending into a second format later does not mean qualifying a second supplier.