The same nutrient, a median 7.3× price gap

Cost per active unit = price ÷ (servings per container × dose per serving). For each nutrient we compare products only within its dominant dose unit — IU of vitamin D against IU of vitamin D, mg of magnesium against mg of magnesium — so we never compare unlike doses.

Spread = the 90th-percentile cost per unit ÷ the 10th-percentile cost per unit. Using the 10th/90th percentiles (not the absolute min/max) deliberately excludes one-off outliers, multipacks, and mis-labeled listings, so the figure reflects the realistic top-to-bottom of the market rather than a freak data point.

Only nutrients with at least 20 comparable products are included. Prices and serving counts come from product labels in our live catalog. Combination products can add noise; the percentile band is chosen to limit it. This is a value comparison, not medical or dosing advice — it does not say how much of any nutrient you should take.

One caveat about the count. Some rows are specific forms of another row — magnesium glycinate is also counted inside magnesium, creatine monohydrate inside creatine — because each is a comparison people actually make. Those rows therefore share products with their parent, so the list is best read as comparison groups rather than as that many independent nutrients, and the median across them is not a median over disjoint sets.