Is 98% purity actually good or should I be worried — need advice

Dr.NateNeph said:

They are not contradictory, they measure different things, and this is the single most common misreading of a certificate.

I am more sceptical of certificates as a category than this thread is. The document tells you about a sample somebody chose to send, at a moment in time, and nothing about the vial in your hand. Independent purchase-and-test is a different quality of evidence and everything else is inference.

kim_atl_prep said:

I have a certificate reporting 99.2% purity and 6.1mg content on a vial sold as 5mg, and I cannot work out whether those two numbers are consistent or…

Third-party testing services for certificates of analysis besides Janoshik:

• Janoshik: Gold standard for peptide community, ~$147, 10-14 day turnaround
• Valitech: US-based, ISO 17025 accredited, ~$237
• Eurofins: Full pharmaceutical testing suite, more expensive but comprehensive
• ChemTox: Basic identity and purity testing, ~$127

Janoshik is the community standard but any ISO-accredited analytical lab can verify peptide identity and purity. The key is independence — don't rely solely on the vendor's own testing.

Dr.AddMedPHL said:

I am more sceptical of certificates as a category than this thread is.

My HPLC chromatogram analysis for certificates of analysis — I sent my batch to Janoshik and here's what the results showed:

Main peak retention time: 16.6 minutes (consistent with semaglutide reference standard)
Peak purity: 98.8%
Related substances: 0.4% (single impurity at 10.6 minutes — likely a synthesis intermediate)
Mass spec: m/z 4113.5 (matches expected molecular weight)

This is a clean result. The mass spec confirmation is particularly important — it proves the molecule is actually semaglutide and not a substitution.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

Why two laboratories report different purity for the same batch, and which number to believe?

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Purity and content being different measurements was the piece I was missing. The vial was overfilled and pure, which is a very different problem from the one I thought I had.