Order size and unit price

Are larger orders priced lower per unit? This page pools every item with enough records to tell. Each record is compared only with its own item, in its own unit, and only those comparisons are pooled — so a kilogram is never set against a box.

Computed on from the records then in the database. Refreshed by the data pipeline.

Items bought by a real measure — kg, litre, metre, m², hour, day, month

924 item–unit series on 784 items, 152,411 records.

0.10×0.20×0.50×1.00×2.00×5.00×10.00×20.00×usual price1/1001/301/101/31×3×10×30×100×1.60× · 3091.43× · 1,4061.29× · 6,9311.13× · 23,8361.04× · 40,1570.98× · 44,7970.89× · 22,3600.82× · 8,2520.79× · 2,7620.64× · 1,601Order size, relative to the item's usual orderUnit price vs item's usual

Orders 10–30× an item's usual size were priced at 0.82× its usual price.

Left out: 75,505 records with a quantity of 1, and 7,769 price outliers.

Median unit price by order size, relative to each item's usual order and price
Order size vs item's usualRecordsMedian price vs item's usual
under 1/1003091.60×
1/100 – 1/301,4061.43×
1/30 – 1/106,9311.29×
1/10 – 1/323,8361.13×
1/3 – 1×40,1571.04×
1× – 3×44,7970.98×
3× – 10×22,3600.89×
10× – 30×8,2520.82×
30× – 100×2,7620.79×
100× or more1,6010.64×

Items bought by count — each, box, pack, tablet

7,910 item–unit series on 5,695 items, 884,173 records.

One “unit” here can be a tablet or a bottle, a box of 10 or a box of 100. Large orders are often a smaller unit of the same item, so this drop mixes pack size with price. Read it with care.

0.10×0.20×0.50×1.00×2.00×5.00×10.00×20.00×usual price1/1001/301/101/31×3×10×30×100×13.36× · 5,0545.66× · 12,3942.43× · 31,5271.42× · 124,3181.11× · 237,0700.97× · 246,8980.81× · 127,4100.58× · 56,3360.35× · 24,6980.11× · 18,468Order size, relative to the item's usual orderUnit price vs item's usual

Orders 10–30× an item's usual size were priced at 0.58× its usual price.

Left out: 73,344 records with a quantity of 1, and 39,641 price outliers.

Median unit price by order size, relative to each item's usual order and price
Order size vs item's usualRecordsMedian price vs item's usual
under 1/1005,05413.36×
1/100 – 1/3012,3945.66×
1/30 – 1/1031,5272.43×
1/10 – 1/3124,3181.42×
1/3 – 1×237,0701.11×
1× – 3×246,8980.97×
3× – 10×127,4100.81×
10× – 30×56,3360.58×
30× – 100×24,6980.35×
100× or more18,4680.11×

What this does and does not show

These are patterns in public records, not a discount schedule. Larger orders are placed by different buyers, often for cheaper variants of the same item, and through different procedures. The figures describe the records; they do not show that ordering more caused a lower price. The outer bands hold the fewest records and are the most affected by what is bought.

The figures here are chart figures, not benchmarks. The benchmark for an item is on its own page.

How it is measured

  1. One series is one item in one unit. Records with no stated unit are left out.
  2. A series is used when it has at least 20 records with a quantity other than 1, from at least 5 tenders, and its larger orders are at least ten times its smaller ones.
  3. Records with a quantity of exactly 1 are left out and counted: many are a whole lot recorded as one unit.
  4. Prices far outside the series' own range are set aside, by the same rule as the item pages' charts.
  5. Each record's price is divided by its series' median price, and its quantity by the series' median quantity. Those ratios are pooled, and the page shows the median price ratio for each order-size band.

Methodology →