What a peptide business costs to start, line by line.

The honest short version

Starting a peptide business in the Philippines costs less in fees and more in stock than most people expect. Registration with the DTI, the barangay, the city hall and the BIR is a modest, mostly one-off outlay. Opening stock, the cold storage to hold it and the cash you need to keep reordering are where the real money goes.

This guide breaks the costs into categories rather than giving you a single total, because a single total would be wrong for nearly everyone reading it. A seller in Makati holding three compounds for a small WhatsApp list and a seller in Cebu holding the full catalogue for a gym network are running different businesses, and their numbers do not overlap.

One thing first, because it changes every line below: the compounds sold in this market are research use only and are not approved for human use in the Philippines. A business that supplies them for patient or personal use takes on regulatory risk that no amount of startup capital removes. Read what research use only means and the current GLP-1 rules before you spend anything, and get your own legal and tax advice.

Opening stock: the biggest line, and the easiest to overdo

Opening stock is the largest single cost of a peptide business, and it is the one you control most directly by choosing how many compounds to carry. Every vial you buy before you have a buyer is cash you cannot use for anything else until it sells.

We do not type stock prices into guides. Every price this business publishes sits on published pack pricing: single vials, five packs and ten packs, for the whole catalogue, open to anyone. Use those figures to build your own opening order, and work out the cost of the two or three compounds you are confident will move rather than the full list.

The usual mistake is breadth. A new seller buys one or two of everything so the menu looks complete, and three months later half of it has not moved. Depth in a few proven compounds turns over faster than a shallow spread across many, and it is easier to store, record and reorder.

• Start narrow

  Two or three compounds you already have questions for, in the pack size that matches what you can realistically sell in a month.

• Count the kit as included, check it is

  Every Primara order ships with bacteriostatic water, insulin syringes, alcohol pads, a reconstitution syringe and blank labels, so consumables are not a separate opening cost. See what ships in the box. If you source elsewhere, price consumables as their own line.

• Leave room to reorder

  An opening order that uses all your capital leaves nothing for the reorder that your first good week will demand.

Storage: a dedicated fridge, a logger and backup power

Storage costs for a peptide business are a dedicated fridge or small freezer, a temperature logger and some form of backup power, and none of the three is optional in Philippine conditions. Sealed lyophilised vials are stable in a freezer and tolerate a fridge; reconstituted vials belong in a fridge and should not be frozen.

A dedicated unit matters more than a large one. A kitchen fridge opened every few minutes for food and water cycles its temperature far more than a small unit opened only for stock, and a condo fridge shared with housemates is a record you cannot vouch for.

Brownouts are the Philippine-specific cost. A few hours without power on a hot afternoon in Quezon City or Cagayan de Oro will push a closed fridge above its range. Budget for a backup option sized to keep the stock unit running through a typical outage, whether that is a portable power station, an inverter or a generator if you already run one for the household. Keep a couple of frozen cold packs ready as a last resort.

The logger is the cheap item that protects the expensive ones. A logger that records temperature over time lets you see whether stock sat warm overnight, which a thermometer you glance at in the morning cannot tell you. Full handling detail is in storing peptide stock in the Philippines.

Packaging and labels

Packaging for a peptide business means insulated mailers or small foam boxes, cold packs, plain outer packaging and labels, and it is a per-order cost rather than a one-off. Price it per parcel, because it scales with every order you send.

Plain outer packaging is the standard in this market. Nothing on the box should describe the contents, which protects the buyer at a condo front desk and the rider in transit.

Labels are their own decision. Blank labels ship in every Primara kit for marking a vial once it has been made up. If you want your own brand on the vial, that is a separate cost and a separate set of rules, covered in custom peptide labels.

Delivery: riders in the metro, couriers to the provinces

Delivery is a recurring cost of a peptide business that most sellers partly absorb, because buyers compare the total they pay rather than the vial price alone. In Metro Manila, same-day rider apps such as Lalamove and Grab Express price by distance and vehicle at the moment you book, so a run from Pasig to Parañaque costs more than one within BGC. For the provinces, J&T Express and similar couriers price by weight and destination zone.

We have not printed courier rate ranges here because they change and vary by route; check each courier's own rate calculator against your real parcel size before you set a delivery fee. Primara's own delivery fees and windows are on the delivery page.

The cost that catches people is the subsidy. Offering free delivery above an order size is a marketing decision, and every rider fee you absorb comes straight out of your margin. Decide the threshold with arithmetic, not by matching what someone else advertises. Pricing peptides for resale walks through how a delivery subsidy fits into the landed cost of a vial.

Payment fees: GCash, Maya and QR Ph

Payment fees for a Philippine peptide business depend on whether you receive money into a personal wallet or a merchant account. Merchant accounts charge a percentage per successful payment. GCash's Help Centre page on the GCash for Business Merchant Discount Rate lists 1.0% for QR Ph payments from e-wallets and banking apps and 3.2% for credit and debit cards, both VAT-inclusive.

Maya and the banks set their own merchant rates, and some payment gateways add their own fee on top; read the current rate card for whichever you use rather than assuming they match.

A personal wallet costs nothing per transfer, but wallet providers have their own terms on using personal accounts for business receipts, and a frozen wallet in the middle of a busy week is a far bigger cost than any fee. Read your provider's terms and keep business money on a business account once volume is real.

Registration: DTI, barangay, mayor's permit and BIR

Registering a sole proprietorship in the Philippines involves four costs: the DTI business name, the barangay clearance, the mayor's or business permit from the city or municipality, and BIR registration. The DTI and BIR figures are national and published; the barangay and city hall figures are set by each local government.

• DTI business name

  The DTI Business Name Registration System FAQ lists two hundred pesos for barangay scope, five hundred for city or municipality, one thousand for regional and two thousand for national, plus a thirty-peso documentary stamp tax on each. A registration is valid for five years.

• Barangay clearance

  Issued by the barangay where the business operates. The fee is set locally and differs between, for example, a barangay in Makati and one in Bacolod, so ask your barangay hall directly.

• Mayor's or business permit

  Issued by the city or municipal business permits office and assessed under that local government's revenue code, often based on declared capital or gross sales. It is renewed every year, so treat it as a recurring cost.

• BIR registration

  The BIR's own explainer on the Ease of Paying Taxes Act (RA 11976) states that the five-hundred-peso Annual Registration Fee was removed. You still need to register, keep books of account and issue invoices, and the books, invoices and any bookkeeper's time are real costs.

Registration does not settle the regulatory question. Whether a business selling research-use-only compounds needs anything from FDA Philippines under RA 9711 depends on what you sell and how you sell it. That is a question for a lawyer, and registering a peptide business covers the process in more detail. Get your own legal and tax advice before you file.

Marketing: cheap to start, expensive to rush

Marketing a peptide business costs less at the start than people budget for, because the first customers usually come from people who already know you. A WhatsApp list, a gym community or a clinic network converts far better than paid reach to strangers.

Paid advertising is the line to be careful with. Health-adjacent products face strict rules on most ad platforms, and copy that makes claims about what a compound does to a person is both against those rules and against the research-use-only position. Budget for content and relationships first. What peptide resellers should never say sets out where the lines are.

The realistic marketing costs in the first months are your time, some product photography, a simple site or catalogue page and possibly a small budget for printed inserts. None of them needs to be large.

A lean setup and a heavier one, in words

A lean peptide business setup in the Philippines is one compact dedicated fridge, a logger, a portable backup power option, a small opening order of two or three compounds, plain insulated packaging bought in modest quantities, a barangay-scope or city-scope DTI name and personal time instead of paid marketing. It suits someone selling to a list they already have, mostly within Metro Manila, and it keeps most of the capital available for reorders.

A heavier setup adds a larger freezer and a second fridge, a backup power option that can run both through a long outage, a wider opening order across more of the catalogue, branded packaging, a bookkeeper from the first month, regional or national DTI scope and a paid content or photography budget. It suits a seller supplying clinics or gyms on a standing schedule, or shipping regularly to the Visayas and Mindanao.

Most people should start lean and move up when a reorder pattern proves the demand. The heavier setup is not more professional; it is just more committed.

The working-capital trap

The working-capital trap is when a peptide business runs out of cash while still holding plenty of stock, and it is the most common reason new sellers stop. It happens because money spent on vials does not come back until each vial sells, and slow-moving compounds hold that money for months.

The arithmetic is simple. If all your capital is in the opening order and it takes two months to sell through, you cannot reorder your fast movers for two months. Your best compound runs out first, your customers go elsewhere for it, and you are left holding the compounds nobody asked for.

Three habits prevent it. Keep part of your capital uncommitted for reorders. Buy deeper in what moves and shallower in what you are testing. And buy from stock that is already in the country, so that a reorder is a courier run rather than a shipment you have paid for weeks in advance. How a reseller account works explains the difference between holding stock and ordering against confirmed sales, which is the main lever you have.