MikeFit_NJ said:

Inter-laboratory variation comes from real methodological differences, not sloppiness: which reference standard was used and how it was itself…

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.

I would rather be corrected than agreed with, if it comes to it.

A1cHero_PHX 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…

Community-verified vendors for certificates of analysis: I maintain a spreadsheet of Janoshik-verified test results submitted by community members. Across 52 submitted tests:

• 85% tested at ≥98% purity
• 10% tested at 95-98% purity
• 5% tested at <95% purity (concerning)

The vendors with consistently high purity results are listed in the Vendor Directory. We update monthly based on new community submissions.

JennaRN 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: 14.5 minutes (consistent with semaglutide reference standard)
Peak purity: 99.3%
Related substances: 0.6% (single impurity at 8.7 minutes — likely a synthesis intermediate)
Mass spec: m/z 4113.58 (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?

Closing the loop on my own question.

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.