How to read a Certificate of Analysis (COA)

A Certificate of Analysis (COA) is the lab document that's supposed to tell you what's actually in a vial. In a field with no consumer protection, it's often the only window you have into quality — which is exactly why bad actors fake them. Reading one properly is a skill worth having.

This is an educational overview of what the sections mean. It is not a guide to buying or using anything.

The parts that matter

• Identity — mass spectrometry (MS) confirms the molecule is what the label says, by its molecular weight.
• Purity — high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) estimates what percentage of the sample is the target peptide versus impurities.
• The batch/lot number — a real COA is tied to a specific batch, and you should be able to match it to the vial.
• The testing lab — an independent, named, verifiable lab is worth far more than an in-house 'we tested it ourselves' page.

The tells of a weak or fake COA

• No lab named, or a lab that can't be found or verified anywhere.
• A purity number with no HPLC chromatogram to back it up.
• No mass-spec identity confirmation at all.
• A generic document not tied to any batch or date.
• Images that look copy-pasted, mismatched fonts, or numbers that don't add up.

Our Bronze / Silver / Gold framework

Bronze: an identity method (MS) and a purity method (HPLC) are both present and internally consistent. The bare minimum to take seriously.

Silver: Bronze, plus the testing was done by a named third-party lab you can independently verify, tied to a specific batch.

Gold: Silver, plus the vendor consistently publishes per-batch COAs from a verifiable lab over time — a track record, not a one-off.