SeqrunWhat sequencing actually costs: per-Gb vs per-genome
A run price on its own tells you little — quotes differ in output, sample count and platform. Break it down into cost per sample, per gigabase and per genome and the comparisons become honest.
Three views of one price
From a single quoted run price you can derive three useful numbers:
- Cost per sample = run price ÷ number of samples — what each library costs you on this run.
- Cost per Gb = run price ÷ total output (Gb) — the platform-independent unit for comparing quotes.
- Cost per genome = cost per Gb × genome size (Gb) — the cost of one genome-equivalent of data.
A run priced at 10,000 producing 1,000 Gb across 50 samples works out to200 per sample, 10 per Gb, and (× 3.2 Gb for a human genome) 32 per genome-equivalent of output.
Why per-Gb is the fair comparison
Cost per sample depends on how many samples you happen to be pooling; cost per run depends on the instrument’s output. Cost per gigabase strips both away, so it is the number that lets you line up two different platforms or vendors side by side. Then multiply by the depth and genome size you actually need to get back to a real per-sample figure.
Bring your own prices
Sequencing prices move constantly and vary by region, contract and volume, so there is no trustworthy built-in number — every figure here is one you supply from your own quote. The arithmetic is unit-agnostic: put in whatever currency you were quoted and the outputs come back in the same units.