2026 Packaging Supply Price Index: What We Found

The short version

For the same product — same neck finish, same material, same size — the median price gap between the cheapest and most expensive US supplier is 37.9%. That means on a $5,000 order, you can typically save $1,500–$2,000 just by choosing the right distributor.

We also found that volume discounts average 24.3% across suppliers that publish tiered pricing — so there's a compounding effect: shop the right supplier and buy in volume.

How we built this index

PackVue tracks 5,288 canonical packaging products across 16 US distributors, built by matching listings across supplier catalogs using a deterministic entity-resolution pipeline. Each match requires agreement on product category, neck finish, material, color, and capacity. Only high-confidence matches enter the price comparison dataset.

Prices are normalized to per-unit cost. Case prices are divided by case quantity. Products where the max/min ratio between suppliers exceeds 10× are excluded — those are almost always case-vs-unit pricing mismatches, not real price differences.

Of the 5,288 canonical products in our database, 2,028 (38%) have pricing from two or more suppliers and can be meaningfully compared.

Price transparency: who shows their prices?

Before we can compare prices, suppliers have to publish them. Not all do. Of the 16 suppliers we track, 10 publish pricing for 90% or more of their catalog. The others range from partial coverage to no pricing at all.

Suppliers with full pricing transparency: Citadel Packaging, General Bottle, SKS Bottle & Packaging, Aaron Packaging, Berlin Packaging, Burch Bottle, Bottlestore, Cary Company, Specialty Bottle, Richards Packaging.

Suppliers that don't publish prices: Oberk and McKernan Packaging. Both require account setup or quote requests before you can see pricing, which adds friction to the sourcing process.

This matters practically: if you're comparing suppliers and two of them won't show you prices, you can't make a data-driven decision without going through their sales process first.

How much do prices vary?

Across 2,028 comparable product pairs:

• Median spread: 37.9% — the midpoint product has a 37.9% price difference between cheapest and most expensive supplier.
• Average spread: 64.7% — pulled higher by products with extreme spreads.
• 466 products with 100%+ spread — more than 23% of comparable products have at least a 2× price gap between suppliers.

The distribution is right-skewed: most products cluster in the 0–50% spread range, but a meaningful tail extends beyond 100%. Those tail products — the ones with the widest spreads — represent the biggest savings opportunities.

Biggest price gap in the dataset

The single largest verified spread in our dataset is 873% for 9 oz Clear GLASS Straight Sided Jar [70-400]. General Bottle lists it at $0.550/unit while Burch Bottle lists the same item at $5.350/unit. At 100 units, that's $480.00 in difference.

Compare prices for 9 oz Clear GLASS Straight Sided Jar [70-400] →

Volume discounts: how much can you save by buying more?

Among suppliers that publish tiered pricing, 2,909 listings show quantity-based pricing. The average discount from single-unit to maximum-volume price is 24.3%.

That's on top of the cross-supplier savings. Combined, a buyer who shops the right supplier and buys at volume can realistically save 40–60% vs a buyer who defaults to the first result and buys in small quantities.

The deepest volume discounts come from Cary Company, which averages a 32.8% discount from low to high quantity (across 277 tiered listings).

What this means for buyers

Three practical takeaways from this data:

1. Always get multiple quotes. A 37.9% median spread means you should expect a material price difference between suppliers, not assume they're all roughly the same.
2. Buy at volume when possible. A 24.3% average volume discount means there's often a significant price break available if you can consolidate orders or plan further ahead.
3. Don't let lack of published pricing stop you from comparing. Suppliers that don't publish prices may still be competitive — but you need to factor in the time cost of getting a quote before you can compare.

What this data doesn't tell you

Price is one dimension. These analyses don't capture:

• Minimum order quantities — some suppliers require full cases or pallet minimums at their low prices.
• Shipping costs — a cheaper per-unit price with expensive shipping may not be the better deal.
• Quality consistency — we track spec data but not measured quality outcomes.
• Negotiated pricing — several suppliers offer volume discounts not shown on their public catalogs.

For a side-by-side view of specific supplier pairs across all these dimensions, see the supplier comparison pages.

Interactive data

The full data behind this article — price transparency by supplier, spread distributions, volume discount depths, and individual product pricing — is available on the 2026 Packaging Price Index page, including sortable tables and interactive charts.