What to Charge for Microgreens: Every Observed Price, in One Unit

The first problem with pricing this crop is not the price. It is that nobody quotes it in the same unit twice.

Ounces, grams, clamshells of unstated weight, live trays, per pound wholesale. So the first job of this page is to convert every weight-stated price that could actually be opened into one unit and lay them beside each other.

Every observed price, converted

Top to bottom that is a 10.7-fold spread, and it is the single most important thing on this page. Anyone quoting you "the price of microgreens" is quoting one row of that table.

Only one of those rows is government data. The Vermont figures come from a USDA Agricultural Marketing Service weekly report covering five markets. The captured text does not expose the report date, so it is an undated weekly observation rather than a current quote, and it is treated that way here. Everything else is a seller's own listing, which is real information about what is being ASKED and not evidence of what is being PAID.

The channel sets the price, not the crop

Read the table by channel rather than top to bottom and it separates cleanly.

• Wholesale to a grocery chain is the bottom. $4.16 to $6.17 per 100 g.
• Restaurant wholesale sits well above it, at $10.58 to $11.01, which is counterintuitive until you notice the order sizes and the delivery obligations differ.
• Direct retail is higher again, $7.02 to $12.35 depending on place and crop.
• A single-ounce specialty garnish is its own market at $28.18, and it is not a channel result. It is a small pack of an unusual crop.

The crop premium is visible and it is not proven. One seller lists common crops at $3.50 an ounce, specialty at $4.50 and amaranth or red-vein sorrel at $7.99. Another separates a $8.00 specialty menu from a $3.00 common one. That is credible evidence that sellers ASK different prices by crop. It is not evidence that the crop caused a buyer to pay more, because nothing holds channel, pack size, farm and date constant.

The organic column is the same trap. Vermont's $48 against $12 is a fourfold gap, and it may reflect different vendors, different products and five different markets. NOT ESTABLISHED as a certification premium.

What this means against what a tray costs

This is where the price stops being an abstraction. This site's labor guide puts the labor in one tray at $2.21 to $5.00, on published per-tray times of 6.8 to 15 minutes.

So: how much does a tray have to yield just to pay for the work of growing it?

At the lowest observed price, a tray has to produce between three and seven ounces before it has paid for the labor alone. Not the seed, not the medium, not the electricity, not one cent of profit.

And here is why that is more than an arithmetic exercise. Twenty-three of the 62 crop entries on this site have no published yield at all, recounted from the comparison table on 2026-08-12. So for more than a third of this directory a grower cannot check whether their tray clears the bar, because the figure that would settle it has never been published for what they are growing.

That is the honest state of microgreen pricing. One side of the equation has a ten-fold range of observed prices and the other side is largely unmeasured.

Cost-plus is the wrong tool here

Every guide in this category teaches cost-plus, and it cannot work for this crop.

Cost-plus requires knowing your cost. The largest input is labor, nobody has published a real time study, and the second input you would need is yield, which is unpublished for 23 of the 62 crops here. A cost-plus price built on two unknowns is a guess wearing a formula.

The market is also not pricing on your cost. The table above shows the same product moving between $2.65 and $28.18 per 100 g on channel, pack size and place. None of that tracks what it took to grow.

Work it from the other end. Required weekly sales equal your target earnings divided by the contribution per tray. At $25 an hour for 20 hours, with a $20 tray and $5 of non-labor cash cost, contribution is $15 and you need 34 sold trays a week. Then check the labor separately: 34 trays at 15 minutes is 8.5 production hours, which leaves the rest of your twenty for the selling that none of the published figures includes.

What actually moves the price

Order predictability does, on grower accounts. One grower reported $5 per 50 g for a standing weekly radish order against $5.50 to $6.00 for variable ones, and one seller publishes explicit 20, 25 and 30 percent discounts by order total. Practice, not prevalence.

Pack size is a pricing decision rather than a packing one. One workbook treats format as buyer-specific, 1.5 to 3 oz for direct customers, 8 oz for restaurants, 2 oz for specialty, and says plainly that a smaller specialty pack exists to avoid a $48 sticker.

Live trays do not convert. One report put average US retail at about $30 a tray in January 2024 with no dimensions, crop or cut yield; a grower account reports $20 for a basil tray. A live tray is a different product with remaining harvest life in it, and dividing its price by a guessed cut weight produces a number with nothing behind it.

What to actually do

• Convert every price you are quoted into one unit before comparing anything. Per 100 g is the easiest, and the table above shows how far apart things are once you do.
• Price by channel first, crop second. Channel moved the observed figures far more than crop did.
• Run your own market survey. A week of looking at what is actually on sale locally, with weights and dates recorded, beats every figure on this page for your own decision.
• Do not price from cost. The two inputs you would need are the ones nobody has measured.
• Work backwards from your target income instead, then check that the labor hours fit in your week.
• Weigh your own trays. It is the number that decides whether any price works, and 23 of the 62 crops here have no published figure for it.
• Treat every figure on this page as a snapshot with a place and a date attached. Prices, wages and equipment costs move faster than anything else on this site.

What nobody has measured

• A US supermarket average. It would need a dated multi-chain, multi-city scrape with net weights, and nothing like it exists.
• A crop premium, holding channel, pack, farm and date constant.
• A certification premium, for the same reason.
• A location effect. The observed spread mixes channel, crop, certification, order size and date, so no location conclusion can be pulled out of it.
• A packaging or branding effect, from any matched test.
• Revenue per grower hour by channel, because no source pairs a price with the selling and delivery time that channel actually costs.
• Any transparent subscription price with a stated weight, place and date.

Sources

Opened 2026-08-12. Every conversion in the tables is arithmetic performed for this page on the published figures below, at 16 ounces to the pound and 28.3495 grams to the ounce. The labor figures come from this site's own labor guide and the crop count from the 62 variety entries here.

• USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Vermont farmers market weekly report (PDF) - five reporting markets local to Vermont or within 30 miles, showing $12 a pound conventional and $48 certified organic. The captured text does not expose the report date, so it is treated here as an undated weekly observation accessed on 2026-08-12 rather than a current quote. This is the only government transaction data on the page.
• University of Minnesota Extension, direct farm marketing - the guidance to record packaging and quality indicators when shopping comparable competitors, which is the basis for the market survey recommended above.
• Associated Press, growing microgreens indoors, January 2024 - the reported average US retail of about $30 a tray, published without tray dimensions, crop or cut yield, which is why this page declines to convert it.
• Seller listings and grower accounts, used as practice only and as the source of every non-Vermont row: Foodomarket rainbow microgreens at $24.95 for 8 oz in New York City on 2026-02-12; Bloom Produce ordering, restaurant wholesale from $3 an ounce; Microgreen Manager's pricing by customer type and its pricing workbook (PDF), the source of the grocery $3.50 per 2 oz against a $5.99 shelf price and of the pack-format reasoning; The Naples Microfarms at $12 per 4 oz direct; and a 2022 grower thread reporting $5 per 50 g for a standing order against $5.50 to $6.00 for variable ones, and $20 for a basil tray.