How to Price Microgreens: Per Ounce, Per Tray, and Per Clamshell

November 6, 2026

Let's skip the suspense: price microgreens by the ounce first, then turn that number into a tray price or a clamshell price. The tray and the clamshell are just boxes. The ounces inside are what you actually grow, harvest, weigh, and sell, and every price that holds up starts with what one ounce costs you to produce.

Here is the part that makes everyone's head spin. The published numbers for what growers charge are all over the map, from about $1.25 to $6.00 per ounce in the extension budgets and studies we pulled for this post, depending on the crop, the buyer, and what gets counted as a cost. That is exactly why nobody can hand you one magic number, and why we are not going to pretend to. What we can do is walk you through building your own, step by step, and show you how to turn it into a per ounce, per tray, and per clamshell price without losing money on the packaging, the labor, or the trays that never make it to harvest.

Quick note before we start, and we mean it: this post is not business, financial, or legal advice, and we are not your accountant. Think of it as a starting point that shows you what to look at first and where to look next. Prices, costs, and rules vary by place and change over time, so do your own research and run your own numbers before you put a price on anything.

A freshly grown microgreen tray being weighed on a kitchen scale

The Short Answer: One Price Per Ounce, Three Ways to Sell It

Think of pricing as one decision with three outputs. Get the first one right and the other two mostly take care of themselves.

Per ounce: the base price, and the way most chefs order. Everything else is built from it.
Per tray: either what a tray's harvested weight is worth, or a flat price for a living tray you hand over whole.
Per clamshell: a set weight in a box, rounded to a clean price people can pay without doing math at your booth.

If you are still deciding how and where to sell, start with our Sell Microgreens Guide and our full guide to pricing, permits, and starting a microgreens business. This post goes deeper on the pricing math itself.

What Published Sources Say Microgreens Sell For

Before we build your number, let's see what real university extension and research sources have published. Treat these as ranges to sanity check against, not numbers to copy.

University of Missouri Extension: its Microgreens Planning Budget (publication g693, revised July 2024, built on March 2024 prices) assumes a sales price of $4.00 per ounce for every crop. It models 10x20 tray yields of 8 ounces for pea and radish, 11.5 ounces for broccoli and mixes, and 15 ounces for cabbage.
American Society for Horticultural Science: a 2013 poster abstract on one local grower's operation reported market prices of $2.00 to $6.00 per ounce and margins of 35 to 75 percent, depending on variety and production management.
University of Kentucky Extension: its microgreens publication (May 2018) says growers who can market high quality microgreens at $25 to $50 per pound are likely to see positive returns. That is about $1.56 to $3.13 per ounce.
Penn State Extension: its business planning article (updated September 2025) uses an example of a 4 ounce clamshell of a spicy mix selling for $5, which works out to $1.25 per ounce. It is an illustration in a planning guide, not a pricing recommendation.

Two things jump out. First, even the older sources and the newer ones disagree by a wide margin, which tells you price depends on the grower's costs and market, not on some universal rate. Second, seed, packaging, and labor prices have moved since several of these were written, so use them to check your thinking and then plug in today's numbers.

Step 1: Find Your Cost Per Ounce

Now for the unglamorous part. You cannot price well until you know what an ounce costs you, and that means writing numbers down instead of guessing. The formula is simple, even if collecting the numbers is not:

Cost per ounce = (seed + growing medium + fertilizer + electricity + labor + packaging + overhead) ÷ ounces harvested and sold

Seed: price per ounce or gram of the actual lot you sowed, times the sow weight for that tray. Seed is a real swing factor, which is why we wrote about buying microgreen seeds in bulk. Our Microgreen Seeds page covers where we buy, and True Leaf Market is our default supplier.
Growing medium and fertilizer: soil, coco coir, or a reusable medium spread over the grows it serves, plus whatever feed you use.
Electricity: lights and fans for every day a tray sits on the shelf.
Labor: your time counts, even if you are the only employee. The Missouri budget assumes 15 minutes per tray at $20.00 per hour, which is $5.00 per tray.
Packaging: the container, the label, and any bag. The same budget assumes $0.42 for a package and $0.60 for a label.
Overhead: licenses, market fees, insurance, delivery, and the app or software you use. Our post on licenses to sell microgreens covers the cost of getting legal, and every dollar of it belongs here.

What the Missouri Budget Shows About Break-Even

Here is where it gets fun. Using the budget's total cost per harvested tray and its modeled yield, we divided cost by ounces to get a break-even price per ounce for each crop. The division is our arithmetic, and the budget's total costs include things like labor, marketing, depreciation, and interest, so a home grower's real numbers will look different.

Cabbage: $40.55 for 15 ounces, about $2.70 per ounce.
Broccoli: $31.64 for 11.5 ounces, about $2.75 per ounce.
Microgreen mix: $31.80 for 11.5 ounces, about $2.77 per ounce.
Pea: $25.42 for 8 ounces, about $3.18 per ounce.
Radish: $26.16 for 8 ounces, about $3.27 per ounce.

At the budget's $4.00 per ounce, that leaves roughly 18 percent over total cost for radish and about 32 percent for cabbage. And here is the plot twist: cabbage has the priciest seed in the budget ($8.00 per ounce, against $0.48 for pea) and still earns the most per tray, because it yields the most. Cheap seed does not automatically mean a better price, and expensive seed does not automatically mean a worse one. Yield per tray ties it all together.

That screenshot is an example from our own app. It shows seeds, medium, and electricity adding up to $3.36 for a tray, or $0.71 per ounce harvested. Before anyone gets excited about that number, notice what it leaves out: labor, packaging, and overhead. A number like that is a floor, not a price.

Margin Versus Markup

This one trips up a lot of new sellers, so here it is in plain numbers. Say your cost per ounce is $3.00 and you want a 40 percent margin. The price is cost divided by one minus the margin: $3.00 ÷ 0.60 = $5.00. If you instead add a 40 percent markup, you get $4.20, which is only a 28.6 percent margin. Same "40," very different dollars. Decide which one you mean before you quote anyone.

Pricing Per Ounce

Per ounce is the base unit for a good reason. Wholesale microgreens get quoted and ordered by weight, and a scale does not care what size tray the harvest came from. A restaurant that wants 1 pound 4 ounces a week is asking for 20 ounces. At the Missouri budget's $4.00 per ounce, that is an $80 order. Swap in your own price, and the order total takes care of itself.

A few habits keep your per ounce price honest:

Weigh everything. Your scale is the most honest thing in your grow space, because it never flatters a tray. The one we use is in our Harvesting Tools list, and our guide to harvesting methods covers the rest of the kit.
Price by crop, not by "microgreens." A crop that is slow, seed hungry, or low yielding should not carry the same price as a fast, forgiving one. Basil, for example, is a slow grower that takes 14 to 21 days, so it is usually priced as a premium crop.
Check three numbers side by side: your cost per ounce, what nearby growers charge, and what your buyer pays today. If the market price sits below your cost, that crop or that channel is not a fit, no matter how gorgeous the greens look.
Quote chefs the way they are used to hearing it. Our page on the best microgreens for restaurants covers what they actually buy.

Pricing Per Tray

Tray Price = Ounces Harvested × Price Per Ounce

If you want a per tray number, build it from weight. At $4.00 per ounce, the Missouri yields work out to $46.00 for an 11.5 ounce broccoli tray, $32.00 for an 8 ounce radish tray, and $60.00 for a 15 ounce cabbage tray. Same price per ounce, very different tray prices.

Here is what our own trays have done. These are honest data points from our grow space, not guarantees. Broccoli on our 7x14 tray kit gave us 177 to 186 grams from a single tray, which is about 6.2 to 6.6 ounces. A 10x20 soil tray seeded with 25 grams of broccoli gave us 276.5 grams, about 9.8 ounces. If you want the details on sizes and seeding, see our guides to the 7x14 tray kit, 10x20 trays, and pea microgreens on various trays.

The takeaway is that a 7x14 and a 10x20 give you different weights, so a flat per tray price only works when everyone agrees on the tray size and the crop. When in doubt, quote the weight.

A grower holding a full tray of fresh microgreens at On The Grow

Selling Living Trays

Some buyers want the whole tray. The Kentucky publication notes that some restaurants take intact trays and harvest as needed, for microgreens grown on rockwool slabs or growing mats. A living tray hands the harvesting, packaging, and shrink to the customer, which can be attractive, but you are also handing over the tray, the medium, and the freshness risk. Price it from the full cost of the tray plus your margin, say clearly which crop and tray size it is, and decide up front whether you want trays back. Because a tray is not harvested weight, some states treat living trays differently from harvested greens, so check with your state and local authorities before you assume one set of rules covers both.

Pricing Per Clamshell

This is the one most people ask about, so let's do it properly. A clamshell is a weight in a box. Sizes vary from grower to grower, from the 4 ounce example in the Penn State article to much smaller retail packs, so always price the weight, not the box. Here is the method:

Pick a net weight for the container, such as 2 ounces.
Work out the cost of one container: your cost per ounce of product times the weight, plus the container and label.
Apply your target margin by dividing by one minus the margin.
Round to a clean price point, then check the per ounce price that results.
Fill every container to at least the labeled weight, since net quantity labeling is a common requirement.

Here is a hypothetical example with made up numbers, so swap in your own. Say your cost to grow and harvest is $1.80 per ounce. A 2 ounce clamshell holds $3.60 of product, and the container plus label adds $1.02 using the Missouri budget's figures, for $4.62 in cost. At a 40 percent margin, $4.62 ÷ 0.60 comes to $7.70. Round to $8.00, which is $4.00 per ounce and about a 42 percent margin. Check the math the other direction, too: if you had rounded down to $7.00, you would be at about a 34 percent margin. Rounding is where a lot of margin quietly disappears.

Fresh microgreens packaged in a labeled container from On The Grow

Do Not Forget the Packaging

Packaging looks tiny until you divide it by the ounces. At $1.02 for a container and label, a 2 ounce clamshell carries $0.51 per ounce of packaging cost, while a 4 ounce clamshell carries about $0.26. True Leaf Market lists its small clamshells from about $0.29 to $0.85 each depending on pack size, so buying in volume helps. Whatever you pay, put it in the formula, and do not double count it if your cost per ounce already includes it.

Mixes work the same way. A mix is priced at the weighted average of what is in it, so if you toss a pricey crop into the blend, the clamshell price has to account for it.

Match the Price to the Channel

The Kentucky publication lists restaurant chefs as the main market for microgreens, along with upscale grocery stores, health food stores, community supported agriculture farms, and year-round farmers markets. Each one costs you something different to serve, so the same ounce should not always carry the same price.

Restaurants: ordered by weight, often on a standing weekly schedule, and you usually carry the delivery time. Quote per ounce or per pound.
Farmers markets and farm stands: sold by the clamshell at clean price points. You carry booth fees, your time at the stand, and whatever does not sell.
Grocery and health food stores: they set the shelf price, so you are really quoting wholesale. Ask about payment terms, returns, and who absorbs shrink before you agree on a number.

Several packaged and labeled containers of microgreens at farmers market booth in Lucas, Texas

Whatever channel you pick, give your microgreens the shelf life they deserve. Our guide on how to store microgreens will help you reduce waste, and waste is a pricing issue, not just a quality one. Want to see what a market ready harvest looks like? Watch our walkthrough below, and find more in our Video Library.

What Moves Your Price Up or Down

Crop and seed cost: in the Missouri budget, seed runs from $0.48 per ounce for pea to $8.00 per ounce for cabbage. See our crop guides for broccoli, radish, and red cabbage.
Yield per tray: the more weight a tray gives you, the more ways you can spread its cost.
Time on the shelf: faster crops turn more often. The budget's growing periods give radish 46 cycles a year and cabbage 37, against 29 for broccoli and 27 for a mix. Those are the budget's assumptions, not our days to harvest.
Freshness and local demand: harvest to delivery time, local competition, and whether buyers care about local or organic.
Failed trays: a tray that fails is a tray you paid for and cannot sell, so your price has to carry some of them.

Common Pricing Mistakes (Skip These)

Pricing by tray size instead of weight.
Leaving out labor, delivery time, and overhead such as licenses, market fees, and insurance.
Underfilling or overfilling containers, which breaks either your label or your margin.
Copying the lowest price at the market without checking your own cost per ounce. Someone else's price only works with someone else's costs.
Never updating prices when seed or packaging costs change. The Missouri budget alone reflects March 2024 prices.
Discounting to win a restaurant without checking what the discount does to your margin per ounce.

Track Your Real Numbers With Microgreen Tracker

Everything above gets easier when your costs are written down instead of remembered. Microgreen Tracker, our grow-tracking web app, is built to keep these numbers in one place. It works out each tray's cost from five components: seed, growing medium, fertilizer, electricity, and overhead. Overhead comes from an Expenses ledger where you list things like rent, insurance, a license, or a market stall, and the app spreads it across the trays you plan each month. When you harvest, it saves a permanent cost snapshot with cost per gram, and Grow Stats shows your average harvest per tray, so you stop guessing what a tray yields.

On the order side, you enter what a customer wants in pounds and ounces, the way chefs order, and the app builds a planting plan that counts back from the delivery date. To be clear about the limits, orders in the app carry no prices and it is not an invoicing tool, so you still choose the price and bill however you already do. What it gives you is the real cost per ounce to price against. You can read more in Meet the Microgreen Tracker, see how it fits a small operation in Microgreen Business Planning With Microgreen Tracker, and learn what to record in Tracking Microgreen Grow Data. It works in any phone or desktop browser.

Learn the Selling Side in the Microgreen Masterclass

Pricing is one piece of a bigger puzzle: who to sell to, how to package, and how to pitch. Module 11 of our Microgreen Masterclass covers selling and marketing, including business setup, branding, packaging, and selling tools. The course has 11 modules and 60+ lessons with lifetime access, and you can see what is inside in our Masterclass course breakdown.

Microgreen Masterclass Module 11 selling and marketing lessons covering business setup, branding, and packaging

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should I charge for microgreens per ounce?

Published sources range from about $1.25 to $6.00 per ounce, and the University of Missouri Extension planning budget uses $4.00 per ounce. Your number should come from your own cost per ounce plus a margin, checked against what buyers in your area pay.

How much should I charge for a tray of microgreens?

It depends on whether you mean harvested weight or a living tray. For harvested weight, multiply the ounces you harvest by your price per ounce. For a living tray, price from the full cost of the tray plus your margin and state the crop and tray size.

How much should I charge for a clamshell of microgreens?

Start with the net weight in the container, multiply by your cost per ounce, add the container and label, apply your margin, and round to a clean price. Then check that the per ounce price still clears your cost.

How many ounces of microgreens come from one tray?

It varies by crop, tray size, and setup. The Missouri budget models 8 to 15 ounces from a 10x20 tray depending on the crop. Our own broccoli trays gave about 6.2 to 6.6 ounces on a 7x14 kit and about 9.8 ounces on a 10x20 in soil.

Why are microgreens so expensive?

Because they are a labor and shelf space product. Seed, packaging, electricity, labor, and trays that fail all get spread across a small harvest weight, and fresh greens have a short window to sell.

Final Thoughts

If you remember one thing, make it this: price the ounce, and let the tray and the clamshell follow. Know your cost per ounce, check it against the market, and build in margin for the things that go wrong. The first time you do the math, you may find that some crops or channels do not pay, and that is a great thing to learn before you have a fridge full of clamshells. So go weigh something, write the number down, and start there.

One more time, because it matters: this post is a starting point, not a substitute for your own research or professional advice. For more on getting started, visit our Learn page. If you want your costs, yields, and orders in one place from your first harvest, you can Start My Free 7-Day Trial of Microgreen Tracker. Nothing is charged until the seven days are up.

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The pricing figures in this post come from the published university extension and research sources linked above and from example numbers we made up to show the math. They are general estimates for learning, not quotes, and not promises of income. Actual prices and profits vary widely with your location, local demand, competition, costs, crops, and the time you put into building accounts. We make no income guarantees. This post is educational and is not business, financial, tax, or legal advice, and On The Grow is not a business advisor. Always do your own research, run your own numbers, and verify current licensing, labeling, and tax rules with your local authorities and a qualified professional before you set prices or sell.

The harvest weights from our own trays are based on our first-hand testing in our specific, controlled grow space. Any mention of a brand or product reflects our own experience, not a sponsored or definitive review. Your climate, water, seed, and setup are different from ours, so your results can vary. We encourage you to run your own experiments and see what works best for you.

Accounts, subscriptions, billing, and support for Microgreen Tracker are handled at microgreentracker.com, not onthegrow.net.

Happy growing!