MOQ

MOQ stands for minimum order quantity, the smallest number of units a supplier will sell on one purchase order for a given part number. Orders below that threshold get rejected outright, or filled at a much higher per-unit price. The floor exists because setup, packaging, and paperwork cost the supplier about the same whether the order is 5 units or 5,000.

MOQs vary by component and by how customized the part is. A distributor selling stock hard drives or SSDs often has no MOQ at all, down to a single unit. A memory maker binning modules to a custom SPD profile might set an MOQ of 500 or 1,000 sticks. A chassis vendor running a special sheet metal variant might want 25 or 50 units before it opens a line. Custom silicon sits at the far end, where a mask set alone runs into the millions of dollars and MOQs land in the thousands of units.

Ask about MOQ early when speccing anything that is not a stock part. It decides whether a small pilot order is possible at all, and how much premium you pay to come in under the supplier's preferred volume.

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Last verified August 29, 2026.