When you're sourcing electronic components, price breaks can make a big impact — but only if you can see them clearly and in context. While many users are familiar with the pricing tiers shown on Octopart’s part detail pages, there’s a deeper level of insight available that most don’t know about. Octopart gives you a comprehensive view of all available price breaks across multiple distributors, helping you spot the most cost-effective options at any volume — from a single unit to 10,000+ pieces. This means less guesswork, better negotiation leverage, and real savings for engineers and procurement teams alike.
Price breaks refer to tiered pricing models offered by distributors, where the unit cost of a component decreases as your purchase volume increases. For example, a microcontroller might cost $16.96 each when you buy one, but drop to $11.54 at 50 units, or $8.43 at 100 units.
For procurement teams managing large BOMs or recurring orders, these savings can add up quickly — often resulting in thousands of dollars saved per project.
Let’s say you’re sourcing the Texas Instruments TM4C1294KCPDTI3. On Octopart, you get a comprehensive view of stock availability and up-to-date pricing from multiple distributors, all in one place. But what sets it apart is how it presents price breaks across different order volumes in a clean, easy-to-read table.
Here's what to look for:
Let’s say you need 100 units of this TI microcontroller.
That’s a difference of over $8 per unit, which adds up to $800+ in savings on a 100-piece order — just by comparing price breaks.
Just search for the part number you're interested in, and once you're on the part detail page, scroll down to the distributor offers section. You'll see a table showing real-time availability and pricing from authorized distributors — including price breaks based on quantity.
Need to see how pricing scales with volume? On Octopart, you can quickly find price breaks for electronic components right on the product detail page. After searching for a part number and selecting a specific part, scroll to the Price and Availability table. In the top right corner of that table, you’ll see a linked text “See all price breaks”. That will take you to a detailed breakdown of unit pricing by quantity tier from authorized distributors. This makes it easy to compare offers and choose the most cost-effective option for your project or BOM.
For buyers working in fast-paced EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Services) environments or at OEMs handling complex BOMs, even small cost reductions per unit can translate into massive margin improvements over production runs.
Beyond savings, price break visibility also supports better planning:
In short, using price breaks isn’t just tactical — it’s strategic.
Whether you're ordering hundreds of parts per month or scaling up production, knowing where the price breaks are — and leveraging them — helps you source smarter. Octopart is here to help you make confident, cost-effective decisions backed by up-to-date data.