iPSC astrocyte suppliers compared, head to head

The short answer: bit.bio is roughly a third of the price per million of everyone else, STEMCELL Technologies is the only supplier selling astrocytes genuinely isogenic to a neuron and microglia range, iXCells has the deepest priced disease panel, and Axol has the clearest donor disclosure. FUJIFILM CDI publishes the widest functional characterisation but with regional pricing caveats you must read before budgeting.

The more useful finding is not a supplier at all. It is that the best-documented human co-culture result in the literature used primary astrocytes, not iPSC-derived astrocytes, and that at least one published account reports NGN2 neurons reaching high firing rates with rodent astrocytes but not with iPSC-derived ones. Nobody selling an iPSC-derived astrocyte will put that on a product page. It is the first thing that should shape your choice.

The scorecard

Where each one is genuinely strongest

bit.bio — cheapest per million, and the only published astrocyte function video

At 999 for a three-vial pack of more than one million viable cells each, ioAstrocytes work out to roughly 333 per million. That is under half the iXCells two-million-vial rate of $722 and under a third of the iXCells single-vial rate. Nothing else in this comparison is close.

The functional evidence is also unusually concrete for a product page rather than a paper. bit.bio publishes video of ioAstrocytes phagocytosing bioparticles, with the honest mechanistic detail that the particles are non-fluorescent at neutral pH outside the cell and fluoresce only once exposed to the acidic environment of intracellular organelles — so the readout is genuinely internalisation and not adhesion. They publish cytokine data showing induction of IL-6 across three distinct proinflammatory cocktails, and they note the confound themselves: because IFN-gamma and IL-1-beta are present in the stimuli, those two produce high detection signals in the readout. A supplier flagging its own assay artefact is worth noticing.

They also publish a step-by-step co-culture protocol with their own ioGlutamatergic Neurons, and a separate MEA co-culture protocol validated on the MaxWell MaxTwo. That combination — cells, a matched neuron, a written protocol and an instrument-specific MEA method — is the most complete package here.

When bit.bio is the wrong choice. You cannot buy one vial. A protocol test costs 999, not $830 or $995. Media kits are priced separately and are expensive relative to the cells, so the delivered cost of a working experiment is a long way above 333 per million. And the range sits on bit.bio’s own engineered opti-ox backgrounds, which is the point of the product and also a constraint: if your experiment needs a specific donor genotype, deterministic programming from one background is not what you want.

STEMCELL Technologies — the only genuinely isogenic neuron-astrocyte-microglia set

STEMCELL sells astrocytes differentiated from the named human iPSC line SCTi003-A, and the same line underpins their neuron and microglia products. That is the single strongest structural argument in this comparison, and it is easy to underrate.

In a neuron-astrocyte-microglia tri-culture assembled from three different suppliers, every phenotype you measure is confounded by three donor genomes. Attributing a result to the microglial genotype when the neurons and astrocytes come from unrelated donors is not a clean inference. Buying all three from one genetic background removes that confound entirely, and no other supplier here offers it as a catalogued product line.

The astrocytes are produced in a fully serum-free system, which matters more for astrocytes than for most cell types: serum drives astrocytes toward a reactive phenotype, and a serum-free derivation is a defensible baseline claim. Published price is from $995 for one million cells, with a maturation kit sold alongside.

When STEMCELL is the wrong choice. The licence. Their published restrictions on commercial or monetised use of the cells and their derivatives are the tightest we found in this category, with screening permitted only for target discovery, target validation or assay development where results are not further commercialised. For an academic laboratory this is irrelevant. For a company it may be disqualifying, and it is better discovered before a year of data exists than after. There is also no disease panel in this SKU — it is the control background, and that is all.

iXCells — the deepest priced disease panel and the only rodent comparison on the same storefront

iXCells prices normal, PSEN2 N141I heterozygous and sporadic Parkinson’s astrocytes on one public storefront, at $1,081 for normal and $1,246 for either variant. That 15 percent premium for a disease line is the smallest in this market, and being able to see it before opening a sales conversation is worth something.

The pack-size lever is also the largest here: $1,081 for one million falls to $1,444 for two million, which is $722 per million — a 33 percent reduction inside one supplier for one decision. Anyone comparing iXCells against a competitor on the single-vial price is comparing pack size, not supplier.

The genuinely useful item is the rodent range on the same storefront. Rat astrocytes at $482 and mouse astrocytes at $608 are the honest answer for method development. Qualifying an electrode plate, training a technician, optimising a coating or a seeding density on $1,081 human vials is a choice, not a requirement.

When iXCells is the wrong choice. No published purity threshold and no published co-culture protocol or MEA method on the storefront, so information other suppliers put in writing has to be requested. Their astrocyte range is also the narrowest on functional evidence: GFAP and ALDH1L1 marker expression per datasheet is identity, not function.

Axol Bioscience — clearest donor disclosure, best single-vial price

Axol prices astrocytes at $830 for at least one million cells, the lowest single-vial price in this comparison, and puts the donor information other suppliers hide in a datasheet directly into the product name: unaffected male donor, aged 40 to 50. For any experiment where donor age or sex is a confound, being able to read that before clicking anything is a real advantage.

Their microglia range is priced alongside at $1,043, with a media and supplement kit at $515 and a bundled cells-plus-media SKU at $1,324 — which saves $234 against buying the two separately. If you are building a glial pair from one supplier, that arithmetic is published and checkable.

When Axol is the wrong choice. One astrocyte SKU. No disease or genotype-stratified astrocyte range on the storefront, no published purity threshold and no published co-culture protocol. For neurons Axol’s disclosure depth is the reason to choose them; for astrocytes the range is thin, and the single donor background is the whole offer.

FUJIFILM CDI — widest characterisation, with two commercial caveats you must read

iCell Astrocytes 2.0 list from $1,109 with an astrocyte kit from $1,299, and sit inside the most extensively documented iPSC-derived cell platform in this comparison. If your model needs to be defensible in a regulatory-adjacent document, the depth of published characterisation across the iCell range is the strongest argument here.

When FUJIFILM CDI is the wrong choice. Two commercial catches, both published and both easy to miss. Pricing is stated as “from” and is explicitly valid in the US and Europe only, with separate arrangements for China, South Korea and Japan — do not budget a US list price elsewhere. And a product restrictions policy limits the use of some SKUs to provide services to third parties, which is directly relevant if you are a contract research organisation.

BrainXell — no published astrocyte price, but the most useful published protocol

We could not retrieve a public astrocyte price from BrainXell, so this table cannot rank them on cost. What they publish instead is the single most actionable document in this whole category: a 24-well MEA neuron-astrocyte co-culture protocol stating a seeding density of 50,000 to 100,000 viable neurons per well delivered as a 40 µL droplet over the electrodes, a neuron-to-astrocyte ratio of 2:1 to 6:1, a media schedule by day, the specific Axion plate part number it was validated on, and an explicit expectation that neural activity appears to some degree by 12 days in vitro and plateaus around 21 days.

That is a supplier telling you how long your experiment is before you have spent anything. If you are buying astrocytes to make a neuronal culture burst, read that document regardless of whose cells you end up buying.

The ratio, and the caveat nobody selling astrocytes will volunteer

No supplier publishes a recommended neuron-to-glia ratio as a product specification. The literature does.

The caveat, stated plainly. The best-characterised result on that list used primary human astrocytes. The Lemieux study additionally notes the earlier observation that NGN2 neurons achieved high firing rates with rodent astrocytes but not with iPSC-derived astrocytes. That is a genuine open question, not a settled one, and no vendor datasheet on this page addresses it.

Two practical consequences:

1. If your model must be fully human and fully iPSC-derived, budget optimisation time. Do not assume the published 2:1 ratio and density transfer unchanged from primary astrocytes to an iPSC-derived product. Treat 2:1 at 90,000 plus 45,000 as the condition to beat, not the answer.
2. If your model only needs to be human on the neuronal side, primary human astrocytes remain a legitimate and well-evidenced choice, and they are the cells behind the result you are trying to reproduce.

Why human astrocytes are not a scaled-up mouse astrocyte

There is a specific reason this category cannot be shopped on price alone, and it is published. Zhang and colleagues purified and characterised progenitor and mature human astrocytes and reported transcriptional and functional differences from mouse astrocytes. That work is the standard citation for the position that rodent astrocyte data does not transfer cleanly to human biology.

The practical reading is not “never use rodent astrocytes”. It is that rodent astrocytes are appropriate where the astrocyte is scaffolding for a human neuronal readout, and inappropriate where the astrocyte is the subject. iXCells rat astrocytes at $482 are a good purchase for the first case and the wrong purchase for the second, and the price difference against a $1,081 human vial is exactly the size of that distinction.

Three comparisons on this page that are not real

Bare vial against kit. FUJIFILM CDI’s $1,109 cells-only figure and the $1,299 kit are not the same product, and Axol’s $1,324 bundled microglia SKU includes $515 of media. Normalise to a delivered working experiment or do not compare.

Different pack sizes. iXCells at $1,081 and iXCells at $1,444 are the same cells at one and two million. Comparing bit.bio’s three-vial pack against a competitor’s single vial measures packaging.

Different evidence classes. GFAP and ALDH1L1 marker expression, a phagocytosis video, an IL-6 induction curve and a serum-free derivation claim are four different kinds of statement. More published evidence is generally better, but it is not a purity ranking, and none of these suppliers publishes a numeric purity release threshold for astrocytes on a public page.

Choosing by what you are actually doing

What we would actually verify before ordering

• The counting convention. Total cells at freeze and viable cells post-thaw are different numbers, and a 2:1 seeding ratio calculated from one on each side is not 2:1.
• Medium compatibility with the neuron you already bought. This is the most common failure in glial procurement. A better astrocyte in an incompatible medium is a worse outcome than a mediocre one that matches.
• Delivery week alignment. Neurons and astrocytes have to arrive for one seeding day. Two vials a month apart is two experiments.
• The medium the published phenotype was generated in. Astrocytes change state readily. Substituting the characterisation medium is not a cost saving.
• Whether the astrocyte and neuron are isogenic, and if not, whether that matters for your claim.
• Licence terms for any commercial downstream, in writing, before the first order.
• The lot’s actual marker data, not a statement that it passed.

Where to go next

The astrocyte and glia sourcing guide has the full price table including microglia, oligodendrocyte-like cells and OPCs, and the seeding protocol in step form. The iPSC neuron comparison is the companion purchase for most astrocyte orders, and the MEA platform compatibility matrix covers which plates these co-cultures have published protocols on.

If you want current quotes across several of these against one specification, normalised to the same counting convention and aligned to one delivery week, send us the spec. We hold no volume agreement with any supplier named on this page.