iPSC neuron suppliers: a directory with the specifications attached

The short answer: eleven suppliers below will sell you human iPSC-derived neurons as a product, and six of them publish a price you can read without speaking to a salesperson. Where they genuinely differ is subtype breadth, whether they publish a numeric purity release specification, whether they publish electrophysiology protocols and data, and how tightly they constrain what you may do with the cells afterwards.

This directory exists because that information is scattered across product pages, protocol PDFs, storefront APIs and terms-of-sale documents, and no vendor has any incentive to put a competitor in the same table.

The directory

How to read this table

Published purity is a minority practice

Only three suppliers in the directory publish a numeric purity release specification that you can read before buying: bit.bio (>80% VGLUT1/VGLUT2 expression), FUJIFILM CDI (≥90% glutamatergic by flow cytometry) and, in weaker form, STEMCELL Technologies (highly pure by βIII-tubulin, no threshold).

That does not make the others worse. BrainXell publishes something arguably more useful — full working protocols with seeding densities and expected activity timelines — and iXCells and Axol both supply certificates of analysis with the shipment. But if you are writing a purchase specification that has to survive a quality review, a supplier who publishes a threshold you can quote back to them is materially easier to buy from than one who does not, and that is a procurement fact rather than a science one.

Published MEA data separates the field more than price does

Six suppliers publish either MEA protocols or MEA data. Three of them publish enough to plan an experiment before you buy:

• BrainXell publishes a 24-well MEA co-culture protocol stating a recommended seeding density of 50,000–100,000 viable neurons per well, a neuron-to-astrocyte ratio of 2:1 to 6:1, a 40 µL seeding droplet, and an explicit activity expectation: neural activity present to some degree by 12 days in vitro, plateauing around 21 days. That is the single most useful published number in this whole directory, because it tells you how long your project actually is.
• NeuCyte publishes the exact composition of its MEA co-culture — 140,000 glutamatergic, 60,000 GABAergic and 70,000 astrocytes per well on 48-well MEA plates — with synchronised network bursting recorded at 3–4 weeks post-seeding.
• bit.bio publishes separate MEA protocols for Axion and for the MaxWell MaxTwo HD-MEA platform, including neuron-with-astrocyte and glutamatergic-plus-GABAergic-plus-astrocyte tri-culture configurations.

If electrophysiology is your endpoint, prefer a supplier whose published protocol names your instrument. The cost of discovering a seeding density empirically is several vials and several weeks.

Line provenance varies from excellent to unstated

Axol is the strongest on donor disclosure of the storefront suppliers — sex, age band and genotype are in the SKU name itself, including APOE genotype for the cortical range and named ALS mutations for the motor range. bit.bio publishes a single donor description covering its wild-type glutamatergic product: Caucasian adult male, aged 55–60, skin fibroblast origin, APOE 3/4, normal karyotype 46 XY. Ricoh names the CIRM line and the donor’s age, sex and ethnicity.

That matters more than it looks. An APOE 3/4 background is not a neutral control for an Alzheimer’s experiment, and a 74-year-old donor is not equivalent to a 40-year-old one for an ageing phenotype. If your experiment has a genetic confound, the donor line is part of the specification and not a detail.

Licensing is where the real variance sits

Every supplier here sells research use only. The differences are in what happens when your project stops being research:

• STEMCELL Technologies publishes the tightest terms we found, prohibiting use of the cells or their derivatives for monetisation or commercialisation, including performing services or supplying products for consideration, and permitting screening only for target discovery, target validation or assay development where the results are not further commercialised. They state a further licence may be obtainable.
• FUJIFILM CDI maintains a product restrictions page limiting the use of some SKUs to provide services to third parties, and prices regionally — listed prices valid in the US and Europe only, with separate arrangements for China, South Korea and Japan.
• bit.bio, iXCells, Axol and BrainXell all sell RUO without publishing an equivalently detailed downstream restriction, which is not the same as there being none. Read the terms attached to your actual order.

If you are a CRO planning to run assays on these cells for paying clients, or a company planning to build a product, this is the first question to ask and the last one anybody volunteers.

Minimum order changes the effective entry price

bit.bio sells in 3-vial packs, not single vials. The headline $999 is therefore an entry ticket of three million viable cells, not one. That is excellent value per cell and a poor fit if you want one vial to test a protocol. iXCells, Axol, BrainXell and FUJIFILM CDI will sell you a single vial.

bit.bio also publishes an academic price of 999 in dollars, euros or pounds for any 3-vial pack of any ioCells type, available year-round with any cell-type combination, plus a volume ladder giving an automatic 10 percent discount at 10–33 packs. For an academic lab running a mixed neuron-and-glia experiment, that is one of the cheapest routes to a full culture system in this directory.

Regional and practical notes

Import and cold chain. Six of these suppliers are US-based, three are European, one is Canadian. Everything ships on dry ice. Cross-border orders need an import permit in several jurisdictions, and the permit — not the manufacturing — is the usual cause of a slipped delivery date. Ask who is the importer of record before you order internationally.

Regional pricing. FUJIFILM CDI states plainly that its listed prices apply in the US and Europe only. Assume the same may be true elsewhere unless a supplier says otherwise, and do not quote a US-captured list price into an APAC budget.

GMP. None of the neuron products in this directory are sold as GMP material. Ncardia advertises GMP-ready manufacturing as a service, and Cook MyoSite runs phase-appropriate GMP cell manufacturing out of ISO 7 / ISO 5 cleanrooms for muscle cells. If you need GMP neurons, you are buying a manufacturing programme, not a catalogue item, and the lead time is measured in months.

What we would ask before placing a first order

1. Which counting convention is the vial content stated in — total at freeze, or viable post-thaw.
2. What the purity specification is, against which markers, by which assay, and whether it is a release criterion or a typical value.
3. Whether a certificate of analysis with lot-specific data comes with the shipment.
4. Whether the media on the datasheet is required to reproduce the datasheet performance.
5. What the published or recommended MEA seeding density and days-to-activity are, if that is the endpoint.
6. Whether a matched isogenic control is available on the same lot schedule as the disease line.
7. What the licence permits downstream, in writing.
8. Whether the lot you are being quoted exists now or is being made.

Related pages

For prices normalised to a single unit, see the price-per-million analysis. For an opinionated head-to-head rather than a directory, see iPSC neuron suppliers compared. For the product-level availability table with formats and licence classes, see human iPSC-derived cortical neurons.

We maintain this directory because we broker across it. We are not a reseller for any supplier listed and we have no volume agreement that would make one of them the answer regardless of your specification.