# How much does it cost to sequence a genome? > A human genome costs about $220 to $450 at university sequencing labs and $399 to $595 as a consumer test. ProteinIQ's survey of US core facilities puts the median lab price at $419 before analysis. Sequencing a human genome costs about **\$220 to \$450** at a university laboratory in 2026, \$399 to \$595 as a consumer test, and several thousand as a clinical test that specialists interpret and report to a doctor. In our survey of US university sequencing facilities, the typical internal price for preparing and sequencing a 30x genome was \$419 before any data analysis. The sequencing chemistry itself costs under \$200, so most of the difference between these prices lies in what else each one includes. Every price below pays for reading the same roughly [3.1 billion base pairs](/guides/human-genome-size) of a person's genome. Some cover only the reagents consumed by the sequencer, some add laboratory handling and data analysis, and some add the clinical work that turns millions of differences from the reference genome into an answer for a patient. Separating these layers explains today's prices, and a longer view shows how the fall from about \$95 million per genome in 2001 has slowed since the mid-2010s. ## How much does it cost to sequence a human genome? As of September 2026, a research-grade 30x human genome costs about \$220 to \$450 per sample, consumer 30x tests are listed at \$399 to \$595, and published clinical estimates range from about £2,100 to £4,400 per genome in 2024 prices. At the low end, the University of Minnesota Genomics Center charges external customers \$221 for a 30x genome including sample quality control, library preparation, sequencing and variant analysis. Half of the university core facilities in our survey charge their own researchers between \$363 and \$451 to prepare and sequence a genome before analysis, with a median of \$419. The "30x" in these offers is the coverage: each position in the genome is read about 30 times on average. No single read is perfectly [accurate](/guides/dna-sequencing-accuracy), so reading every base many times lets software distinguish a genuine variant from an occasional error, and 30x is the usual depth for calling a person's variants. Consumer companies sell the same depth with a collection kit and reports. Sequencing.com lists its 30x bundle at \$399, and Nebula Genomics lists its 30x Pro test at \$595 on sale, down from a standard \$895. Table 1. Price of a human whole genome by setting. Research and consumer prices are list prices in US dollars on September 24, 2026; the university core median is our calculation from published price lists. Clinical costs come from microcosting studies converted to 2024 British pounds by purchasing power parity. Sources: UMGC (2026), Sequencing.com (2026), Nebula Genomics (2026), McElwee et al. (2026). Setting Listed cost What the price covers Research service, 30x short reads \$221 per sample University of Minnesota external rate on the Ultima UG 100 in batches of 24; sample QC, PCR-free library preparation, sequencing, data QC, alignment and variant calling University core facilities, 30x short reads \$419 median; middle half \$363 to \$451 Our survey of 11 US facilities at internal rates; standard whole-genome library plus 90 Gb of Illumina NovaSeq X sequencing, without analysis Consumer test, 30x \$399 Sequencing.com bundle with collection kit, downloadable FASTQ, BAM and VCF files, and one month of its premium analysis plan Consumer test, 30x \$595 sale price; \$895 standard price Nebula DNA Complete Pro with collection kit, one year of reports, and downloadable CRAM and VCF files Clinical genome, one person £2,114 to £4,423 Published microcosting estimates including sequencing, bioinformatics and clinical interpretation The clinical range needs more care than the others. McElwee and colleagues reviewed economic studies of exome and genome sequencing published between 2016 and 2024, and every microcosting study they found included sequencing, bioinformatics and clinical interpretation. The most recent cost year among those human genome studies was 2019, however, so the range shows the scale of a full diagnostic workflow rather than a current laboratory quote. Sequencing a child with both parents, a "trio" used in rare-disease diagnosis, cost £4,629 to £9,118 in the same studies. What the buyer receives also differs. Research and consumer services return raw reads as FASTQ files, reads aligned to the reference genome as BAM or CRAM files, and a VCF file listing where the person differs from the reference, typically about [5 million single-nucleotide variants](/guides/how-many-snps-are-in-the-human-genome). FASTQ files keep a quality score for every base; converting [FASTQ to FASTA](/app/fastq-to-fasta) removes those scores for workflows that need only the sequence. Research models such as [AlphaGenome](/app/alphagenome), which predicts how a single variant changes gene regulation, can help prioritize variants, but none of these files or predictions amounts to a diagnosis. That judgment is what the clinical price pays for. ## What does the sequencing itself cost? Counting only the reagents consumed on the instrument, a human genome now costs about \$80 to \$200 on high-throughput short-read sequencers and about \$345 on a long-read system, according to manufacturers' list prices. Illumina advertises a \$200 genome on its NovaSeq X Series using the largest 25B flow cell. Ultima Genomics advertises an \$80 genome on the UG 100 with its Solaris chemistry, calculated from list prices over four wafers, down from \$100 in 2024. Table 2. Manufacturer claims for the reagent cost of a human genome. List prices in US dollars as advertised on September 24, 2026. None includes the instrument, laboratory staff or clinical analysis. Sources: Illumina (2026), Ultima Genomics (2026), PacBio (2026). Platform Claimed cost per genome Basis Ultima UG 100 with Solaris, short reads \$80 List price averaged over four wafers Illumina NovaSeq X, short reads \$200 List price on the 25B flow cell PacBio Revio, long reads About \$345 at 20x List price of sequencing reagents with SPRQ-Nx; about \$300 with volume discounts These are the lowest numbers in genomics, and they are easily misread. PacBio's footnote is the most explicit: its figure covers the sequencing reagents run on a customer's instrument and excludes instrument amortization and other reagents. A laboratory also pays for the sequencer, staff, sample tracking, library preparation, computing and failed runs, and it reaches the advertised cost only when it fills large flow cells or wafers with many genomes at once. Long reads cost more, but they answer a different question. Short reads of a few hundred bases are efficient for finding small variants against a reference, while long reads spanning thousands of bases can cross repeat-rich regions and resolve large structural variants directly. PacBio quotes its price at 20x rather than 30x, so the figures in Table 2 are not strictly like for like. The National Human Genome Research Institute's (NHGRI) benchmark sits between the reagent claims and a full service. Its last value, \$525 per genome in 2022, includes labor, reagents, sequencing instruments amortized over three years, production informatics and indirect costs. It excludes quality assessment, technology development and downstream analysis, the steps that dominate a clinical test. ## What do university sequencing facilities charge? In our survey of US university core facilities, preparing and sequencing a 30x human genome cost a median of \$419 at internal rates, before any data analysis. Sequencing accounted for about two-thirds of that price, and library preparation, the step that fragments the DNA and attaches the short adapters a sequencer reads, for the remaining third. Core facilities are the shared sequencing laboratories that universities run for their researchers, and many publish their prices. On September 24, 2026, we collected the price lists of 17 US facilities that publish Illumina NovaSeq X sequencing prices or a whole-genome library price. For each, we took the cheapest lane of 2×150 base-pair reads that a single laboratory can buy and scaled its price to 90 gigabases (Gb) of sequence, which is NHGRI's definition of a 30x human genome and equals 300 million read pairs. At the University of Pittsburgh, whose price happens to equal the median, one lane of a 25B flow cell costs \$2,907 for 937.5 Gb: $$ \begin{aligned} \text{Sequencing} &= \frac{\$2{,}907}{937.5\text{ Gb}} \times 90\text{ Gb} \\ &= \$279\text{ per genome}. \end{aligned} $$ We then added each facility's standard whole-genome library price at its smallest batch size. Eleven facilities publish both prices, and they form the combined median. The [price data with sources](/data/guides/genome-sequencing-cost/core-facility-prices.csv), [per-facility results](/data/guides/genome-sequencing-cost/core-facility-results.csv), [methods](/data/guides/genome-sequencing-cost/README.md) and [analysis script](/data/guides/genome-sequencing-cost/analyze.py) record every rate, yield and assumption. ![Grouped bars comparing sequencing and library preparation prices at 11 US university core facilities. Sequencing prices cluster between about 240 and 400 dollars, while library prices range from 45 to 630 dollars.](/images/charts/core-facility-genome-price-components.webp '**Figure 1. Price of a 30x human genome at US university core facilities.** Internal rates for 90 Gb of Illumina NovaSeq X 2×150 sequencing, from the cheapest lane-level option, and a standard whole-genome library at the smallest batch size. Facilities are ordered by combined price. Source: ProteinIQ survey of published price lists, September 24, 2026.') Table 3. Core facility prices for a 30x human genome. Our survey of published price lists read on September 24, 2026. The middle half is the interquartile range. Prices exclude DNA extraction, data analysis and storage, and lane-level statistics exclude one facility that sells sequencing only per million reads. Component Median Middle half Facilities Sequencing, 90 Gb, internal rate \$279 \$268 to \$296 15 Sequencing, 90 Gb, external academic rate \$338 \$309 to \$415 10 Library preparation, internal rate \$129 \$75 to \$194 13 Library and sequencing, internal rate \$419 \$363 to \$451 11 Library share of the combined price 33% 25% to 39% 11 Sequencing prices cluster tightly, from \$236 to \$400 per genome, because every facility buys the same Illumina reagents and adds broadly similar charges for staff, instrument service and quality control. The median charge, \$279 or \$3.10 per gigabase, sits above Illumina's \$200 reagent figure, as expected for a price that also covers those costs, and external academic customers pay a median of 18% more than each facility's own researchers. Library preparation varies far more. The University of Georgia lists \$45 per library for small batches, whereas Weill Cornell Medicine charges \$630, more than twice its own sequencing cost. Other prices show what the median leaves out. How a laboratory buys sequencing matters: the University of New Hampshire sells shared runs at \$3 per million read pairs, or \$900 for 90 Gb, more than three times the lane-level median, and quotes dedicated flow cells separately. The platform may matter too. Minnesota's Ultima-based genome costs \$192 for its own researchers and \$221 externally including analysis, about half the Illumina median without analysis, although one facility cannot establish a difference between platforms. Analysis, which the median excludes, is usually a separate line item; Pittsburgh charges \$180 per genome for its germline whole-genome analysis pipeline. The survey has limits. It covers facilities that publish prices online rather than a random sample, four of them send runs to outside providers, and list prices can differ from negotiated quotes. Counting 100 Gb per genome instead of 90 raises the sequencing median to \$310. ## How do coverage and platform change the price? Deeper coverage costs more, but far less than proportionally, because much of a genome's cost is fixed per sample. At the University of Minnesota, tripling coverage from 30x to 90x on the Ultima platform raises the price from \$221 to \$379, about 70% more, since only the sequencing grows while sample handling and library preparation stay the same. Table 4. Price of human whole-genome sequencing by coverage and platform at one research facility. External rates per sample in US dollars, including sample QC, PCR-free library preparation, sequencing, data QC and analysis. Coverage is minimum depth at 30x and mean depth at 60x and 90x. Source: University of Minnesota Genomics Center (2026). Platform Coverage Batch size Price per sample Ultima UG 100 30x 24 samples \$221 Ultima UG 100 60x 18 samples \$274 Ultima UG 100 90x 12 samples \$379 Element AVITI 30x 4 samples \$469 Element AVITI Ultra Q 30x 2 samples \$1,168 The same table shows that the platform can matter more than the depth. A 30x genome on Element's AVITI, which the facility offers for projects that need the highest accuracy on small variants, costs about twice the Ultima price, and the Ultra Q mode costs about five times as much. Smaller batches are part of the difference, because fixed run costs are shared among fewer samples. Library preparation matters as well: PCR-free methods avoid amplification bias and give more even coverage, but [how much DNA is needed](/guides/how-much-dna-is-needed-for-sequencing) depends on the method a laboratory uses. Consumer pricing follows the same pattern. Nebula's 1x Essential test is listed at \$245 on sale, 41% of the price of its 30x test for about a thirtieth of the sequencing, and its 100x Elite test at \$1,295. At 1x, many positions are read once or not at all, so low-pass sequencing is a cheaper product rather than a cheaper route to the same result. The same balance of fixed and variable costs applies to other species, where genome size and the availability of a reference drive the price. The Minnesota facility sequences mouse genomes, which are similar in size to the human genome, at the human rates, but prices de novo assemblies and ultra-deep projects separately. Building a new genome without a reference usually needs long reads, more depth and more analysis, and comparing it with related assemblies is a further [whole-genome alignment](/use-cases/whole-genome-alignment) step. For the [largest known genomes](/guides/largest-and-smallest-genomes), which can be dozens of times larger than the human genome, the sequencing alone scales accordingly. ## How much has the cost of genome sequencing fallen? On NHGRI's production benchmark, the cost of sequencing a human genome fell from about \$95.3 million in 2001 to \$525 in 2022, a nominal decline of more than 180,000-fold. Adjusted for inflation with the US consumer price index, we calculate a fall of about 300,000-fold, from about \$179 million to \$601 in August 2026 dollars. ![The cost to sequence a human genome fell from about \$95.3 million in 2001 to \$525 in 2022 on a logarithmic scale.](/images/charts/human-genome-sequencing-cost-decline.webp '**Figure 2. Cost to sequence a human genome, 2001 to 2022.** Selected annual values in nominal US dollars from the NHGRI production-cost series, shown on a logarithmic axis because they span more than five orders of magnitude. Sources: [NHGRI (2022)](https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequencing-Costs-Data), [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-of-sequencing-a-full-human-genome).') The series also changes what it counts as a genome. Dividing NHGRI's cost per genome by its cost per megabase shows that values before 2008 describe a genome sequenced to about 6x coverage, or 18,000 megabases of sequence, while later values describe 30x, or 90,000 megabases. Measured per megabase, which keeps the unit constant, we calculate that the cost fell about 908,000-fold. The sharpest break came in 2008, when sequencing centers moved from Sanger sequencing to next-generation platforms. NHGRI describes the decline that followed as a sudden and profound outpacing of Moore's Law, the doubling of computing power roughly every two years that is often used as a benchmark for technological progress. To measure how that pace has changed, we fitted the trend in cost per megabase within four periods. The cost halved every 5.4 months from 2008 to 2011, but only every 42 months from 2016 to 2022, a slower pace than Moore's Law. Table 5. How quickly the cost of DNA sequencing halved in four periods. Our log-linear fits to NHGRI's cost per megabase in nominal US dollars; end-of-period costs are that cost multiplied by 90,000 megabases, so the Sanger value is restated at 30x. Boundaries fall at the switch to next-generation platforms in 2008 and at the ends of 2011 and 2015, so each value is a period average that shifts slightly with the chosen boundaries. Source: NHGRI (2022). Period Dominant technology Halving time Cost per 30x genome at the end of the period 2001 to 2007 Sanger sequencing 20 months \$35.7 million 2008 to 2011 Early next-generation sequencing 5.4 months \$7,743 2012 to 2015 Maturing short-read sequencing 25 months \$1,245 2016 to 2022 Recent short-read sequencing 42 months \$525 The decline after 2015 was also uneven: the annual value rose in 2018 and again in 2022, when it was higher than the \$454 recorded for 2021. NHGRI has not published values after 2022. University core facility prices are not the same measure, because their internal rates can be subsidized and omit overheads that NHGRI counts. Even so, the median internal charge of \$3.10 per gigabase in our survey is about half NHGRI's final \$5.83 per gigabase. Together with manufacturers' reagent claims of \$80 to \$200 per genome, that comparison suggests the fall has continued at a modest pace. The first human reference sequence belongs to a different comparison. NHGRI estimates that the initial draft cost about \$300 million, while mapping, finishing and related sequencing work put the first reference at roughly \$500 million to \$1 billion. The full U.S. Human Genome Project cost about \$2.7 billion because it also funded technology development, genome mapping, model organisms, ethics research and program management. Modern services sequence a person by aligning reads to that existing reference rather than building a genome from scratch, so today's prices and the Human Genome Project budget are not like-for-like numbers. The [time needed to sequence a genome](/guides/human-genome-sequencing-time) has contracted just as dramatically, from years to hours or days for data generation. Taken together, the numbers describe layers rather than competing answers. Reagents for a 30x genome cost \$80 to \$200, a university facility charges about \$420 to prepare and sequence one on Illumina instruments and as little as about \$220 on newer platforms, a consumer test with reports costs \$399 to \$595, and a clinically interpreted genome several thousand. In the laboratory, reading the DNA is still the largest single charge. What turns a dataset costing a few hundred dollars into a medical answer costing several thousand is the analysis and expert interpretation that follow.