MOTS-C peptide dosage chart: doses, cycles and goals

Most MOTS-C dosage charts online publish a number and stop. The number is the least useful part. What decides whether a protocol makes sense is the combination of dose, frequency, administration window, and cycle length, and those four move independently of each other.

This page is the chart. Every figure on it comes from the Klarovel research catalog, which is the same source the protocol engine reads when it caps a generated dose. MOTS-C dosing therefore has one traceable origin here rather than a consensus assembled from forums. Where the catalog does not differentiate, this page says so instead of inventing a split.

Key takeaways#

• The Klarovel research catalog supports a MOTS-C range of 5 mg as a starting dose up to a 10 mg ceiling, administered subcutaneously.
• Frequency is two to three times per week, not daily, which is the single most common error in charts published elsewhere.
• The catalog timing is before training, which follows from MOTS-C being characterised as an exercise-associated peptide rather than a general metabolic agent.
• The cycle is six weeks on followed by four weeks off, shorter on both sides than the twelve-and-four pattern most repair peptides use.
• The catalog does not split the dose by goal. Metabolic, endurance and longevity use share one range, and this page does not fabricate a three-way split to fill a column.

MOTS-C and MOTS-c are the same peptide#

The capitalisation difference carries no meaning, and both spellings appear in the peer-reviewed literature. MOTS-c stands for mitochondrial open reading frame of the twelve S ribosomal RNA type-c. The lowercase "c" is the more common form in journals; the uppercase "MOTS-C" is more common in commercial and community writing. Search volume splits almost evenly between the two, which is why both appear on this page.

The peptide itself is sixteen amino acids long and encoded in mitochondrial DNA rather than nuclear DNA, which is what makes it unusual. It was described in a 2015 paper in Cell Metabolism by Lee and colleagues, which identified it as a regulator of the folate-methionine cycle acting through AMPK, and reported that it reduced diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance in mice. A 2018 follow-up in the same journal showed that MOTS-c translocates to the nucleus under metabolic stress and regulates nuclear gene expression there, which is a genuinely unusual behaviour for a mitochondrial-encoded peptide.

The exercise association comes from a 2021 study in Nature Communications, which reported MOTS-c as exercise-induced and linked it to age-dependent physical decline and muscle homeostasis. Research suggests the peptide behaves as a signal that tracks exercise rather than one that substitutes for it, though the performance work in that paper is in mice. Human interventional data on MOTS-C and exercise capacity remains thin, and any dosage chart that implies otherwise is overstating the evidence.

The MOTS-C peptide dosage chart#

Five figures define a MOTS-C protocol, and only one of them is a dose. The chart below carries all five as the research catalog states them.

Parameter	Value	What it means
Starting dose	5 mg	Conservative entry point in the research catalog
Upper bound	10 mg	Ceiling the protocol engine will not exceed
Frequency	2 to 3 times weekly	Not daily. Fewer administrations than most peptides
Timing	Before training	Follows the exercise-associated characterisation
Route	Subcutaneous	No oral or intranasal route in the catalog
Cycle length	6 weeks on, 4 weeks off	Shorter on both sides than the common 12-and-4 pattern
Taper	None specified	The catalog attaches no taper rule to this compound

The milligram scale is worth pausing on. MOTS-C is dosed in whole milligrams while most peptides in the same catalog are dosed in micrograms, a thousandfold difference in units. A chart that lists MOTS-C at 500 mcg has almost certainly carried a unit over from a neighbouring compound. The comparison is easier to see on the full peptide dosage reference, where every peptide sits in one sortable table.

Dosing by goal: metabolic, endurance and longevity#

Three goals, one dose range, and that is the honest answer to the MOTS-C dosage by goal question rather than an evasive one. MOTS-C appears in the Klarovel catalog against two goal categories, performance and body composition, and against three symptom targets: fatigue, weight gain and muscle loss. The catalog does not attach a different dose to each. Many published charts do split the range three ways, and none of them cite a source for the split.

What genuinely differs by goal is where the emphasis in the protocol sits, not the number in the syringe.

Goal	Dose range	What actually differs
Metabolic	5 mg to 10 mg	Insulin sensitivity is the tracked outcome. The 2015 Cell Metabolism work is the mechanistic anchor
Endurance	5 mg to 10 mg	The before-training window matters most here, because the peptide is characterised as exercise-associated
Longevity	5 mg to 10 mg	Cycle discipline matters most. The six-and-four pattern repeats rather than running continuously

The one genuine biological differentiator in the MOTS-C literature is not the goal but the genotype. A 2022 study in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta found the K14Q polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA to be associated with muscle fibre composition and muscular performance. That variant is common in East Asian populations and effectively reduces MOTS-C activity. Research has shown genotype to be a plausible source of variation in response, which is a more defensible explanation for differing user reports than a goal-based dose split.

MOTS-C signalling route

Frequency and cycle length are separate decisions#

Two to three times weekly and six weeks on are independent parameters, and confusing them produces the most common protocol error in this compound. Frequency governs how often the peptide is administered inside a week. Cycle length governs how many weeks the protocol runs before a scheduled break. A person can be correct on one and wrong on the other.

The MOTS-C cycle length of six weeks on is shorter than the twelve-and-four pattern that BPC-157, TB-500 and the growth hormone secretagogues use. That difference is deliberate in the catalog rather than incidental. Ten weeks makes a complete round trip, which means a calendar year holds roughly five of them rather than four.

Administration timing is the third axis. The catalog specifies before training, which is coherent with the exercise-associated characterisation but is a scheduling constraint rather than a dose constraint. Someone who trains four times a week and administers three times has a straightforward mapping. Someone who does not train has a harder question to answer than the chart can settle, and it is a reasonable one to bring to a clinician.

Reconstitution turns milligrams into syringe units#

A 10 mg vial does not tell you what to draw, because the answer depends entirely on how much bacteriostatic water went into it. This is arithmetic, and getting it wrong is the most consequential mistake available in a peptide protocol, so it belongs in a calculator rather than in a worked example on a page.

Step	Tool	What it answers
Choose water volume	BAC water calculator	How much bacteriostatic water to add so the unit math stays clean
Convert dose to units	Peptide reconstitution calculator	Vial size plus water volume plus target dose gives exact syringe units
Check the unit scale	Units converter	Converts between mcg, mg, IU and syringe units in either direction

The milligram scale makes MOTS-C reconstitution forgiving in one respect and unforgiving in another. Whole-milligram doses mean the draws are larger and easier to measure accurately than a 20 mcg draw. But a tenfold unit error is correspondingly larger in absolute terms, which is the argument for running the numbers through a calculator rather than a mental estimate.

Where the MOTS-C dosage chart stops#

A chart describes a population range. It cannot tell one person where inside that range they belong, and pretending otherwise is what makes most dosage charts less useful than they look. Body weight, existing metabolic markers, training load, medications, and the K14Q genotype all plausibly shift the answer, and none of them appear in a table.

Klarovel's health questionnaire is what narrows the range. Contraindication screening runs first, then experience tier, then the compound-specific modifiers. Blood work sharpens the output for anyone who has a recent panel and never gates access to a protocol, because protocols are built from health data.

For the mechanism, the K14Q variant, and what the Reynolds work does and does not establish, the complete MOTS-c guide covers the science in more depth than a dosage chart should attempt. For how MOTS-C compares against every other peptide on dose, frequency and cycle, the peptide dosage reference puts all of them in one sortable table.