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

MOTS-C is dosed in milligrams, and the dose depends on experience: someone new to peptides starts at 2.5 mg once weekly with a 5 mg target, while an experienced user works at 15 mg two to three times weekly with a 25 mg ceiling. At every level it is injected subcutaneously before training, in cycles of six weeks on and four weeks off.

Every figure in the chart below comes from Klarovel's curated dose table, the same table each generated protocol is held to: a dose above the ceiling is capped, and a dose below the starting dose is raised to it. MOTS-C is not approved by the FDA for any indication. Most MOTS-c dosing charts online publish one number and stop, but dose, frequency, timing and cycle length move independently, so this page gives all four.

Key takeaways#

• The dose scales with experience. First-time users start at 2.5 mg with a 5 mg target and ceiling; experienced users start at 10 mg with a 15 mg target and a 25 mg ceiling.
• Frequency scales with it: once weekly at the first two levels, twice weekly for beginners, two to three times weekly from intermediate up. Never daily.
• Timing is before training, which follows from MOTS-C being characterized 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 dose is not split by goal. Metabolic, endurance and longevity use share the band for your experience level, and this page does not fabricate a three-way split to fill a column.

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

The capitalization 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 behavior 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#

The dose and frequency depend on your experience with peptides. The starting dose is the floor a protocol will not go below, the target is the dose a protocol is written to, and the ceiling is the dose it will not exceed.

In a later cycle the dose can step up from the target toward an advanced dose (5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg, 15 mg and 20 mg for the five levels in order), and never beyond the ceiling.

The rest of the protocol is the same at every level.

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 neighboring 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 band per experience level, 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 curated dose table 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.

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 fiber 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 signaling route

Frequency and cycle length are separate decisions#

How many times a week and how many 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 characterization 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.

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.