mg per pouch is the total nicotine in one pouch; mg per gram is the concentration in the material inside it. To convert between them you need the pouch’s weight, and most manufacturers do not publish it. That single missing number is why pouch strengths cannot be compared reliably, and why two “6 mg” products can differ by a factor of three.
Every pouch strength argument comes down to one of two numbers being quoted as if it were the other. This page is about telling them apart, converting between them when you can, and — the part nobody says out loud — recognising the situations where neither number tells you anything useful.
The two numbers, and why they are not interchangeable
mg per pouch is an absolute quantity: this pouch contains 6 milligrams of nicotine. It is the number on most cans sold in the US, the UK and the Nordics, and it is the number Denmark and Czechia have written into law.
mg per gram is a concentration: the material in this pouch is 16 milligrams of nicotine for every gram of filler. It is the unit Swedish snus has always used, the unit Finland now legislates in, and the unit the German risk institute uses in its recommendations.
The bridge between them is pouch weight, and the arithmetic is trivial:
- mg per pouch = mg per gram × pouch weight in grams
- mg per gram = mg per pouch ÷ pouch weight in grams
A 1.0 g portion at 16 mg/g contains 16 mg. A 0.3 g mini portion at the same 16 mg/g contains 4.8 mg. Same concentration, more than three times the difference in what goes in your lip. Run it the other way and the trap is clearer still: a 6 mg pouch weighing 0.5 g is 12 mg/g, while a 6 mg pouch weighing 1.0 g is 6 mg/g. Identical label, half the concentration.
The number you need is usually the one that is secret
Here is the practical problem. Pouch weight is rarely published, and when a manufacturer files it with a regulator it is often withheld as confidential commercial information.
The clearest illustration sits inside the FDA’s own filing cabinet. Helix Innovations’ technical review for on! PLUS states a portion weight target of 0.714 g in the public text — so you can work out that a 6 mg on! PLUS pouch is roughly 8.4 mg/g (my arithmetic, not a published figure). The FDA review of ZYN from the same agency in the same period has its portion weight redacted. Same regulator, same document type, one number in the open and one blacked out.
So a lot of the time the honest answer to “what is this in mg/g?” is: nobody outside the company can tell you.
Weights that are published
| Product or category | Per-pouch weight | Source |
|---|---|---|
| on! PLUS (all six variants) | 0.714 g target | FDA technical review, Helix Innovations |
| ZYN | Not published — redacted in its own FDA review | FDA technical review |
| VELO | Not published anywhere primary | — |
| Swedish snus, mini portion | 0.3 g | FDA technical review, Swedish Match |
| Swedish snus, large original and white portion | 1.0 g | FDA technical review, Swedish Match |
| Pouches on the German market, median | 0.6 g | BfR opinion 023/2022 |
| Pouches sold in Finland, by law from 1 Feb 2026 | 0.5 g minimum, 1.0 g maximum | Finnish Government; Finnish licensing and supervisory authority |
Finland’s approach is worth pausing on, because it is the only jurisdiction that has closed the loophole properly. By capping concentration at 16.6 mg/g and fixing pouch weight between 0.5 g and 1.0 g, it has capped the per-pouch content at 16.6 mg as a matter of arithmetic. A concentration limit without a weight limit caps nothing.
Which unit your regulator uses
There is no harmonised EU nicotine limit for pouches. The EU tobacco framework does not cover them at all — the Commission’s April 2026 evaluation lists “nicotine pouches” among the products outside the scope of the Tobacco Products Directive, and says the Commission intends to propose a revision during 2026. Until then, each country has picked its own unit, and they have not picked the same one.
| Country | Limit | Unit | Instrument | In force |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark | 9.0 mg | per pouch | BEK nr 249 of 4 March 2025, § 2 | 1 July 2025 |
| Czechia | 12 mg per dose; 240 mg per can | per pouch, and label must state mg per dose | Vyhláška 141/2023 Sb., §§ 2(4)–(5), 4(4)(b) | 1 July 2023 |
| Finland | 16.6 mg/g; pouch 0.5–1.0 g | per gram | Laki 251/2025, amending the Tobacco Act | 1 February 2026 |
| Finland (earlier interim measure) | 20 mg or more prohibited | per pouch | Chemicals Act 599/2013 s.45b; Government decision 21 September 2023 | 2023 |
| Sweden | No cap; content and “distribution per dose” must be declared | per dose | Lag (2022:1257) § 7; Förordning (2022:1263) § 11 | in force |
| Poland | No cap; notification reports mg per individual pouch | per pouch | Dz.U. 2025 poz. 799, Art. 11ha(1) | 5 July 2025 |
| Hungary | 17 mg per consumption unit — notified draft, adoption unconfirmed | per consumption unit | Draft amendment to Government Decree 39/2013, § 19/F | not verified as in force |
| Netherlands | Total sales ban | — | Tabaks- en rookwarenwet; Stb. 2024, 292 and 324 | 1 January 2025 |
| Belgium | Total ban, no numerical threshold at all | — | Royal Decree of 14 March 2023, Art. 2 | 1 July 2023; retailers 1 October 2023 |
One correction to something widely repeated: Switzerland’s 20 mg/g nicotine ceiling applies to nasal nicotine products and tobacco-free waterpipe products, not to oral pouches. The category definition in the Swiss ordinance lists three product types and oral pouches are not among them. I would not cite 20 mg/g as a Swiss pouch limit.
The confusion is not hypothetical — a regulator documented it
When BfR, Germany’s federal risk assessment institute, examined 44 pouch products, it found that “nicotine content, expressed as mg per pouch or per g, was declared clearly on only about a third of the nicotine pouches examined”. Most products instead described strength “using either a scale (such as a strength of ‘3 out of 5’) for which no further details were given or figurative language … examples being ‘easy’, ‘medium’, ‘strong’, ‘extra strong’, ‘ultra’, ‘extreme’, ‘danger strong’ or ‘brutal'”.
Then the sentence that is the whole argument of this page: “Switching between products from different manufacturers can result in nicotine content per pouch doubling even though the nicotine strength of these products is described using the same terms. One reason could be that some manufacturers meant the nicotine content per pouch and others per gram. However, this fact is not apparent to the consumer.”
The measured spread in that survey was enormous: a median of 9.48 mg per pouch, a lowest value of 1.79 mg and a highest of 47.5 mg. A German state laboratory testing pouches in 2022 found 6.6 to 19.0 mg per pouch across 15 quantified samples.
And the unit swap happens at the top of the industry too. BfR recommends an upper limit of “16.7 mg per g of pouch”. Philip Morris’s own science site restates that as “an upper limit of 16.6 mg of nicotine per pouch”. Per gram became per pouch, in the course of a single citation, on the site of a company selling the product. If that can happen there, it can happen on a can.
Both numbers describe content, not dose
Here is where I would push back on the entire framing. Whichever unit you pick, you are reading a figure for how much nicotine is in the pouch, not how much reaches you. Look at the statutory wording and this is explicit: Denmark’s rule says pouches may at most “indeholde” — contain — 9.0 mg; Czechia’s says a dose may “obsahovat” a maximum of 12 mg; Sweden requires a declaration of “innehåll” — content.
The gap between content and dose is large and inconsistent. BfR’s assessment concludes that “at least half of the nicotine in the pouch can be absorbed”, and reproduces extraction figures of about 56%, 59% and 50% for 3 mg, 6 mg and 8 mg pouches — against only 32% for snus. A German state laboratory assumed a 50% release fraction as its working case for risk assessment.
Independent measurement found wider variation still. In a 2024 study in Frontiers in Pharmacology, pouches declared at 6, 20 and 30 mg measured 4.8, 16.3 and 27.1 mg of actual content, and delivered mean extracted doses of 1.8, 4.7 and 14.1 mg. That is an extraction rate of roughly 38%, 24% and 52% respectively — and note the 20 mg product contained 19% less nicotine than its label claimed before extraction entered the picture at all.
pH is the number that would actually help, and nobody prints it
Nicotine crosses the oral mucosa in its free-base form, and how much of it is free base depends on pH. The CDC analysed 37 pouch brands and found pH ranging from 6.86 to 10.1, and the free-nicotine fraction ranging from 7.7% to 99.2%. Total nicotine ran from 1.29 to 6.11 mg per pouch; free nicotine from 0.166 to 6.07 mg.
Read those two ranges together. At the bottom of the free-nicotine range, a pouch delivers a fourteenth of its content in the readily absorbed form; at the top, essentially all of it. BfR found a median pH of 8.8 and a median free-base fraction of 86% in its own sample, with wide variation. No manufacturer prints pH on a can, and on! PLUS’s pH is redacted from its FDA filing.
So a 6 mg pouch at pH 9 and a 6 mg pouch at pH 7 are not the same product in any sense that matters to your mouth, and the label cannot distinguish them. That is not a reason to ignore the mg figure. It is a reason to treat it as a ceiling and a rough ordering, not a dose.
How to compare pouches without fooling yourself
What I would actually do with all this:
- Establish which unit the can is using before comparing anything. If the number is above about 20, it is almost certainly mg/g. If the pack came from Denmark or Czechia, it is per pouch by law.
- Never compare across formats on the label alone. A mini and a large slim at the same stated strength are different products.
- Treat a strength scale or a word as marketing. “Extra strong” is not a unit, and BfR showed that the same words cover a doubling in content.
- Compare within a brand and format, where the pouch weight and pH are at least held roughly constant, and the mg figure actually orders things sensibly.
- Judge by onset and duration in use, not by arithmetic. Pouch peak plasma nicotine arrives around 20–65 minutes after insertion, against 5–8 minutes for a cigarette — a slow curve that the number on the can says nothing about.
FAQ
Is a higher mg/g always stronger than a lower one? No. Concentration times weight is what you get. A high concentration in a tiny pouch can contain less nicotine than a low concentration in a big one.
Why does Swedish snus use mg/g and pouches usually use mg per pouch? Snus is sold loose as well as in portions, so a concentration is the only figure that works for both. Pouches are sold only in fixed units, so an absolute figure per unit is more natural. Sweden’s own law requires content plus its distribution per dose, which is effectively both.
Can I calculate mg/g myself? Only if the weight is published. For on! PLUS you can — 6 mg in 0.714 g is about 8.4 mg/g. For ZYN and VELO you cannot, because the weight is not public.
Does the EU set a maximum? No. There is no harmonised EU limit for pouches, and they sit outside the Tobacco Products Directive. The Commission has said it intends to propose a revision of the framework during 2026.
Is the mg figure the dose I receive? No. It is content. Measured extraction across published studies runs from roughly a quarter to around 60% of the labelled amount, and measured content itself can sit below the label.
What should a beginner look for? A low per-pouch figure in a small format from a brand that states its number in a unit you can identify. The complete mg guide works through the ladder, and how nicotine pouches actually work covers the absorption curve in detail.
Sources
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung, Health risk assessment of nicotine pouches, opinion 023/2022, 7 October 2022.
- Stanfill S. et al., Characterization of total and unprotonated (free) nicotine content of nicotine pouch products, Nicotine & Tobacco Research 23(9):1590–1596, 2021.
- Mallock-Ohnesorg N. et al., Small pouches, but high nicotine doses, Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2024.
- Denmark, BEK nr 249 af 04/03/2025 om grænseværdier for nikotinindhold i tobakssurrogater.
- Czechia, Ministry of Health, Vyhláška č. 141/2023 Sb. o nikotinových sáčcích bez obsahu tabáku.
- Finnish Government, The Tobacco Act will be amended on 1 August 2025.
- Sweden, Lag (2022:1257) om tobaksfria nikotinprodukter.
- Belgium, Koninklijk besluit van 14 maart 2023.
- European Commission, Commission evaluation of the EU tobacco control framework, 2 April 2026.
- FDA, Technical Project Lead review, Helix Innovations LLC (redacted).
- Chemisches und Veterinäruntersuchungsamt Sigmaringen, Nicotine Pouches – tabakfreie, nikotinhaltige Portionsbeutel.
- PMI Science, Oral nicotine pouches — quoted for its restatement of the BfR figure.