Nicotine content in snus vs nicotine pouches

A one-gram Swedish snus portion holds roughly 8–9 mg of nicotine; a nicotine pouch typically holds 3–11 mg in a pouch weighing 0.26–0.8 g. The totals are closer than the marketing suggests. What differs is how much comes out: snus gives up about a third of its nicotine, a pouch about half to three-fifths.

This should be the easiest comparison on the site. Two products, one number each, subtract. It is instead the hardest, because the published figures for snus and for pouches sit on at least three different denominators, almost nobody states which one they are using, and in Sweden — the home market of both General snus and ZYN — the law requires a nicotine figure on neither product.

So this article does two things. It gives you the numbers, and it tells you what each number is a number of.

The short answer, in numbers

Every row below cites a document that states its own basis, or is flagged where it does not.

Product	Portion/pouch mass	Nicotine content	Basis	Source
Swedish snus, FDA category figure	—	8.71 mg/g	Dry weight, stated	FDA, Copenhagen Classic Snuff MRTP review, Table 1
Swedish snus, free nicotine	—	5.65 mg/g	Wet weight (“as is”), stated	same table, adjacent row
General snus portion	1.0 g	8 mg per portion	⚠ not stated	Lunell et al. 2020
General snus (clinical study figure)	1000 mg	8.8 ± 0.4 mg per portion	⚠ not stated	FDA PMTA review, General snus, 2015
Loose-leaf chewing tobacco	—	6.2 mg/g total; 0.04 mg/g free	Dry / wet, stated	FDA Table 1
Camel Snus Original (US-made)	—	11.3 mg/g	Wet weight, stated	Lawler et al. 2013 (CDC)
ZYN 3 mg / 6 mg	0.40 g	3 / 6 mg per pouch	Per pouch (FDA’s orders; the brand states no basis)	FDA modified-risk order
on! 2 mg / 4 mg	0.260 g	2 / 4 mg per pouch	Per pouch (FDA)	FDA marketing order
on! PLUS 6 mg / 9 mg	0.714 g	6 / 9 mg per pouch	Per pouch (FDA)	FDA marketing order
Pouch market median (Germany, 2022)	0.6 g	9.48 mg per pouch	Per pouch, stated	BfR Opinion 023/2022
Pouch range, 26 products measured	—	2.6–15.1 mg per pouch; 7.6–20.0 mg/g	Both, stated	Rantaša & Finšgar 2026

Read that table once more and the headline falls out. A one-gram snus portion and a 9 mg pouch are in the same neighbourhood. The idea that snus is “much stronger” or that pouches are “much stronger” — I have seen both asserted confidently — survives only as long as nobody checks the denominator.

Three denominators, and almost nobody says which

A nicotine figure can mean milligrams per pouch, milligrams per gram of product, or milligrams per gram of dry product. They are three different quantities and they can differ by a factor of two or three.

Germany’s federal risk institute went and measured how often anyone says: “Nicotine content, expressed as mg per pouch or per g, was declared clearly on only about a third of the nicotine pouches examined.” And it identified exactly the trap: “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 consequence it gives is concrete — “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.”

The single best illustration is a brand that does the right thing. Nordic Spirit publishes both bases for all six of its tiers:

“Regular – Mini pouch size: 3mg of nicotine per pouch / 9mg of nicotine per gram.”
“Mellow – Mini pouch size: 4mg of nicotine per pouch / 9mg of nicotine per gram.”
“Regular – Standard pouch size: 6mg of nicotine per pouch / 9mg of nicotine per gram.”
“Strong – Standard pouch size: 9mg of nicotine per pouch / 14mg of nicotine per gram.”

Look at what “9 mg” does across those four lines. On one brand’s own published figures, the numeral 9 denotes 3 mg, 4 mg, 6 mg or 9 mg of actual nicotine, depending on which basis you happen to be reading. A threefold spread behind one number, on one page.

Even legislators trip on it. Poland’s cap, in art. 11hb of Dz.U. 2025 poz. 799, reads “zawartość nikotyny w woreczku nikotynowym nie może przekraczać 20 mg/g” — the nicotine content in the nicotine pouch may not exceed 20 mg per gram. The object of the sentence is the pouch; the unit is per gram. You cannot apply that cap without weighing the pouch, and nothing in the statute requires the weight to be declared.

FDA puts two nicotine rows on two different bases, in one table

The cleanest cross-category comparison anyone has published is FDA’s own, in its Technical Project Lead review of the Copenhagen Classic Snuff modified-risk application. “Table 1. FDA Comparison of HPHCs in Copenhagen Classic Snuff Compared to Other ST Categories” sets five smokeless categories side by side — and carries this footnote:

“Data reported on a dry weight basis (DWB) except for free nicotine, pH, and moisture which are reported” “as is” (wet weight basis)

Category	Total nicotine (mg/g), dry weight	Free nicotine (mg/g), wet weight
Copenhagen Classic Snuff	12.5	3.92
Moist snuff	12	4.2
Dry snuff	15.8	0.7
Loose leaf	6.2	0.04
Swedish snus	8.71	5.65

Two rows, both labelled mg/g, both about nicotine, on two different bases — and the regulator says so, which is more than most sources manage. The Swedish snus column is footnoted as “reported as an average of data from Swedish Match 2014 MRTP application”: the manufacturer’s own filing, averaged by FDA.

Here is why that matters practically. Swedish snus runs around 50% moisture. If you take the 8.71 mg/g figure, multiply it by a one-gram wet portion and conclude the portion holds 8.71 mg, you have silently mixed a dry-weight concentration with a wet mass — and you are out by roughly the moisture fraction, which is to say roughly double. That the answer lands near the correct per-portion figure anyway is a coincidence of the arithmetic, not a vindication of the method. We went into the moisture machinery in snus moisture levels and why they change everything.

The industry has admitted this problem in writing. A review of the snus literature commissioned by Swedish Match from ENVIRON International Corporation in 2010 reports Swedish nicotine concentrations “between 8.6 and 9.0 mg/g in three different brands of loose snus and between 9.0 and 10.3 mg/g in four different brands of portion-bag snus” — and then adds, of those same figures: “These authors did not specify if the values were given as per wet or dry weight.” A review paid for by the manufacturer, about its own product, cannot tell you which basis the published nicotine numbers are on.

Sweden requires a nicotine figure on neither product

This is the finding that reframed the whole article for me.

For snus, Sweden’s labelling rule is a closed list of four items. LIVSFS 2024:2 § 12 requires net quantity in grams, date of manufacture, a storage instruction where storage affects shelf life, and the name and address of the manufacturer, packer or seller. Nicotine content is not on the list. Section 14 requires a full ingredient declaration only for snus-like products without nicotine.

Meanwhile § 8 of the same regulation demands dry-weight precision where it cares: nitrosamines “i mängder över 2 mg/kg torrvikt” and benzo(a)pyrene at “0,003 mg/kg torrvikt”, while lead and aflatoxins are given with no basis at all, and dry weight itself “ska bestämmas med en etablerad metod” — by an established method, unnamed. So the Swedish state specifies the denominator for contaminants and not for the constituent people actually choose by.

For tobacco-free pouches it is the same answer by a different route. Sweden’s Public Health Agency did make regulations under the tobacco-free nicotine products act — HSLF-FS 2023:24 — and they govern where the ingredient declaration sits (20% of one of the largest faces), how large the health warning is (30% of the two largest faces) and that it be in Swedish. They do not require a nicotine quantity, and the act itself sets no content limit.

And the industry’s own flagship standard is silent too. GOTHIATEK sets limits for sixteen constituents — nitrite, NNN+NNK, NDMA, benzo(a)pyrene, aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, crotonaldehyde, five metals, mercury and agrochemicals. Nicotine is not among them. The standard does at least declare its basis, which puts it ahead of most: “In the table below, the limits and the average contents are based on snus, “as is”.” We looked at the standard in full in the GothiaTek standard, explained.

Czechia shows it can be done

One regulator picked a denominator and held it. The Czech decree on tobacco-free nicotine pouches, Vyhláška č. 141/2023 Sb., in force since 1 July 2023, requires on both the unit pack and the outer pack:

“b) obsah nikotinu v mg na jednu dávku nikotinového sáčku,” “c) počet dávek nikotinového sáčku v jednotkovém balení,”

— the nicotine content in milligrams per single dose, and the number of doses in the pack. Its limits use the same unit throughout: “Jedna dávka nikotinového sáčku může obsahovat maximálně 12 mg nikotinu” (12 mg per dose), “Obsah jednotkového balení nesmí překročit 240 mg nikotinu a musí obsahovat minimálně 20 dávek” (240 mg per pack, minimum 20 doses). Twelve times twenty is two hundred and forty; the three numbers are internally consistent. And if a nicotine salt is used, its quantity per dose must be declared in milligrams too.

Denmark, by contrast, caps content at “9,0 mg nikotin pr. pose” and imposes no duty to tell the buyer what the actual figure is. The UK Act has the power to require labelling, in section 94(3)(b), and has not used it.

What is in it versus what you get

Content is not delivery, and here the snus-versus-pouch comparison genuinely inverts.

Lunell and colleagues measured nicotine remaining in used portions and pouches under one protocol, with the same subjects. The results:

Product	Nicotine in it	Extracted	Fraction	Peak plasma	Time to peak
ZYN 3 mg	2.86 mg measured	1.59 mg	55.9%	7.7 ng/mL	61 min
ZYN 6 mg	5.89 mg measured	3.51 mg	59.1%	14.7 ng/mL	66 min
ZYN 8 mg	7.52 mg measured	3.79 mg	50.4%	18.5 ng/mL	59 min
General snus, 1 g portion	7.57 mg measured	2.41 mg	32.0%	10.6 ng/mL	69 min
General snus, 2 × 1 g	16 mg nominal	5.04 mg	32.6%	21.2 ng/mL	63 min
American moist snuff, 18 mg	18 mg nominal	2.99 mg	18.9%	16.9 ng/mL	65 min

That study was funded by Swedish Match, which makes both ZYN and General, and several authors have financial relationships with the company — so the result flattering the company’s newer product deserves a second opinion. It has one, from the opposite direction. In 2013, a team of British American Tobacco employees published an independent extraction study on a rival snus brand and reported “the present study result of 33 ± 9.9% for LS Brown”, on samples of “1.0 ± 0.04 g” and — unusually, and to their credit — stating the basis outright: “with no correction for pouch mass” “or water content (i.e. wet-weight basis).”

Two manufacturers, two brands, two methods, one answer: snus gives up about a third of its nicotine. A pouch gives up about half to three-fifths.

Which means the comparison that matters runs the opposite way from the label. An 8 mg snus portion delivered about 2.4 mg. A 6 mg ZYN pouch delivered about 3.5 mg. The product with the smaller number on it put more nicotine into the user.

Two caveats travel with that, and I would rather state them than have them found. These are measurements of what left the portion, not what was absorbed — the mouth is not a perfect sink. And a separate in-vitro study of seven pouch brands found release over an hour ranging from 38% to over 88%, which is a different measurement under different conditions and should not be pooled with the mouth figures. Variation between brands is real and large.

The label is often wrong anyway

Three independent lines of evidence say the printed figure is a target rather than a measurement.

FDA’s own review of the ZYN application records a result of “approximately 4.5 mg rather than the 6.0 mg target specification”. An academic study of 26 pouches found measured nicotine “generally lower than declared on the labels, with an average deviation of −28.8%”, with a worst case of −52.9% — though the full per-product data sits in supplementary material I could not reach, and the paper says “generally lower”, not universally, so I am not going to claim every product was under. And an industry-funded study of seven brands measured VELO’s 7 mg pouches at 4.6 mg and Dryft’s at 5.7 mg, while finding two other brands slightly above label.

Nothing comparable exists on the snus side, which is itself worth noting: when the law does not require a figure, there is nothing to audit.

How to compare two cans honestly

A short procedure that works:

Get both onto a per-portion basis. That is the unit you actually consume. A snus portion is typically 1.0 g; a pouch is 0.26–0.8 g.
If a product gives only mg/g, you need its mass, and most brands do not publish one. Nordic Spirit is the only brand I found from which the mass can be derived out of its own two published figures. FDA’s marketing orders publish the mass for every authorised US product, which is often the fastest route.
Check whether a per-gram figure is wet or dry. For snus, assume nothing — the ENVIRON review could not establish it for published Swedish figures, and FDA’s table uses both bases in adjacent rows.
Then discount for extraction. About a third for snus, roughly half for a pouch, as a rough prior rather than a promise.

Frequently asked questions

Is snus stronger than nicotine pouches?

By content per portion, they overlap heavily: around 8–9 mg for a one-gram snus portion against a German market median of 9.48 mg per pouch. By what actually comes out, the pouch usually wins, because it releases a larger fraction.

Why does a snus can not state the nicotine content?

Because Sweden does not require it. LIVSFS 2024:2 § 12 lists four things that must appear on the pack and nicotine content is not one of them. Any figure you do see on a Swedish snus can is voluntary, with no prescribed basis and no prescribed method.

What does “free nicotine” mean, and why is it lower?

It is the unprotonated fraction, which depends on pH, and it is the part that crosses membranes readily. FDA gives Swedish snus 5.65 mg/g free against 8.71 mg/g total — on different bases, note. Our piece on pouch pH and why it changes the hit goes into the chemistry, and nicotine salts vs freebase covers the formulation side.

Does a bigger pouch mean more nicotine?

Not reliably. on! PLUS at 0.714 g holds 6 mg, a derived 8.4 mg/g; on! at 0.260 g holds 4 mg, a derived 15.4 mg/g. The smaller pouch is nearly twice the concentration and two-thirds of the dose.

Which figure should I actually pay attention to?

Milligrams per pouch or per portion, when you can establish that is what you are looking at. Per-gram figures are for comparing formulations, not for predicting an afternoon.

Sources

FDA, Technical Project Lead review, Copenhagen Classic Snuff modified-risk application (MR0000108) — Table 1, the dry/wet basis footnote, and the Swedish Match MRTP attribution.
FDA, modified risk granted orders for ZYN, 30 June 2026 — “Nicotine Concentration: 3 milligrams (mg)/pouch” and “Portion Mass: 0.40 g”.
FDA, authorised nicotine pouch products, content current 21 August 2026; marketing orders for on! and on! PLUS.
FDA, Technical Project Lead review, ZYN — the 4.5 mg against a 6.0 mg target; ZYN’s own moisture specification is redacted in that document.
FDA, Technical Project Lead review for General snus PMTAs PM0000010–PM0000017, 2015 — “Portion Mass: 1000 mg” and “General (8.8±0.4 mg nicotine/portion)”.
Lawler TS, Stanfill SB, Zhang L, Ashley DL, Watson CH, “Chemical characterization of domestic oral tobacco products”, Food and Chemical Toxicology 2013;57:380–386 — “Total nicotine (mg/g, wet)”. Supported by internal CDC funds; “The authors report no conflicts of interest.”
ENVIRON International Corporation, “Review of the Scientific Literature on Snus (Swedish Moist Snuff)”, 31 March 2010, prepared for Swedish Match — the Andersson 1994 figures and the unstated-basis admission. Industry-commissioned.
Lunell E, Fagerström K, Hughes J, Pendrill R, Nicotine & Tobacco Research 2020, doi:10.1093/ntr/ntaa068 — extraction fractions and pharmacokinetics for ZYN, General snus and American moist snuff. “The present study was funded by Swedish Match AB, Stockholm, Sweden.”
Digard H, Gale N, Errington G, Peters N, McAdam K, “Multi-analyte approach for determining the extraction of tobacco constituents from pouched snus by consumers during use”, Chemistry Central Journal 2013;7:55 — 33 ± 9.9% extraction, wet-weight basis stated. “All authors are employees of British American Tobacco, which is a producer of snus.”
Rantaša M, Finšgar M, Analyst (2026), d6an00153j — 26 pouches, −28.8% average deviation, 2.6–15.1 mg per pouch. Slovenian Research Agency and ERDF; no conflict declared.
Platt SP et al., Scientific Reports (2026) — measured versus labelled nicotine per pouch, and in-vitro release. Funded by Altria Client Services LLC; all authors Altria employees at the time.
BfR, Opinion 023/2022 — the declaration finding, the 0.6 g / 9.48 mg median and the 1.79–47.5 mg range.
Livsmedelsverket, LIVSFS 2024:2 (Swedish text; English as notified to the Commission). Folkhälsomyndigheten, HSLF-FS 2023:24; SFS 2022:1257.
Czechia: Vyhláška č. 141/2023 Sb. Denmark: BEK nr. 249 af 4. marts 2025. Poland: Dz.U. 2025 poz. 799, art. 11hb. United Kingdom: Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, s. 94.
Swedish Match, the GOTHIATEK standard; Nordic Spirit FAQ; ZYN US FAQ.