E-Liquid Nicotine Mix Calculator

Why bottle space is the whole game

Mixing your own vape juice comes down to one stubborn fact: a finished bottle holds exactly one volume, and everything you pour has to share it. Concentrated nicotine base claims its portion first, because it dictates the strength. Whatever is left over gets split between propylene glycol (PG) and vegetable glycerin (VG), the two diluents that decide how thin, thick, and vapor-heavy the liquid feels. Buy your juice premixed and you're stuck with the handful of strengths on the shelf; mix it yourself and you can dial in any strength your device likes, in any bottle size, at any PG/VG blend. The catch is the arithmetic — get the nicotine base volume wrong and the ratio drifts, or the bottle overflows.

This calculator does that bookkeeping for you. Give it a target strength in mg/mL, a bottle size, the strength of the nicotine base you already own, and a PG/VG split, and it returns the exact milliliters of each component to measure. It won't recommend a brand or replace careful handling, but it hands you a clean, repeatable starting recipe every time.

Filling in the five fields

Start with the final amount you want to make. A small test bottle might be 30 mL; a batch of a proven favorite could be 60 or 100 mL. Then enter the nicotine strength you want in the finished liquid, written in mg/mL — milligrams of nicotine per milliliter of e-liquid.

1. Total Volume (mL): Enter the final bottle size you want to end up with.
2. Target Strength (mg/mL): Enter the desired nicotine concentration in the finished e-liquid.
3. Nicotine Base Strength (mg/mL): Enter the concentration of the nicotine base you already have on hand.
4. PG Percentage (%) and VG Percentage (%): Enter the ratio for the finished mix. These two numbers should add to 100.
5. Select Compute Mix to view the component breakdown.

Remember which field does what: nicotine base strength and target strength set how much base you need, while the PG/VG fields only decide how the leftover space is split. Measuring precision should match the batch — on a 30 mL trial bottle, the 0.1 mL gradations on a syringe or a small scale earn their keep, whereas on a big batch, steady technique matters more than speed. Whatever the size, wear gloves and label the bottle with its date and strength so today's numbers still mean something next month.

The nicotine mass balance

Think of the recipe in two moves. First, work out how much nicotine base supplies the strength you want; second, hand the leftover volume to PG and VG. The nicotine step rests on one idea from grade-school chemistry — conservation of mass. The nicotine sitting in the finished bottle has to equal the nicotine you poured in from the base. No advanced chemistry required, just a mass balance written in liquid-mixing units.

Let $S_t$ be the target strength (mg/mL), $S_b$ the nicotine base strength (mg/mL), and $V_t$ the desired total volume (mL). The required nicotine base volume $V_n$ is:

After adding nicotine base, the remaining volume is:

Then PG and VG volumes are calculated from your chosen percentages, which must sum to 100:

In plain language, a higher target strength increases the nicotine base requirement, while a stronger nicotine base reduces the amount of base you need. Total volume scales everything up or down. Double the bottle size and, assuming the same target strength and ratio, you double each ingredient volume as well.

Working a 30 mL bottle by hand

Goal: Make 30 mL of 6 mg/mL e-liquid using a 100 mg/mL nicotine base at a 50/50 PG/VG ratio.

• Nicotine base volume: Vn = (6 ÷ 100) × 30 = 1.8 mL
• Remaining volume: 30 − 1.8 = 28.2 mL
• PG volume (50%): 0.50 × 28.2 = 14.1 mL
• VG volume (50%): 0.50 × 28.2 = 14.1 mL

So the recipe is 1.8 mL nicotine base, 14.1 mL PG, and 14.1 mL VG. The example is useful because it shows the two important ideas at once. First, the nicotine base is only a small fraction of the bottle because the base is much stronger than the target liquid. Second, PG and VG share the remaining bottle space after nicotine has already claimed its portion.

If you repeated the same example at 60 mL instead of 30 mL, all three numbers would simply double. If you kept the bottle at 30 mL but dropped the target strength from 6 mg/mL to 3 mg/mL, the nicotine base volume would be cut in half. These small thought experiments are a good way to check that the output feels reasonable before you mix.

Picking a PG/VG split

PG and VG get argued about as if one wins outright, but they simply pull different levers. PG is the thin one — it carries flavor and delivers most of the throat hit. VG is the syrupy one — smoother draws, bigger clouds. The blend that suits you depends on your device, coil, wick, and how much power you run. There's no universally correct ratio, only the one your setup wicks cleanly and tastes right on.

Treat those rows as jumping-off points, not laws. A liquid that feels thin, floods the coil, or wicks too fast usually wants more VG. One that tastes muted or gums up a small pod usually wants more PG. The calculator won't pick for you, but it turns whatever split you settle on into exact milliliters.

What the calculator deliberately ignores

The math here is stripped down on purpose — transparent, easy to check, and nothing hidden. The flip side is that a couple of real-world details sit outside it, and it's worth knowing where they land before you call the output a finished recipe.

The biggest omission is flavor concentrate. Flavoring, sweetener, and cooling agents take up bottle space too, so in a real batch you subtract their volume before dividing what's left between PG and VG. Say you want 60 mL at 3 mg/mL from a 100 mg/mL base, a 30/70 PG/VG feel, and 10% flavor. Nicotine base is (3 ÷ 100) × 60 = 1.8 mL. Flavor is 10% of 60, or 6.0 mL. That leaves 60 − 1.8 − 6.0 = 52.2 mL for plain diluents, so PG is 0.30 × 52.2 = 15.66 mL and VG is 0.70 × 52.2 = 36.54 mL — still a 60 mL bottle, now with room for the flavor. This tool hands you the nicotine-base figure; the flavor subtraction is the one manual step it leaves to you.

Two smaller gaps: the carrier your nicotine is dissolved in (PG, VG, or a blend) quietly counts toward your ratio, and this page treats the base as its own volume rather than folding it into the split — so trim the added PG or VG to compensate if you want an exact match. And the results are pure milliliters. Some mixers work by weight instead, but grams depend on each liquid's density and temperature, so no conversion is offered here; if you switch to a scale, write down your method so repeat batches stay identical.

None of that is theoretical, because you're handling concentrated nicotine. It can be dangerous on skin or if swallowed, so glove up, mix without distractions, wipe spills right away, and store the base labeled and out of reach of kids and pets. Accuracy is its own hazard: VG clings to a syringe and a tiny nicotine dose is easy to overshoot with coarse tools, which is exactly why a scale wins on repeatability.

Questions mixers run into

Why won't it let target strength exceed base strength? The base is your only nicotine source. If it's 48 mg/mL, no amount of it makes a 60 mg/mL liquid — reaching that would demand more base than the bottle even holds. You'd need a stronger base to go higher.

Do PG and VG have to add to 100? In this tool, yes. Those two fields describe how the non-nicotine portion is divided between the two diluents. Flavors and additives aren't handled by shrinking the PG/VG total — account for them separately against the bottle volume, as in the flavor example above.

My base is in PG (or VG) — does that matter? It nudges your final ratio: a PG-based nicotine adds PG, a VG-based one adds VG. The calculator doesn't fold that in automatically, so for a tight match, shave the corresponding diluent by the base volume after you compute it.

Why don't my numbers match another calculator? Almost always rounding rules, whether flavor is counted, and whether the base carrier is rolled into the ratio; weight-based tools also assume densities. The underlying mass balance is identical — it's the accounting choices around it that shift the displayed volumes.

What strengths do people actually use? Freebase blends commonly land between 3 and 12 mg/mL; salt formulations can run higher where regulations and preference allow. There's no single right number — device, usage pattern, and tolerance all weigh in. If you're stepping down, small drops are easier to judge than big jumps.

How does the ratio affect wicking and coils? High-VG juice is thick and may starve a coil unless the wicking channels are generous or the power is up. High-PG juice flows freely and suits smaller systems, though some find it harsher. Leaking, dry hits, or flat flavor can trace back to the ratio — alongside power level and coil condition.