Nicotine Strength Guide: Finding Your Dose, 1mg to 25mg

Start one band below where you think you belong, and treat the first pouch as a ten-minute test rather than a session. That is the practical answer, and the rest of this page is the detail that makes it usable — including the part most strength charts leave out, which is that a large number printed on a can is often not a dose at all.

Two things first. Nicotine is addictive, and these products are sold only to adults aged 18 and over. VinaPouches is a shop, not a medical provider: what follows is what the labels say and what our catalogue records. Questions about nicotine and your body belong with a doctor or pharmacist.

The five bands, and how many products are really in each

We hold 682 products. Of those, 352 publish a milligram figure per pouch. Only those 352 can honestly be sorted into a strength band, because a band is a statement about milligrams in the pouch you put under your lip. They fall out like this:

• Light, 1–4mg — 13 products. The smallest band on the site. Two ZYN products at 3mg, and 4mg from Ace, Chainpop, FOLD, GLICK, STNG, VELO and XQS.
• Regular, 5–8mg — 86 products. The everyday band, and where 6mg alone accounts for 68 products.
• Strong, 9–12mg — 176 products. The largest band by a wide margin. 9mg is the single most common figure in the whole catalogue at 89 products, with 12mg close behind at 75.
• Extra strong, 13–20mg — 76 products. 16mg is the centre of gravity here with 38 products; 14 sit at exactly 20mg.
• Ultra strong, above 20mg — 1 product. NOIS Eucalypt at 25mg. That is the highest per-pouch dose any manufacturer in our range publishes.

Notice what those five numbers add up to: 352, not 682.

The biggest number on a can is often not a dose

330 of our 682 products publish no per-pouch figure at all, and they belong to no band. This is the single most useful thing on this page, so it is worth being precise about why.

A pouch can be described two ways, and both are written as "mg" in the same spot on the tin.

• Milligrams per pouch. How much nicotine is in the one you use. ZYN, VELO, XQS, CLEW and most of the market print this. A 6mg pouch holds 6mg.
• Milligrams per gram. How concentrated the material is, regardless of how much material there is. A pouch does not weigh a gram, so a figure like 70mg/g describes the mix and not the serving.

Nothing on the outside of the can distinguishes them. The unit is identical, the placement is identical, and the per-gram number is always the larger — which is why the brands that sound strongest are so often the ones quoting a concentration. In our catalogue, 35 products carry a per-gram label figure: ICEBERG at 70mg/g and 50mg/g, RAVE at 32.5mg/g, MAGGIE at 60mg/g, NOiS at 50mg/g and 35mg/g, and GLICK at 50mg/g. Every one of those records no per-pouch dose in our data, because there is none to record.

We do not convert them. Turning 70mg/g into a per-pouch number requires the exact weight of the pouch, no maker publishes it, and inventing a plausible figure to fill an empty field is how a wrong number acquires authority. If you want that argument in full, with what it means for the strongest-pouch league tables, we wrote it up in what ICEBERG's 70mg actually means.

The remaining 295 are less interesting. For 230 of them the maker simply states nothing — all six Siberia products are in that group, with no per-pouch dose and no per-gram figure either. The last 65 are products where a dose is not a meaningful attribute at all: 27 flavour pouches with no nicotine in them, 22 caffeine pouches, and 16 accessories such as cans and display units.

The rule that follows is short. An unpublished dose is an unknown, not a zero and not a maximum. If you are opening a per-gram-labelled brand for the first time, assume it is at least as strong as your current can and give it a shorter session than usual.

If you have never used a pouch

Start in the light band. Thirteen products is a narrow choice, and that is the shape of the market rather than a gap in our stocking — most brands do not make anything below 4mg.

Put one pouch between the upper lip and the gum, leave it alone, and expect a tingle or a mild burn within about a minute. That sensation is normal and fades. Take it out after ten minutes the first time, even if nothing much seems to be happening, and see how you feel an hour later. A pouch keeps releasing nicotine the whole time it is in, so the length of the session matters as much as the figure on the tin.

If you overshoot — too strong a pouch, or a normal one left in too long — the usual result is dizziness, sweating and nausea, sometimes with a racing heartbeat and a headache. It typically arrives within fifteen minutes and passes over the next twenty to thirty. Remove the pouch immediately, rinse your mouth, sit down, and drink water. Do not use another one to settle it.

Two things reliably cause a bad first experience: an empty stomach, and letting a pleasant flavour stand in for a strength check. Sweet flavours make high figures easy to keep in, which is a design decision, not a signal.

If you already use nicotine daily

There is no conversion table between a cigarette, a vape and a pouch, and any page that gives you one has made it up. The delivery routes, the timing and the amount actually absorbed are all different, and none of it is published in a form that would let a retailer do that arithmetic honestly.

What works instead is to treat the pouch bands on their own terms. Most people with an established daily habit land in the regular band and settle there; the strong band is where long-term users end up, not where they should begin. Buy one can of a 6mg product, use it for a week, and let that tell you which way to move. A week of real evidence beats any chart, including this one.

Moving up: change one thing at a time

The reliable way to step up is to keep the flavour and the brand fixed and move only the milligrams, so a single variable changes. Four brands in our range make that easy because they sell the same flavour at several strengths:

• CLEW runs 5mg, 10mg and 20mg across seven shared flavours — Blueberry, Citrus, Cool Mint, Menthol, Spearmint, Watermelon and Wintergreen. It is the widest single-brand ladder here.
• MYNT and LUMI both run 6mg, 12mg and 18mg across their full flavour lists.
• NEAFS runs 6mg, 9mg and 12mg, which is a gentler set of steps.
• ZYN spans 3mg, 6mg, 9mg, 12mg, 15mg and 18mg, the finest gradation of any brand we carry.

Go up one step, not two. From 6mg the next stop is 9mg, not 20mg. And the honest signal that it is time to move is that your current pouch has stopped registering at all — not that it merely feels comfortable. Comfortable is the destination, not a stage to escape.

The reverse also applies and gets forgotten. Tolerance falls faster than people expect after a break of a few weeks, so a product that suited you last year may not now.

What the shape of the catalogue is not telling you

176 products in the strong band and 13 in the light band is a fact about what manufacturers make, not a recommendation about what you should use. The market skews high because that is where the competition is, and reading a stock count as dosing guidance gets the causation backwards. Plenty of long-term users stay in the light and regular bands permanently; there is nothing to graduate to.

Pouches with no nicotine at all

Our 0mg range lists 49 products: 27 flavour pouches with the nicotine left out, and 22 caffeine pouches that carry caffeine instead. Some brands mirror most of their flavour list at 0mg, which makes it a straightforward way to test an unfamiliar flavour before buying it with nicotine in it. We make no claim that these help anyone reduce or stop using nicotine, and we sell them under the same 18+ rule as everything else.

The short version

• Never compare a per-gram figure to a per-pouch figure. 70mg/g and 6mg per pouch are different measurements.
• Start one band lower than you expect to need, and cap the first pouch at ten minutes.
• Move up one band at a time, inside a flavour and brand you already know.
• Session length is part of the dose. A shorter session is the easiest adjustment available to you.
• If it goes wrong, take it out. Dizziness, sweating and nausea mean the pouch comes out now.

Every product page here states the per-pouch dose where the manufacturer publishes one, and says plainly that none is published where they do not. Nothing is estimated, interpolated or converted. Browse the range by measured strength at the shop.

Adults 18+ only. These products contain nicotine, which is an addictive substance. Not for anyone under 18, anyone who does not already use nicotine, or anyone pregnant or breastfeeding. Keep used pouches away from children and pets. Catalogue figures checked on 2 August 2026.