Component Sourcing Report, September 2026

01How much do prices differ between distributors for the same part?

More than most buyers expect. We compared every part quoted by at least two authorized distributors with a first price break at quantity one: 6,610 parts. The gap between the lowest and highest quote had a median of 18.2%. For 44.8% of parts it was above 20%, and for 13.2% it was above 50%.

The result does not depend on the exchange rate we use. 6,478 of these comparisons are between two quotes in the same currency, and on that subset the median gap is 18.3%.

We do not rank distributors here. These are list prices as each API returns them, and the feeds do not say whether shipping or sales tax is included. A tax difference of a few percent would decide which distributor looks cheaper; it would not produce an 18% median gap. Compare landed cost, not list price, before you order.

02Which categories carry the most obsolete parts?

Across 185,055 parts listed by DigiKey, 10.4% are obsolete and 1.5% are marked not recommended for new designs. The share is far from even. In integrated circuits it reaches 30.6%: 7,212 obsolete and 652 NRND out of 25,714. Check lifecycle before a part goes into a new design, not after the first order fails.

03Which categories are hardest to find in stock?

69.6% of quoted parts had stock at a distributor on the snapshot date. By category it ranges from 28.5% for optics to 99.3% for magnetics components.

At the other end, magnetics components (99.3%), filters (96.9%), isolators (96.7%), switches (93.7%) were almost always available.

04Is a distributor listing the same as stock?

No, and the difference is large. Of the part listings we hold from DigiKey, 85.8% showed stock; of those from element14, 60.2%. That reflects what each distributor chooses to list, including lines they supply to order, rather than which one carries more inventory. A part appearing in a catalogue tells you it can be ordered, not that it can ship today.

05What this data cannot tell you

• Lead timesOnly 6 out-of-stock records carried a factory lead time, too few to report. We will add lead times when the feeds supply them.
• How many sources a part has98.0% of parts in this snapshot are quoted by one distributor, but that is how the catalogue is assembled (each feed covers different parts), not evidence that those parts are single-sourced.
• The whole marketThis is the catalogue TracedParts tracks. Category sizes reflect how deep each distributor's API lets a harvest go, not how many parts exist.
• Lifecycle outside DigiKeyOnly DigiKey records carry a lifecycle status we can rely on for this analysis, so lifecycle figures cover those 185,055 parts only.

06How were the figures produced?

Every figure on this page is computed from the 2026-09-21 snapshot of the TracedParts catalogue: 511,724 manufacturer part numbers from 2,379 manufacturers, with price and stock read from the DigiKey, Mouser and element14 APIs. Prices are compared at quantity one only. Category rates are reported only where a category holds at least 300 parts. The same code produces each month's issue, so the next report will show how these numbers move. See the methodology for how the catalogue itself is built.