# Onion packs explained: 50-lb sacks, cartons and consumer bags > Onions ship wholesale in a few standard packs: the 50-lb sack is the workhorse, the 25-lb sack is common and the 40-lb carton rounds it out, with consumer bags of 2 to 10 pounds sitting below them. A carton price and a sack price are not comparable until you put them both on a per-pound basis, which is the one bit of math every pack comparison needs. _Updated Jul 10, 2026._ Onions ship wholesale in a handful of standard packs, and the pack is part of the price. The 50-lb sack is the most-quoted wholesale pack. The 25-lb sack is common. The 40-lb carton rounds out the big three. Below them sit consumer bags, the 2, 3, 5 and 10-lb mesh or poly bags a shopper actually buys. Which pack an onion is in changes its quoted price, so the pack is always named alongside the number. ## The wholesale packs A sack is a mesh or poly bag, and 50 pounds is the standard wholesale weight, with 25-lb sacks the common smaller option. A carton is a corrugated box, 40 pounds the usual weight. Same onions, different container, and the market prices each separately because they serve different handling. Sacks are the bulk workhorse for buyers moving big volume. Cartons cost more to make and protect the onions better, so a carton line typically carries a higher price than a sack line for the same onions. That is packaging and handling, not a different market. ## Who uses which pack Pack maps to the buyer. High-volume buyers, repackers and big foodservice distributors take sacks, because sacks are cheap per pound and they are going to rehandle the onions anyway. Cartons go where the onions need to arrive clean and stackable with less bruising. Consumer bags are a retail-facing format, and they price on a different logic again, closer to the grocery shelf than to the shipping-point market. This site's FOB pages track the three wholesale packs, because those are the ones that compare cleanly at the origin. ## The comparison trap: get to per-pound Here is the one mistake to avoid. A 40-lb carton and a 50-lb sack cannot be compared as sticker prices, because they hold different weights. To line them up, divide each by its weight and compare per pound. A carton quote divided by 40 against a sack quote divided by 50 is the only honest comparison. Skip that step and a carton will always look more expensive than it is, or a sack cheaper, purely because of the weight in the bag. Per pound is the great equalizer across packs. ## Worked example: carton versus sack [Table: 40 lb cartons onion prices](https://knowyouronions.news/pack/40-lb-cartons) ([data](https://knowyouronions.news/pack/40-lb-cartons.md)) Take a carton quote off the table above and a 50-lb sack quote for comparable onions. Divide the carton range by 40 and the sack range by 50. Now they are both in dollars per pound and you can actually see which is dearer and by how much, net of the pack. That per-pound step is the whole trick to reading packs. The raw pack prices were never comparable. The per-pound numbers are. Know Your Onions reports pack prices as USDA publishes them, each with its pack named. ## Related data + guides - [50-lb sack prices](https://knowyouronions.news/pack/50-lb-sacks) - [40-lb carton prices](https://knowyouronions.news/pack/40-lb-cartons) - [Onion sizes and grades](https://knowyouronions.news/guides/onion-sizes-and-grades) --- Canonical URL: https://knowyouronions.news/guides/onion-packs-explained