Nic Salts vs Freebase: What's Actually Inside a Disposable
Turn a disposable over and the label gives you a number — usually 5%, or 50mg per mL — and often the words "nic salt". Nearly every disposable we sell sits in that bracket, and the question we get most in our inbox is why 50 sounds enormous next to the 3mg and 6mg figures people see quoted for refillable gear. The answer is chemistry, not marketing, and once it clicks the whole strength conversation stops being confusing.
Same molecule, two different chemical states
This is the bit almost nobody explains properly: freebase and nic salt e-liquid contain the same nicotine molecule. What differs is whether that molecule is carrying an extra proton, and that one difference changes how the liquid behaves on your throat.
Freebase: nicotine on its own
Freebase is nicotine in its unprotonated base form — nothing paired to it. It is alkaline, and manufacturer and retailer guides generally place e-liquid freebase somewhere around pH 8 to 9. That alkalinity is precisely what you register as throat hit. It was the standard form in e-liquid for years, and it is still what goes into refillable bottles today.
Nic salt: nicotine plus an organic acid
A nicotine salt is that same freebase nicotine combined with an organic acid — benzoic acid, most commonly. The acid donates a proton, the nicotine accepts it, and the resulting salt sits much lower on the pH scale, typically around 5. The modern version of this formulation was patented by Pax Labs (later Juul Labs) under the title "Nicotine salt formulations for aerosol devices and methods thereof", granted in December 2015. The patent names benzoic, salicylic and levulinic acids among others; benzoic is the one you will see on ingredient lists.
Why 50mg of salt is liveable and 50mg of freebase would not be
Here is the key point: throat hit tracks pH far more than it tracks milligrams. At 12mg or 18mg, freebase already has a sharp, scraping edge on the back of the throat that a lot of people find limits how much they can comfortably take. Push the same alkaline liquid to 50mg and it would be genuinely unpleasant — which is why nobody formulates it that way. Drop the pH to around 5 with an acid and most of that bite goes with it, so a 50mg liquid becomes something you can actually draw on. That is the whole reason disposables run high-strength salt.
Salt does not delete throat sensation, and anyone telling you it does has not used much of it. It changes the character: a warm, rounded press instead of a dry scrape, with the flavour sitting further forward because your throat is not busy objecting. The practical trade-off is that 50mg lands quietly, so it is easy to take more than you meant to — pace yourself, especially on a device with a fresh coil. If the number itself is what you are stuck on, our guide to vape nicotine strength in mg and percent does the conversions properly.
The carrier: PG and VG
Nicotine is a small fraction of what is in the tank. The bulk is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which carry the flavourings and turn into vapour on the coil. PG is thin, carries flavour cleanly and adds its own share of throat sensation. VG is thick — roughly thirty times more viscous — slightly sweet on its own, and responsible for dense vapour. Refillable bottles print the ratio (50/50, 70/30); disposables do not, because the blend is matched at the factory to that coil and airflow.
Nic salt vs freebase, side by side
| Nicotine salt | Freebase | |
| Chemistry | Nicotine + organic acid (usually benzoic), protonated | Nicotine in base form, no acid added |
| Typical pH | Around 5 | Around 8–9 |
| Throat hit at 50mg | Firm but manageable | Not sold at this strength — it would be far too harsh |
| Strengths normally sold at | 20mg to 50mg per mL | Roughly 3mg to 18mg per mL |
| Best suited to | Low-power, tight-draw devices: disposables and pods | High-power sub-ohm gear run at high wattage |
| Vapour | Modest, warm, flavour-forward | Large volume at low strength |
| In our range | Effectively everything — 5% / 50mg | Nothing — we don't sell refillable liquid |
What that means for the disposables we ship
Effectively every disposable in our range is a nicotine-salt device at 5% / 50mg per mL, tuned for a restricted, mouth-to-lung style draw. That includes IGET Bar Pro, IGET ONE, GROO MAX, G.T. 3600, GODFATHER 9, IGET Bar, IGET Moon and Alibarbar Ingot. The differences between them are puff count, flavour range and whether they recharge — IGET Bar and IGET Bar Pro have no charging port at all, while IGET ONE, GROO MAX, GODFATHER 9 and G.T. take Type-C. The nicotine chemistry is the constant; if you want the draw explained, see our MTL vs DTL guide.
Everything we list is 100% original stock, shipped fast and discreetly Australia-wide, with free shipping on orders of 10 or more. Adults 21+ only.
So where does freebase actually turn up?
In refillable sub-ohm hardware — box mods and tanks with coils below 1.0Ω run at high wattage. Those setups move a lot of vapour per puff, so the liquid in them is deliberately low-strength freebase, often 3mg. It is the same logic in reverse: high strength suits small vapour, low strength suits big vapour. We don't stock refillable systems or e-liquid bottles, so this is background knowledge rather than a shopping decision — our disposable vs pod vs refillable comparison lays out the formats if you're weighing them up.
And nicotine pouches?
Different scale entirely. Pouches like VELO, ZYN and YAHABEBE are labelled in milligrams per pouch, not milligrams per millilitre, so a number on a pouch tin is not comparable to a number on a disposable no matter how similar the digits look. The strength guide covers both scales side by side.