Capsules, Tablets, and Softgels: How Dry-Format Supplements Are Made

Reviewed by Apollo’s production and R&D team · July 14, 2026

Ask a capsule shop what format your product should be and you’ll hear “capsule.” Ask a tablet press and you’ll hear “tablet.” A single-format co-packer has one tool, and your product tends to become whatever that tool makes. The result is a web full of “how it’s made” pages that each describe one format in glowing terms and skip the two next to it.

This is the version a liquid-first manufacturer can write, because we’re not selling you any of the three. Capsules, tablets, and softgels are the dry, solid-dose formats (the pills) made in genuinely different ways, on different equipment, with different tooling and different failure modes. Knowing which is which tells you what a run costs to start, which format you can reverse later, and which one your ingredient will fight.

One boundary first. This is a manufacturing guide: how each format is physically built, filled, pressed, formed, sealed, tested. It makes no claim about absorption, bioavailability, or how fast one format works versus another. Those claims fill pill marketing, and several pages that rank for these searches make them outright. We don’t, for reasons that get clearer by the end.

Educational overview: not legal, regulatory, or medical advice. Requirements change and vary by jurisdiction and sales channel. Last reviewed July 2026.

Short answer. The three dry formats split by two things: the state of the fill, and the tooling it takes to close it up. A two-piece capsule meters a dry powder into a pre-made shell: the lowest-tooling dry format, running on mostly stock components. A tablet compresses powder into a solid slug using custom punches and dies, which makes it cheap at volume but the hardest format to reverse. A softgel forms, fills, and seals a one-piece shell around an oil or non-aqueous liquid in a single step on a custom die, then dries for days. Match the format to your fill state and your dose first; the tooling and minimums follow from that.

Best for: Founders and brands comparing dry, solid-dose formats and sizing up what each really takes to make before requesting a quote.

Key decision: Whether your active is a dry powder (capsule or tablet) or an oil/liquid (softgel or liquid-filled capsule), because the fill state decides the format before cost or preference does.

Apollo path: Apollo is a liquid-first contract manufacturer and will tell you honestly when your product belongs in a dry format. Formulation, ingredient qualification, and per-lot testing through vetted independent third-party labs apply to any format; format-specific fill is scoped through a fit review, and a quote returns the run size, component minimums, and tooling behind your exact product.

Why these three aren’t interchangeable

It’s tempting to treat capsule, tablet, and softgel as interchangeable ways to make a pill. They aren’t. Two questions sort them, before anyone talks branding or price.

Is your fill a dry powder or a liquid? Dry powders go into a two-piece capsule or a compressed tablet; an oil, an oil solution, or a lipophilic liquid or semi-solid goes into a softgel, or a band-sealed two-piece capsule built to hold a liquid. That split alone rules out half the field: you can’t press an oil into a tablet, or pour a free-flowing powder into a softgel die.

How much custom tooling does it take to close up? This is the question the format’s name never answers, and it decides your starting cost and your flexibility. A two-piece capsule shell is a stock component, bought rather than built for you; a tablet’s shape and embossed logo are cut into custom steel punches and dies; a softgel’s shape and size are set by a custom rotary die. Tooling separates a small first batch on stock parts from committing to a mold before the line turns over.

How a two-piece capsule is actually filled

A two-piece capsule is the most familiar dry format and the most forgiving to start, because most of what you need already exists as a stock part. The shell comes pre-made in standard sizes from a shell supplier; the line’s job is to fill it accurately and close it.

The process is short and the discipline is in one number:

1. Weigh and blend. Every active and excipient is weighed to the batch formula, milled or sieved to a consistent particle size, and blended to a uniform powder. Keeping that blend even from the mixer to the fill is the same problem covered for powders and stick packs.
2. Meter into the body. An automated encapsulator separates the cap from the body, doses a measured amount of powder into the body, then rejoins the two halves. Two metering principles dominate: a dosator, which packs a small plug of powder inside a tube and ejects it into the shell, and a tamping / dosing-disc system, which builds the dose by pressing powder into cavities in stages. Both are trying to deliver the same mass of powder into the same volume, capsule after capsule.
3. Polish and inspect. Filled capsules are de-dusted and polished, then checked (visually and by weight) before they go to bottling.

Everything that matters about a capsule run lives in fill-weight accuracy, and that lives in how well the powder flows. An encapsulator fills by volume (it packs a set cavity and trusts the same volume to hold the same mass every time), which only holds if the powder flows evenly at a consistent density. A cohesive, poorly flowing, or dusty blend bridges and packs unevenly, so fill weights drift; and because the powder is the dose, a drifting fill weight is a drifting dose. That’s why the fix is almost always a formulation fix: improve the flow. Match particle sizes, granulate a difficult blend into free-running grains, or add a small amount of a glidant (a flow aid such as colloidal silica) so the powder feeds cleanly.

Two shell choices matter before you commit. Standard shells are gelatin: animal-derived, inexpensive, widely stocked. HPMC (a plant-derived cellulose shell, often labeled “vegetarian”) and other non-gelatin shells like pullulan cost more but open a vegan claim, and HPMC holds up better around moisture-sensitive and hygroscopic actives than gelatin does. The shell is one component decision that touches positioning, allergen profile, and stability plan at once.

The capsule’s advantage, in manufacturing terms, is that it asks for the least: no custom mold, no press tooling, no multi-day cure; just a stock shell, a stock bottle, and a blend engineered to flow. That’s why it’s usually the lowest-commitment dry format and the easiest to change your mind about later.

How a tablet is pressed, and why it’s the hardest format to reverse

A tablet looks simpler than a capsule and is harder to make well. You’re taking loose powder and forcing it, under tons of pressure, into a solid slug that has to survive a bottle and a shipping truck, then break apart cleanly once it’s swallowed. Getting a powder to do both (hold together and fall apart on cue) is a formulation problem solved with excipients, the non-active ingredients that make compression possible.

Getting the powder ready to press has three routes. Direct compression blends and presses it as-is: fastest and gentlest, but only if the ingredients flow and compact well on their own. Wet granulation binds the powder into granules with a liquid, then dries and mills them: the most robust route for difficult actives, but it adds heat and moisture steps fragile ingredients may not survive. Dry granulation (roller compaction) presses the powder into dense ribbons and mills those into granules: a middle path for heat- or moisture-sensitive actives that still won’t flow.

The pressing itself happens on a rotary tablet press: powder feeds into a die cavity, an upper and lower punch compress it, and the tablet ejects, at high speed. After pressing, many tablets are coated: a thin film for appearance, to mask taste, to ease swallowing, or (as an enteric coat) to protect the active from stomach acid.

Here’s the strategic part the single-format pages skip: the punches and dies are custom tooling. A tablet’s shape, size, and any embossed logo are cut into hardened steel made for your product. That tooling is a real cost and a real lead time, and it’s specific to that tablet; change the shape and you’re buying new tooling. Combined with the press development it takes to dial in a new formula’s compression, that makes a tablet the hardest dry format to reverse. A capsule blend can be re-sized or moved with relatively little drama; a committed tablet, with its tooling and its validated compression, is a heavier decision to unwind. Tablets earn their keep at high volume, where their low per-unit cost and shelf stability pay back the tooling, but they punish indecision early.

How a softgel is made: one continuous forming, filling, sealing step

A softgel is the odd one out. A capsule and a tablet both start from a dry powder; a softgel starts from a liquid fill and a shell that doesn’t exist yet. Both are created in the same machine, at the same moment, on a rotary die.

The rotary die process runs like this. Molten gel (gelatin, a plasticizer such as glycerin or sorbitol, and water) is cast into two thin, continuous ribbons. The ribbons travel toward each other over a pair of counter-rotating dies. As they meet, a heated wedge injects a precise shot of the liquid fill between them; the injection pushes the softening gelatin into the die pockets, and the dies simultaneously cut the shell to shape and seal it around the fill in one motion. The capsule that drops out was formed, filled, and hermetically sealed in a single continuous step; there is no separate “make the shell, then fill it” like a two-piece capsule.

Two consequences follow, and they’re the ones brands underestimate.

The die is the tooling, and it’s custom. The shape and size of your softgel (round, oval, oblong) are defined by the die cut for your product. Like tablet punches, a softgel die is a custom cost and a custom lead time. This is the honest content behind “softgels cost more to start.”

Softgels need to dry, and drying takes days. Fresh softgels leave the die soft and full of water; they’re tumble- and tray-dried to a stable moisture level over a period best measured in days, not minutes: a window built into every softgel timeline with no equivalent in a capsule or tablet run.

Now the fact several ranking pages get wrong. Softgels are for oils and non-aqueous liquids: fish and algal oils, oil-dissolved vitamins like D and E, CoQ10, lipophilic botanical extracts, and semi-solid oil suspensions. They are not for free water or aqueous solutions, because water migrates into and compromises the gelatin shell. You’ll see comparison pages claim softgels hold “aqueous” or “water-soluble” fills; on the floor, a watery fill in a gelatin softgel is a stability problem, not a product. If your active is oil-based, a softgel (or a liquid) is its home; if it’s a dry powder, it isn’t a softgel candidate at all.

There’s a middle path the format-versus-format pages tend to miss: a two-piece liquid-filled hard capsule. A hard shell (often HPMC) is filled with an oil, an oil solution, or a semi-solid, then band-sealed so it doesn’t leak. It carries many of the softgel’s fill advantages with lower, more standard tooling and easier small-batch development, which can make it the sensible route for an oil-based product that doesn’t yet justify a custom softgel die. It’s worth asking about whenever “softgel” is on the table.

Capsule vs tablet vs softgel: the honest comparison

Put the three side by side on what actually decides a project (the fill they take, the tooling they demand, and how hard they are to change later), and the choice stops being about which pill looks best.

Two honest limits cut across all three. None carries a gram-scale dose gracefully: you can’t put a full scoop of protein or a big mineral dose into one or two pills, which is exactly where a powder or a liquid takes over. And none is inherently “better absorbed.” You’ll find pages that rank softgels over capsules over tablets on how fast they break down or how well the body takes them up. Those are marketing claims, not manufacturing facts; any such claim on your own label is yours to substantiate for your specific formula. We rank formats by fit (the fill, the dose, the tooling, what you can change later), not by an absorption story. The ingredient-first way to narrow the field across every format, dry and liquid alike, runs through choosing the right supplement format. If a chewable, taste-first format is also on your list, how a gummy is manufactured covers that molded route from the same floor-level angle.

What in-process testing proves before a dry-format run scales

Everything above is a set of claims about a batch: the fill weight is on target, the tablet holds together and breaks apart on cue, the softgel is sealed, every unit carries the dose the label promises. Testing is what turns those claims into evidence, and each format has its own in-process checks.

• Capsules: fill-weight (weight-variation) checks across the run, content uniformity for the active, disintegration, and appearance. The weight check is the front line, because the fill weight is the dose.
• Tablets: weight, thickness, and hardness (crushing strength), friability (whether it chips and dusts in handling), disintegration time, and content uniformity. Hardness and disintegration are a matched pair: too soft and it crumbles, too hard and it won’t break apart.
• Softgels: fill weight, seam and seal integrity (a leak test), shell moisture after drying, and content uniformity.

Around those sit the checks any finished supplement carries, scoped to the ingredients and the sales channel: identity and potency, and (driven by botanicals, minerals, and channel rules) heavy metals and microbial panels, plus a stability program to prove the product holds its dose and its physical form through the shelf life it’s dated for. Which panels a given product actually needs, and why testing is quoted as its own line rather than buried in a per-unit price, is the subject of what testing your supplement actually needs.

These checks aren’t optional polish; they’re how a manufacturer meets its own specifications. As of mid-2026, 21 CFR Part 111 requires a manufacturer to set a specification at any point, step, or stage where a control is necessary to ensure the supplement’s quality and that it’s packaged and labeled as its master manufacturing record specifies, and to hold the finished supplement to its specifications for identity, purity, strength, and composition. A fill-weight check, a hardness check, a seal test are exactly those in-process controls. Testing runs through vetted independent third-party labs, with fees, turnaround, and sample needs quoted before work starts.

The two numbers behind a dry-format quote, and where the tooling sits

Ask for a “minimum” on a capsule, tablet, or softgel and, as with any format, you get one number standing in for two. There’s the finished-unit run (how many bottles a line will fill and pack), and there are the component minimums suppliers set: shells, bottles, closures, labels, cartons, and, for the pill formats, the tooling. They rarely match, and dry-format run sizes are quoted per project, not posted as one number.

The component side is where a minimum behaves like a wall, and the three formats sit very differently on it: a two-piece capsule leans on stock shells and bottles, so the fewest supplier minimums stand between you and a first run; a tablet adds custom punches and dies; a softgel adds a custom die plus the multi-day drying step. Custom tooling and custom printed components each carry the supplier’s own minimum, commonly in the low thousands regardless of how small your finished run is. An honest quote shows tooling and each custom component on their own lines rather than folding them into a headline “MOQ,” so you can see which number you’re really committing to. Any custom component or tooling you buy above your first run is yours, and with a locked design and a plan to reorder, that excess is pre-bought inventory rather than waste. The full decomposition (finished run versus component minimums, and who owns the excess) is worked through in your MOQ is really two numbers, with the pricing mechanics in how manufacturing minimums work.

One more edge worth naming: dry formats are light and shelf-stable, cheaper to ship and easier to hold on a shelf than a water-bearing format, a real reason a dry format can win, and one of the cost drivers that separate liquids from dry formats.

When a dry format is the right call, and when it isn’t

Apollo Future Labs is a liquid-first contract manufacturer. We run R&D, mixing, accurate filling, and packaging for liquids, from small vials to 55-gallon drums, and that’s our center of gravity. So here’s the straight version a shop that only presses tablets won’t give you.

Sometimes a dry format is exactly right. A simple, moisture-stable, milligram-dose blend that only ever needed to be a capsule gains nothing from being a liquid except weight and preservation work. An oil-based active is a natural softgel or liquid-filled capsule. A cost-sensitive, high-volume, shelf-stable line is what tablets were built for. When that’s your product, forcing it into a liquid is the wrong call, and we’ll say so, even when the honest answer points you to a dry-format shop rather than our own line. We’d rather redirect a bad-fit project than run a product into a format that fights it.

Where we add value on a dry-format product is the part that doesn’t change with the format: formulation and R&D judgment to get a blend that flows and a dose that fits; ingredient and supplier qualification so what arrives matches its paperwork; per-lot testing and stability coordination through vetted independent third-party labs; and packaging and fulfillment that carries a finished product to a marketplace-ready box under one accountable team. Format-specific fill beyond our confirmed liquid scope is scoped through a fit review rather than assumed; we look at your actual product before claiming it fits our floor.

So the useful move isn’t to pick a pill because it photographs well. It’s to start from the fill and the dose, let those name the format, read the tooling and the two numbers before you commit, and work with someone who’ll tell you when the right answer is a format they don’t run. Tell us what you’re building and we’ll tell you honestly how it fits, and where it belongs if it doesn’t.

About this guide

Apollo Future Labs is a liquid-first contract manufacturer in Livermore, California. We operate an FDA-registered facility with cGMP-compliant operations. We coordinate testing through vetted independent third-party labs and run R&D, formulation, packaging, and fulfillment as one connected system. Statements about capabilities are general; formats beyond our confirmed liquid fill are scoped through a fit review, and project specifics are confirmed in written quotes. This article is educational and makes no claims about absorption, bioavailability, or health. Reviewed by our production and R&D team. All quantities and tooling references are illustrative.