Guides / USB-UART chips: CH340, CP2102, FT232 · Data from 22 October 2026
CH340 vs CP2102N vs FT232RL: USB-to-UART chips compared
Nearly every microcontroller board with a USB port has a USB-to-UART bridge on it. The three families everyone knows differ by more than ten times in price. We looked up the common parts at 100 pieces on 22 October 2026.
The numbers
| Part | Package | JLCPCB / LCSC | DigiKey | Mouser |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CH340C (WCH) | SOP-16 | $0.3336 (117,566) | no offer | no offer |
CH340G (WCH) | SOP-16 | $0.3369 (51,835) | no offer | no offer |
CH343P (WCH) | QFN-16, 3×3 mm | $0.6606 (9,060) | no offer | no offer |
CP2102N-A02-GQFN28R (Silicon Labs) | QFN-28, 5×5 mm | $1.3408 (31,330) | $3.3934, 0 stock | $2.89, 0 stock |
FT232RL-REEL (FTDI) | SSOP-28 | $5.4563 (7,996) | $4.80, 0 stock | 0 stock |
Stock in brackets. "No offer" means our DigiKey and Mouser lookups returned no listing that day; WCH parts are mostly sold through LCSC and Chinese distributors.
What the numbers say
- A CH340 costs a quarter of a CP2102N and about a sixteenth of an FT232RL at JLCPCB.
- The CP2102N was cheaper at JLCPCB than at either US distributor, which both had none in stock. DigiKey's reel price was $2.99659, in 1,500-piece reels only.
- The FT232RL is marked obsolete in our data and was out of stock at DigiKey and Mouser. Our stock history shows it went out of stock at JLCPCB twice in the last 120 days. Not a part for a new design.
- None of them is a JLCPCB basic part. Each adds the $3 extended part fee if JLCPCB assembles the board.
CH340C or CH340G?
Same price, same SOP-16 package, but not the same circuit. The CH340G needs an external 12 MHz crystal on pins 7 and 8 (XI and XO). On the CH340C those pins are not used: it has an internal oscillator, so the crystal and its two capacitors come off the BOM. That also means fewer extended parts at JLCPCB. The trade-off is the temperature range: the CH340C is listed for −20 to 70 °C, the CH340G for −40 to 85 °C.
The two are close enough that the CH340C fits a CH340G footprint with the crystal left unpopulated, but check the datasheet for your exact layout before relying on that.
When to pay more
- CH343P: up to 6 Mbps instead of 2 Mbps and a 3×3 mm package, for twice the CH340 price. Useful for fast logging or a small board.
- CP2102N: configurable GPIOs, USB charger detection, −40 to 85 °C and a long-established driver. A common choice for products where the USB port is customer-facing.
- FT232RL: only to match an existing design or a customer requirement. For new FTDI designs, look at FTDI's current parts instead.
Drivers
CH340 and CP210x drivers ship with Linux and recent versions of macOS, and Windows usually installs them on its own. If your users are not technical, test the driver install on a clean machine with each chip before you choose.
Prices are list prices in USD from 22 October 2026, without shipping, taxes or tariffs. If you search from an AI assistant with Next Everything, get_part shows every offer, the pinout and the 120-day stock history used here.
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About the data
The numbers in this article come from Next Everything, an MCP server we build that lets AI assistants such as Claude, Cursor and Codex check a BOM against the JLCPCB/LCSC catalog and live Mouser and DigiKey prices. If you want to run the same check on your own BOM, the setup guides show how to connect it.
Next Everything is not affiliated with Mouser, DigiKey, JLCPCB or LCSC. Prices are list prices in USD at the time stated and change daily.