Americans researching their next vape are increasingly looking past the throwaway device, and the shift is now showing up in national search data before it reaches store shelves.
A new analysis of US search figures by Discount Vape Pen, an online vaping store based in New Jersey that specializes in refillable 510-thread cartridge batteries, found that the search term “510 thread battery” now draws roughly 30,500 clicks a month nationwide, edging ahead of “disposable vape” at about 29,500. Interest in the reusable term is up around 20% since 2021, while searches for disposables have fallen roughly 36% from their 2022 peak.
The change in buyer attention has been gradual but steady. In 2022, Americans searched for disposable vapes about 2.4 times as often as for the rechargeable batteries that power refillable systems. By 2025, that ratio had narrowed to roughly 1.46 to one.
“What people search for is usually a preview of what they are about to buy,” said Marc Pitts, co-founder of Discount Vape Pen. “For years that attention pointed at disposables. Now it is drifting toward hardware people can keep, recharge and refill, and that kind of shift in curiosity tends to show up at the checkout a little later.”
On the shelf, the throwaway device still leads comfortably. Retail figures compiled by the CDC Foundation put disposables at 58.1% of US e-cigarette units sold by mid-2024, more than double their 26% share in early 2020. By that measure, disposables have never been more popular.
But that picture is complicated by what regulators have been doing. The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized only a few dozen of the roughly 6,000 e-cigarette products on the US market, and its 2024 enforcement push produced more than 700 warning letters, many aimed at the best-selling disposable brands. The period in which supply of popular throwaways became unreliable lines up closely with the slide in disposable search demand.
There is a practical side to the switch as well. Consumer advocates at PIRG have documented how single-use vapes, each built around a lithium battery that is binned after a few hundred puffs, pile up as electronic waste. A reusable battery, by contrast, is bought once and topped up for months, which tends to appeal whenever buyers start adding up what a weekly disposable habit costs them.
Discount Vape Pen is careful to note that disposables are not going anywhere soon and remain the single most common device sold. Its point is narrower: the search trend has now held for several years and is too consistent to wave away.
“The till is a lagging indicator and search is a leading one,” Pitts said. “Right now the leading indicator is pointing at a more refillable few years ahead.”
