Accepted answer
97.1 per cent is at the top of what stepwise synthesis delivers on a chain this long, and it is reachable rather than fictional. Every coupling is high-yielding and none is quantitative, so the deletion and truncation sequences that survive purification are what occupies the remaining 2.9 per cent. Above roughly 98 per cent you are fighting the purification rather than the synthesis, which is why a 97.1 per cent figure on survodutide deserves a method question — column, gradient, wavelength — rather than either belief or dismissal.
The underlying point is that purity is a method-dependent figure, and that is not a limitation of the measurement, it is a property of what the measurement actually answers.
Retention time is sequence-specific and method-specific, so comparing your result to a supplier value using a different method is meaningless without method documentation.
Detection wavelength matters because 214 nm sees the peptide backbone while 280 nm sees only aromatic side chains — so truncation impurities lacking a tryptophan are invisible at 280 nm.
Published side-by-side method comparisons show that a two-point difference in purity on the same vial is easily explained by method choice alone.
I would be careful about over-reading a single measurement — treat it as a data point, not as ground truth.
The practical summary: ask for the chromatogram and the method, and ignore the headline number until you have both.
edited 28 Sept 2024 by RP_C18 — added a caveat about sampling