Dialysis is useful for many of the same desalting and buffer exchange applications performed with gel filtration chromatography, as both methods are based on similar molecular weight cut-off limits. Gel filtration has the advantage of speed (a few minutes vs. hours for dialysis) along with the ability to remove contaminants from relatively small-volume samples compared to dialysis which is an important feature when working with toxic or radioactive substances. Dialysis, on the other hand, is much less dependent on sample size as related to device format. For dialysis applications, achieving a high percentage sample recovery and molecule removal is generally straight forward with little optimization. For gel filtration applications it is important to select a column size and format that is suitable for your sample.