repotting soil plant (neccessity of)

Is it better to repeatedly repot a plant into successively larger holders, or better to repot once, say after it sprouted a few inches, into a large 5gal holder that would be the plants final destination?

A lot of stuff that I've read indicates that plants undergo a shock when transplanted and there is a risk of damaging the vascular system of the plant when doing so. OTOH it seems that transplanting is a common enough thing talked about on these boards so that either the negative consequences are minimal or it has benefits that I'm not aware of.

repotting saves money most growers repot twice i believe. 1st seddling into little pot the teen into flower pot.

Ideally you would start your seed in your final container.

I start my seeds in jiffy pellets to see which sprouts.
Then I move them into cups to see if there's a runt. When roots are STARTING to swirl around the cups I move to a 1-2L pot with high N guano and some other veg supplements.
They stay there until they are sexed and then moved to a hotter, high P and K soil, in a bigger pot.

That way I save on soil and space.

If soil costs and space wasn't an issue I would have started straight in big pots.

i germed, moved to gatorade bottles then to the final container..so..twice?

I move them 3x. The main reason is allowing the plant to grow a good root ball before transplanting into the next sized container. When done properly there is no shock to transplanting. I have never had a plant stall or react negatively to transplanting.

when roots have a place to go and nothing stops them they grow MUCH faster.
You can get the transplanting shock to a minimum but you can't get the roots to grow as they wish when they don't have the space.

If you are planning to veg for any length of time you should repot before flowering, mainly to avoid soil problems throughout the budding proccess. If you are good at transplanting you'll always notice that your plant will do better in fresh soil. I grow in lava rock so I don't have to be concerned about those types of things so much.

If you plan on transplanting before flowering do it 2-3 weeks before you flip the lights.
After repotting the roots sense that they have a place to go and the plant focus on building more roots.
That means flowering will delay.

A lot of people tried (including myself) and found that slightly rootbound plants (that don't sense much space for more roots) start to bud faster.