How a supplement gets its score
Every product is graded 0–100 from three measured inputs. The weights below are read from the scorer itself, not written alongside it — 299 products carry a full component breakdown, and 283 of them reproduce their published score from these weights alone.
What the score is made of three inputs, summing to 100%
How well the active's effect is established in humans — trial quality, replication, and whether the studied population resembles the person taking it.
Whether one serving actually reaches the range the trials used. A correct ingredient at a quarter of the studied dose scores as what it is.
Whether this chemical form is the absorbable one. Magnesium oxide and magnesium glycinate are not the same product.
Raw score × weight, summed. Nothing else enters the number except the gate penalty below.
When a form cannot be judged 7 products
Some products do not state a form specific enough to grade — a blend, or an ingredient with only one commercially available form. Rather than score them against a criterion they cannot answer, the remaining two inputs are rescaled to carry the whole number: evidence 53.3%, dose 46.7%.
This is why two products can show different weights. It is a smaller model, not a penalty — a product is never marked down for a question that does not apply.
Recorded, but not scored weight 0%
These three are measured and published on every product, and contribute nothing to the number. They are shown because they are real and checkable, not because they move the score.
An earlier version of this page listed them as 20%, 10% and 10% of the score. They have never been weighted.
Gate penalties 23 of 299 products
A product can lose points after the weighted sum for a disqualifying property — an underdosed primary active, a proprietary blend hiding the amounts, a form with a known absorption problem. Penalties observed in the catalog run from 0.25 to 18.75 points.
This is why 16 products do not reconstruct exactly from their components: the gate has moved the number after the sum. Each product page says which case it is.
What the numbers look like 299 scored products
Scores cluster high, and that is a real limitation rather than a compliment: with 46% of the catalog above 90, the number alone rarely separates two products. That is why every card also states rank inside its category and cost per serving, which do.
How a brand is graded a separate score
A brand's grade is not an average of its products. It blends five areas, and unlike the product weights above, these are the ones actually applied.
cGMP, third-party testing, certificate-of-analysis availability
How the brand's own products score in this system
Clinical studies, credentialed founders, patents
Full label disclosure, no hidden blends
NSF, USP, Informed Sport certification
What this cannot tell you
- It does not know you—
- It grades the label, not the bottle—
- It cannot see interactions with medication—
Scoring reads published composition and public evidence. It has no access to your labs, your prescriptions or your conditions, and it does not assay what is physically in a given jar. Nothing here is medical advice.
Commission is earned on some purchases. No brand can pay to change a score, and no score on this page is set by hand.