The Best Testosterone Supplements for Women

We don’t typically think of women as producing testosterone. The hormone is so closely associated with masculinity that it might seem odd for some to learn that women produce testosterone of their own.

A woman’s hormonal balance can be disrupted if her testosterone levels are too high or too low, and various supplements exist that may help increase testosterone levels in women who are deficient.1 That said, most dedicated testosterone boosters out there are designed for and marketed toward men. Their ingredients’ potential to increase a woman’s testosterone levels just doesn’t have the science to back them.

Fortunately, there are one or two single ingredients we can confidently identify as potential female testosterone boosters. And there are even more supplements out there intended to regulate a woman’s hormonal health in general, often to relieve symptoms of menopause or female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

For those of you in a rush, here’s a quick look at our team’s findings:

• Best for stress relief with a sexual boost: Nootropics Depot Shoden Ashwagandha
• Best for female sexual dysfunction: ArginMax
• Best for menopause support: HUM Nutrition Fan Club
• Best testosterone precursor: Life Extension DHEA

At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each and every product or service that we review. For this guide to the best testosterone boosters for women, we got hands-on with all of our top recommendations, ordering them and trying them for ourselves. This gives us specific insights into the customer experience you can’t get elsewhere.

On top of our practical hands-on research, our team pored over more than 100 scientific journal articles related to female testosterone production, potential causes for female hormonal imbalance, and the various approaches to treating low testosterone when it occurs. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions involving staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

Evaluating female testosterone boosters is an interesting proposition. Most testosterone-boosting supplements on the market are formulated for and marketed toward men, and there’s no shortage of review websites out there that are happy to phone it in and recommend any of those to women. But most of the research into the ingredients and doses you’ll find in male-oriented testosterone boosters is specific to male physiology, specifically bodies that tend to be larger and produce more testosterone in different tissues than women.

As a result of this, we looked hard at the potential reasons for which a woman would seek out a testosterone booster, then built our evaluation criteria around those potential concerns. Ultimately, we put safety above all else, followed closely by efficacy and cost.

And for the record, when we speak of women in this guide, we’re referring to individuals assigned female at birth, regardless of current gender identity. Let’s take a close look at each criterion:

Safety

Winner: Nootropics Depot Shoden Ashwagandha

For the most part, research into the main ingredients in the supplements we recommend to women looking for testosterone support reveals very few adverse effects. Among these products, we’ve found ashwagandha offers the best safety profile with the most research into its potential adverse effects.

Comparatively, the other products should be safe for most women to take, but they are associated with a few more side effects. For example, DHEA can cause specific hormonal effects from its attendant increase in testosterone, including hair growth and acne.2 It’s also associated with an increased risk of certain cancers and a reduction in high-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good” cholesterol).

ArginMax has shown minimal side effects in studies, but there are risks associated with some of its ingredients, including the L-arginine at the center of its formula. L-Arginine can lower blood pressure, and if you already have low blood pressure or take medications to regulate blood pressure, this can potentially be dangerous.3 Other ingredients in the supplement, like ginseng and damiana, can produce headaches, sleep disturbances, or gastrointestinal issues.37

HUM Nutrition’s Fan Club centers on a Siberian rhubarb extract, which hasn’t had any noteworthy side effects reported in its studies, but those studies are too scarce to come to any conclusion about its safety. That said, survey data from public adverse effect reports in the U.S. and Germany from 1993 to 2014 indicate a small percentage of users reported gastrointestinal symptoms.4

That leaves us with ashwagandha to consider. In one study looking at its potential to treat women with diminished sexual function, there were no reported adverse effects among the 25 women in the intervention group.5 A study in males with the same number of intervention participants reported one case of sleepiness. A third study in which 20 men and 20 women were treated with ashwagandha reported no adverse effects.6 The one study we found reporting six adverse events concluded that none were directly associated with the ashwagandha administered.38

Effectiveness

Winner: ArginMax

As we’ll discuss at greater length below, the products in this guide are each intended to approach a woman’s perceived need for increased testosterone from different angles. In some cases, it might be to achieve a stronger libido and increased sexual satisfaction, while in others, it might be a need to control symptoms of menopause.

Those different approaches make it difficult to pit the products against one another, but we applied this criterion by asking what a given supplement’s purpose was and how effectively it achieved that purpose.

Among the products we selected, ArginMax is the only complex supplement to boast numerous studies looking into its specific formula, often for treating female sexual dysfunction.7 The results of those studies are impressive, as are some other studies looking at certain ArginMax ingredients in isolation.

So, while there is research showing ashwagandha’s effectiveness at treating the same dysfunction and for the ERr-731 (Rheum rhaponticum extract) in HUM’s Fan Club to help with menopause symptoms, there is slightly more convincing evidence overall for ArginMax.5 8

Cost

Winner: Life Extension DHEA Complete

While the exact purpose of the supplements in this guide makes them hard to compare directly, there is little standing in the way of a simple cost analysis. For this, we looked at the one-time purchase cost for each product, potential shipping costs, money-back guarantees, and opportunities for savings like subscriptions or bulk purchasing.

Here’s what we found in a nutshell:

Among our top picks, ArginMax is the only one you can get with free shipping without needing to hit the $50 free shipping threshold the other companies have in place. But even with a shipping charge, Life Extension's 100mg DHEA still offers the lowest cost per dose.

There are several reasons a woman might look at her overall health or a specific health marker and consider increasing testosterone as a way to address an issue. These needs can range from performance in the gym to libido and sexual functioning, but there are certain needs for which testosterone supplements may be able to help and others that might not be as useful as you’d think.

Based on the nature of the available scientific research and the marketing efforts of women’s supplements that may increase testosterone, the symptoms of menopause and perimenopause are the central drivers for women seeking to boost their testosterone levels.

There are other cases, as well, which we’ll touch on below, but the bulk of our efforts here will be to address testosterone’s role in and around menopause and to evaluate whether T levels matter for certain symptoms. In cases where they don’t, we’ll speak to alternatives women can try in search of relief.

What testosterone does for women

To better understand how a woman might employ a testosterone supplement, it helps to understand what role testosterone plays in overall female health. After all, it’s a hormone more typically associated with men and masculinity. Men produce about 95% of their testosterone in the testes, with the adrenal glands making up the remainder.9 Since women don’t have testes, it’s easy to assume they don’t make much testosterone, if any at all.

A woman’s adrenal glands produce about 25% of her testosterone, with the ovaries kicking in another 25%, and the remaining 50% converted from androstenedione and other precursors in peripheral tissues.10

It is true that women produce far less testosterone than men. Average levels of testosterone in women range from 0.6–2.5 nmol/L.10 In men those numbers are closer to 10-35 nmol/L — up to 14 times the amount.11 However, that amount in women is still enough to be an important part of overall hormonal balance. Deficiency in testosterone has been most closely linked with sexual issues in women, including a lack of desire and insufficient lubrication during sex.12

Outside of sexual performance, testosterone plays critical roles in maintaining bone density and muscle mass, as well as sexual and cognitive function, red blood cell production, and energy levels.13 14 Some evidence also points to a role in mental health.15

Testosterone’s role in menopause

Testosterone is often cited as a hormone that greatly impacts a woman’s experience of menopause, as though T levels fall off a cliff at some point during this transition. However, T levels in men and women decline gradually with age unless another disease or procedure results in a more dramatic reduction. One study showed a roughly 60% decrease in average daily T levels between ages 20 and 50.16 Women who’ve undergone an oophorectomy (a removal of one or both ovaries), for example, will see a significant drop in T levels, as well as other hormones.17

Testosterone levels may be suboptimal in a woman by the time she reaches menopause, which is why supplementing with ingredients that may boost testosterone or supplementing with testosterone directly has been shown to help with menopausal symptoms.13

That said, menopause is a complex enough experience that simply boosting one hormone likely won’t be enough to tackle the range of symptoms a woman can encounter. That’s why it’s more important in many cases to look at individual symptoms and see if increases in testosterone may be able to help there. If not, then it’s worthwhile to look at alternatives to treating those symptoms.

Testosterone’s role in female sexual dysfunction (FSD)

More than any other menopausal symptom we’ve encountered in women’s testosterone research, FSD appears to be one of the most common concerns, affecting up to 50% of women in various studies. Its symptoms include:18

• Lack of interest in or thoughts about sex
• Diminished vaginal lubrication
• Pain and discomfort during intercourse
• Decreased sense of arousal
• Difficulty in achieving orgasm

Testosterone replacement therapy has been considered a potentially viable treatment for women with FSD.13 In one significant systematic review of 72 articles examining testosterone as a treatment for hypoactive sexual desire in women, researchers concluded that testosterone provided “significant increases in satisfactory sexual activity, as well as improvement in all domains of sexual function (desire, arousal and orgasmic response) and a decrease in personal distress, with an increase in the score of the Female Sexual Function Index.”19

So, for women who’ve identified lower than optimal levels of testosterone as a cause for their issues or who have symptoms that have been treated with testosterone replacement or testosterone-boosting supplements in studies, selecting a product to improve testosterone production may be a smart place to begin.

Actual testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) comes with a lot of risks, as well as a high price tag and, in many cases, regular injections.13 Whether you’re averse to the potential side effects, hoping to avoid high medical bills, or want to keep needles out of the equation, you may be better off starting with a supplement that might increase your body’s natural testosterone production.

In men, testosterone-boosting supplements might increase testosterone directly, but others increase luteinizing hormone production in the pituitary, which can increase testosterone production in the testes, specifically.20 Still others may affect the behavior of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) to increase free testosterone the body can use for targeted purposes (like muscle-building).21

In women, increasing testosterone requires different pathways (though SHBG influencers can still make a difference). Because around 50% of a woman’s testosterone is created in peripheral tissues, supplemental ingredients that can increase production there may be more effective than production increased in the ovaries or adrenal glands.

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a potent testosterone prohormone that nearly doubled women’s T levels in one prominent study.22 Another study showed improvements in anxiety and depression scores and increased frequency of sexual thoughts, interest, and satisfaction among premenopausal women taking DHEA at 50mg/day.23 However, another study with the same dose noted no improvements in cognitive or sexual function after 12 months.24 Ultimately, it seems that DHEA can reliably increase testosterone production in women, but the effects that follow increased T production are mixed.

Whether or not a given women’s T-booster is safe depends on what you’re using to boost testosterone, what symptoms you’re trying to address, and where you are in life with respect to menopause or any potential androgen imbalance.

Here’s a look at some of the potential risks associated with some of the ingredients you’ll find in the options in this guide:

Because altering your hormonal balance can have so many cascading effects throughout your body, we highly recommend talking to your doctor before trying any testosterone booster or treatment for a symptom that could be hormone-related.

Alternatives for women in search of hormonal balance

Women may also be interested in boosting testosterone as a way to achieve overall hormonal balance, but increasing the level of a single androgen isn't typically the answer for such a goal.

In many cases, women will find greater success identifying specific symptoms they're experiencing that may or may not be tied to androgen levels — like hot flashes of diminished libido — and then seeking out treatments for those symptoms or their immediate causes, rather than attempting general androgen balance — a moving target that’s going to be hard to hit consistently.

Alternatives we’ll discuss below include a novel rhubarb extract, a popular Ayurvedic botanical, and a complex blend of vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and amino acids.

Best for stress relief with a sexual boost

Whether you’re experiencing FSD or another of the many symptoms that can accompany menopause, the experience can be a stressful one. So, it might be a blessing that ashwagandha, which has been shown to help with FSD, also has potent anxiolytic (stress-reducing) effects.5 29

It’s become a more popular supplement in recent years, so you’ll find it in many forms, sometimes from the root of the plant, other times from the leaves. Capsules occasionally contain actual roots or leaves, while others offer an extract, which is more potent.

To get the most out of your ashwagandha, it helps to look for a standardized extract, one that’s been made under precise conditions to ensure a certain percentage of ashwagandha’s active constituent, withanolides.30 These compounds are what provide ashwagandha’s benefits, and the specific brand we recommend here has an exceptionally high concentration of withanolides in its 120mg dose.

One of the most common branded forms of ashwagandha you’ll see throughout the supplement market is KSM-66 ashwagandha. This extract is standardized to a minimum of 5% withanolides, and it’s often recommended at a dosage of 300mg twice daily. By comparison, Shoden ashwagandha is standardized to 35% withanolides allowing you to take a much smaller dose daily while still getting more withanolides than you would from KSM-66. That smaller dose also means a smaller capsule that’s much easier to swallow than something like the daily 6-capsule ArginMax dose.

Here’s what the numbers look like:

Many more studies have been conducted using KSM-66 than Shoden, including the studies we’ve referenced that look at female sexual function. However, given that withanolides have been positively identified as the component in ashwagandha responsible for its therapeutic effects, that increase in potency should improve effectiveness. One study looking at half the daily dose of Shoden reported an increase in testosterone, as well as sexual and psychological well-being, albeit in male subjects.31 Another study looking at twice the daily dose (240mg, or 84mg withanolides) successfully lowered depression, stress, and anxiety scores in participants with no reported adverse effects.32

Nootropics Depot Shoden pricing, shipping, and returns

Interestingly, Shoden doesn’t have anywhere near the ubiquity of KSM-66. Nootropics Depot offers both, and Shoden is the more expensive of the two. Since KSM-66 has been shown to be effective, supplement manufacturers may be content to offer the weaker version to keep their prices down.

Still, compared to some of the other options in this guide, Shoden ashwagandha is relatively inexpensive, especially if you get Nootropics Depot’s 90-count bottle:

Like some of the other companies in this guide, Nootropics Depot has a $50 free shipping threshold, and neither of its Shoden ashwagandha quantities reach it alone. And Nootropics Depot has the highest shipping costs of any company we’ve included here, charging around $10.

Compared to Daily Wellness’ ArginMax and Life Extension, Nootropics Depot has a far inferior return policy. While those two companies will offer you 60 and 365 days, respectively, to actually try their products, Nootropics Depot only offers a 30-day return policy on unopened products.

Best for female sexual dysfunction

Female sexual dysfunction is one of the top reasons we’ve seen for why women might seek out testosterone boosters. And while the results of the studies that have put ArginMax’s exact formula to the test don’t boast impressive results for serum testosterone increases, they do show significant improvements in self-reported sexual parameters.

ArginMax’s formula comprises several vitamins and minerals we’ve seen in some menopause supplements, as well as a proprietary blend of ingredients that are more typical of male enhancement pills. Within that proprietary blend is L-arginine, an amino acid most likely responsible for some of the supplement’s positive sexual effects.

Here’s a quick look at ArginMax’s full ingredient list:

• Vitamin A: 5000IU
• Vitamin C: 60mg
• Vitamin E: 30IU
• Thiamin (B1): 1.5mg
• Riboflavin (B2): 1.7mg
• Niacin (B3): 20mg
• Vitamin B6: 2mg
• Folate, Folic Acid, Folacin: 400mcg
• Vitamin B12: 6mcg
• Biotin: 300mcg
• Pantothenic acid: 10mg
• Calcium: 500mg
• Iron: 9mg
• Zinc: 7.5mg
• Proprietary blend: 2,755mg

That proprietary blend consists of:

• L-Arginine
• Ginseng (Panax Ginseng) Root Extract
• Ginkgo Biloba Extract
• Damiana Leaf

While Daily Wellness, the company that makes ArginMax, doesn’t divulge the specific quantities of each ingredient in this blend, we came across one listing for the product on a reputable site that broke it down into the following doses:

• L-Arginine: 2,500mg
• Ginseng (Panax Ginseng) Root Extract: 100mg
• Ginkgo Biloba Extract: 50mg
• Damiana Leaf: 50mg

For those of you doing the math at home, that totals 2,700mg, which is 55mg short of the 2,755mg listed on the ArginMax bottle. However, the information could provide a hint as to the quantities within that blend. If those numbers are close to accurate, the 2.5g of L-arginine would put it right in the middle of ranges used in treating erectile dysfunction in men.26 It’s also significantly more L-arginine than we’ve seen in competing products like Ristela.

On the other side of the coin, the doses of ginseng and ginkgo biloba appear to be much smaller than those used in studies for female sexual function. Ginseng studies have used doses as small as 200mg, but they’ve also gone up to 3,000mg.27 Larger doses were generally more effective.

ArginMax pricing, shipping, and returns

Daily Wellness, the company behind ArginMax, sells its supplements directly to consumers, but it also sells them through third-party retailers like CVS and iHerb. List prices are identical from one location to the next, though we have seen a few dollars come off when iHerb puts it on sale. If you buy a three-month supply from Daily Wellness, you can save a bit more. The company recommends that iHerb is the best place to make international orders.

Here’s how it works out:

If you continue to take ArginMax for a year, buying in bulk would save you $84, nearly paying for an entire three-bottle shipment.

Shipping is free from ArginMax, and the company provides a 60-day money-back guarantee. That’s enough time for most women to be able to tell if the product is working for them, and it’s a much more generous offer than you’ll see from Nootropics Depot or HUM, but it pales in comparison to Life Extension’s 1-year guarantee.

Best for menopause support

HUM Nutrition offers nearly three dozen supplements, many of which are geared toward women. Its Fan Club supplement is the one best suited for women looking for menopause relief, specifically relief from hot flashes and mood impacts. It contains just three ingredients:

HUM Fan Club pricing, shipping, and returns

One bottle of HUM’s Fan Club costs $40. There are no subscription options for single-product purchases, but HUM offers a bundling system through which you can access a 30% discount and unlock free shipping.

You need to buy at least three products to qualify as a bundle, but that package can consist of three bottles of Fan Club, essentially creating a subscription system and bulk discount all in one. However, you can’t adjust the frequency of deliveries, so you’ll get another shipment of three Fan Clubs 30 days later. Fortunately, you can pause shipments at any time without penalty.

Under the bundling subscription model, shipping is free, but that’s really only because it inevitably takes you over the company’s $50 free shipping threshold. Several other competitors share the same threshold.

Like Nootropics Depot, HUM doesn’t have a money-back guarantee. You only get 30 days to return unopened products if you change your mind. That’s far less generous than the 60- and 365-day guarantees from Daily Wellness (ArginMax) and Life Extension (DHEA), respectively.

Best testosterone precursor and best budget pick

Life Extension manufactures a dizzying array of supplements, including DHEA, which we discussed above as a reliable precursor for testosterone production in a woman’s peripheral tissues. That’s where women produce around 50% of their testosterone, so it’s a reasonable target for increasing T levels.

As a supplement, DHEA is far from perfect. Studies show that it can increase testosterone levels in women, but the effects of that increase seem hit or miss from one study to the next.24 So, while it’s a reliable testosterone precursor, whether that increase will have the desired effect is kind of unpredictable. That said, for women who’ve determined (hopefully, on the advice of a physician) that increasing testosterone levels would serve their needs, DHEA is a reliable way to do it.

If you’re not sure whether a pure testosterone increase would address whatever problems you’re having, it might be wise to start elsewhere, though. That’s because DHEA is associated with so many potentially harmful side effects and interactions with medication.2 Side effects can be as mild as increased oiliness of the skin or acne, but women can also see hair start to grow in places they’d rather not have it — including the face.

DHEA can also cause manic symptoms when combined with SSRIs, one of the most common forms of antidepressants. Other medications are contraindicated to DHEA, as well, including antipsychotics and certain seizure medications, the efficacy of which DHEA might reduce.2

There is also evidence that DHEA’s role in regulating cholesterol might reduce your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) “good” cholesterol, throwing its balance with LDL cholesterol out of whack.28

Life Extension DHEA pricing, shipping, and returns

Life Extension typically offers good prices for its supplements, and its DHEA selection includes four concentrations, each with its own price structure.

Here’s how it breaks down:

It’s worth noting that the 100mg capsules and the 25mg dissolvable tablets are vegetarian-friendly, whereas the other capsules contain gelatin.

Life Extension typically charges $5.50 for shipping if your order is under $50, but you can also get free shipping with a subscription. That’s a slightly better deal than Nootropics Depot or HUM offers, each of which has a $50 free shipping threshold but no straightforward subscription option.

Life Extension also boasts the longest money-back guarantee in this guide (and several other of our guides where it appears). That guarantee covers 365 days. However, it won’t apply to a year’s worth of subscription purchases; you can only claim it on your initial product purchase. That said, Life Extension has some limited bulk purchasing benefits. For example, you can buy four bottles of DHEA 100mg as a one-time purchase for the same per-bottle price as subscribers would get. Those four bottles would then be covered by the 365-day guarantee, allowing you to try the product for longer to make sure it works for you.