Best Volume Pills

While semen output isn’t the first thing most men associate with their masculinity, it’s not something you should ignore. Compared to muscle or penis size, semen quality is a much more important measurement, as it can profoundly affect reproduction.1 That’s where volume pills — nutritional supplements designed for and marketed toward men hoping to improve semen output and sexual performance — hope to bridge the gap. In fact, the ingredient lists on common volume pills and fertility supplements are strikingly similar.

But here’s the thing: most volume pill manufacturers bank on male sexual insecurities, promise things they can’t deliver, and hope you won’t notice their sub-par dosing. Far too many of these manufacturers create supplements containing smaller portions of the ingredient doses that some scientific studies show to be successful. And you’re just as likely to find ingredients in there that have little-to-know research to support them.

So, we’ve evaluated the landscape of both volume pills and their typically stronger and safer counterparts — male fertility supplements — to get you the best of both worlds: an increase in semen output and sexual pleasure combined with improved fertility.

Here, we’ll break down our findings if you’re pressed for time.

For this volume pills guide, our team reviewed over 170 research papers examining the various ways that common volume pill ingredients interact with male sexual health and virility. This allowed us to examine different formulas with an eye toward dosing and potential efficacy. We also reached out to experts in the field, including the Director of the Global Andrology Forum, Dr. Ashok Agarwal. And to help complete our understanding of these companies’ products and services, we became customers, ordering various volume pills in an effort to evaluate customer support quality, shipping logistics, and privacy.

Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy. We’ll continue to monitor the volume pill and fertility supplement landscapes to keep this guide up-to-date.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions to improve their health.

Fully evaluating volume pills requires a deep understanding of male reproductive function and the multitude of ingredients — vitamins, botanicals, amino acids, minerals, hormones, and more — that companies employ in the search for improved semen quality and quantity. We took pains to be as clear-eyed about this as possible, as this is a category where the vast majority of players underperform. It wasn’t enough for us to find the best option from among a pool of so-so supplements. We expanded our selection to include supplements that actually had potential and compared them to one another from there.

In comparing these products, we looked at effectiveness, cost, safety, and convenience. Ultimately, we found Bird & Be’s Powers for Males to be the most compelling option. It offers higher doses than its competitors in almost every ingredient, and it includes a high number of components with multiple research papers behind them. Semenax is a runner-up thanks to an extensive ingredient list and an internal scientific study that points toward efficacy.

Effectiveness

Winner: Bird & Be

We assess effectiveness by comparing ingredient lists with available research to determine that a given supplement succeeds in ingredient selection and dosing. Some companies choose well-researched ingredients but deliver them in paltry quantities that undercut their potential. Others have high doses of ingredients with scant research behind them.

Bird & Be’s Powers for Males is designed as a fertility supplement, but research into many of its ingredients supports the kinds of claims the average volume pill maker purports. Those include increased orgasm intensity from ingredients like citrulline42 and improved erectile performance from 500mg of L-arginine.19

Semenax is a runner-up in this category. It includes a compelling mix of botanicals, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, some of which boast clinical support in improving semen production when used in doses higher than Semenax provides. A few of those studies are in animals without a clear conversion rate to humans, so dosing is hard to pin down in those categories. Semenax also published an internal study that looked at its specific combination of ingredients, finding that its formula resulted in a 20% increase in semen volume compared to placebo.2 Semenax’s parent company funded the study, which it’s done for several of its products. That may introduce some bias, and the study population was under 100 men, but it’s rare to see any company subject its product to such scrutiny.

Cost

Winner: Semenax

Price is the first thing we look at when evaluating cost, but we also consider things like bulk or subscription discounts, as well as money-back guarantees that could protect your investment.

If you’re willing to spend enough to buy a year’s worth of pills, Volume Pills and Semenax offer the best bargains. Your cost works out to just under $1.10/day at that purchase level. Of course, that means you have to be ready to fork over $400 all at once, and not everybody is ready to do that. That’s what makes Beli a compelling runner-up in this category, as its subscription-only model keeps your cost per bottle at just $50 — more than the best price per bottle from Semenax and Volume Pills, but a lower barrier to entry.

Here’s a quick look at how our top picks’ prices compare:

It may be the same ultimate cost as Volume Pills, but the ingredient blend in Semenax is superior, making it the better value of the two. That said, more expensive products typically offer much better formulas than Semenax, making it a wise choice only if cost is your most important consideration.

Safety

Winner: Beli Men Vitality

Safety is a tough line to toe when formulating a volume pill. When you whittle the wide field of options down to the handful of companies in our guide, parsing out which one is safest gets even harder — formulas start looking similar, and manufacturing standards are high. But there are a few things we look for to consider a volume pill particularly safe.

It may run counter to the efficacy goal, but our picks for safety tend to have an average amount of ingredients delivered in quantities at or around the lower range of doses used in clinical studies. That helps ensure that adverse effects associated with certain ingredients are less likely to occur. And keeping the list from ballooning to an immense size as a countermeasure to lower doses helps prevent certain un-studied ingredient combinations from posing a risk.

Beli hits the bullseye on this target. Its ingredient list is mostly made up of vitamins and minerals that are well-researched for fertility and have good safety profiles. Plus, very few of them appear in especially large doses. Ingredients that have particularly weak safety profiles are strictly limited. Still, the combination is enough to suggest efficacy based on clinical research, especially for men who may be deficient in one or more of these vitamins or minerals.

Convenience

Winner: Beli

Our convenience evaluation takes a few parameters into account, including:

• User-friendliness of the website and ordering process
• Pill size
• Dosing regimen
• How easy it is to keep up on your stock of supplements

Unfortunately, in one way or another, a lot of volume pill manufacturers fall short in convenience. They usually have poorly designed websites that make it relatively easy to order but difficult to navigate to specific information. They also often have little to no real-time customer support.

Another knock on most volume pills is that they aren’t available on a subscription basis. Not only do subscriptions often offer additional savings, but they also help ensure that you don’t run out of a supplement you plan to take daily. Beli, conversely, only offers a subscription platform. While we don’t love that you don’t have a choice in the matter, the website’s ordering process is nicely streamlined. It’s also worth noting that Beli’s dosing regimen is just two pills, once daily; some other manufacturers require you to take up to eight capsules at a time.

Both volume pills and male fertility supplements seem to draw from the same well of ingredients. In our research, we found that many fertility supplements use higher doses that are closer to what’s clinically supported in the research, but they sometimes use fewer ingredients than the average volume pill. There is some potential for smaller ingredient quantities to combine on a longer ingredient list and create a profound effect. But it's harder to predict such a supplement’s helpfulness without scientific research to support its specific combinations.

We want to steer people away from wishful-thinking products and toward the most likeliest products to deliver positive results. In many cases, we recommend what would be considered fertility supplements to men interested in volume pills, as they'll get many of the same ingredients but in higher quantities. For simplicity here, we'll continue to refer to the class as a whole as "volume pills," including fertility supplements.

Volume pills utilize ingredients that research indicates may increase spermatogenesis, boost testosterone, bolster fertility, and improve blood flow. The most effective among them can increase the quantity and quality of semen output, particularly in men with suboptimal testosterone levels and even more so in men with certain nutritional deficiencies. Some also contain ingredients that can increase your sexual pleasure both during intercourse and at the moment of climax.

We’d prefer to see generous doses on relatively long ingredient lists, provided those ingredients all bear some research support indicating safety as well as efficacy. Bird & Be’s Powers for Males offers the best combination of ingredient quantity and dosing, with most of its ingredients boasting published scientific research.

Key semen parameters

A lot of this can get confusing, especially the information regarding semen parameters. Understanding what these supplements are aiming to improve at a more granular level could help inform your decision when you compare ingredient lists.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most important semen parameters when it comes to fertility:

Volume pill ingredients

The specific ingredients in volume pills will vary wildly, but there are a few ingredients that have a lot of good scientific research behind them. There are also several that pop up in most of the ingredient lists we encounter. One of the most profound ingredients for both semen volume and fertility is zinc, which can directly improve semen parameters while boosting testosterone.

Many volume pills and fertility supplements also contain some kind of multivitamin complex. There is plenty of evidence that various vitamins can improve semen parameters, but one or two vitamins stand out from the rest. Perhaps most notable is vitamin D, which, like zinc, has been shown to improve semen characteristics and boost testosterone.6 And unlike B and C vitamins, which many people consume sufficiently through their diets, vitamin D deficiencies are relatively common. That increases the chances that supplements containing vitamin D will make a noticeable difference for more men.

Here’s a deeper look at some key ingredients you’ll find in many volume pills:

Volume pills have the potential to serve various needs by increasing the quantity of your ejaculate, boosting testosterone levels, improving the pleasure you experience during orgasm, providing harder erections that are more reliable, and even helping with fertility issues. There are a lot of men out there who could benefit from taking volume pills. This is doubly true for men who are deficient in nutrients like zinc and vitamin D.

The fertility question seems like one of the most important to us, as so many of the ingredients in volume pills are associated with increases in semen quality. We reached out to Dr. Ashok Agarwal, Director of the Global Andrology Forum, to discuss male infertility. He highlighted a few symptoms men should look out for that could indicate potential fertility issues, including:

• Erectile and ejaculation problems
• Pain, swelling, or a lump in the testicle area
• Abnormal breast growth
• Obesity
• Decreased facial or body hair

“Male fertility issues can only be diagnosed with a comprehensive semen analysis test,” he told us, “which is usually done after one year of trying to get pregnant or after six months if over the age of 35.” If you’re concerned about infertility, you can consult our guide to the best at-home fertility tests to get started.

Of course, some men aren’t necessarily concerned about reproducing, and they just want to have more impressive ejaculations or more intense orgasms. Fortunately for everyone involved, many of the ingredients that improve semen parameters can also provide these benefits. That said, traditional volume pills may contain ingredients that research indicates will be less likely to help with fertility but more likely to increase pleasure or performance in the bedroom. So, for men explicitly concerned with pleasure and performance, traditional volume pills — or male enhancement supplements — may be preferable to supplements designed to bolster fertility.

Because volume pills all have different ingredient profiles, it’s hard to say which ones might pose a risk to you and your health, which is why the best course of action is always to talk to your doctor before introducing any new supplement to your life. That said, there are some side effects associated with many of the most common ingredients in volume pills, including:

• Upset stomach
• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Flushing
• Headache
• Jitters
• Trouble sleeping

There are also some ingredients in volume pills, like L-arginine, that can act similarly to PDE-5 inhibitors like Viagra or Cialis, albeit with less intensity. These ingredients can slightly widen blood vessels to increase blood flow — an important aspect of erectile health. But that widening can lower your blood pressure, and if you already have low blood pressure or you take medication to manage your blood pressure or blood clotting, these ingredients can be dangerous.27

Best overall

Our comprehensive research led us to conclude that Bird & Be Powers for Males is the overall best volume pill for 2024, even though it's marketed as a fertility supplement rather than a volume pill. As we’ve discussed, fertility support is one of the biggest promises volume pill manufacturers make, and there are ingredients in Bird & Be’s formula that you’ll find in many volume pills. However, Bird & Be provides you with higher doses of those ingredients that are much more in line with the research behind them while excluding ingredients common in volume pills that lack scientific support.

All told, Bird & Be put 22 active ingredients in its Powers for Males, including generous doses of vitamins A and C, a nice B vitamin complex, and more zinc than any of the other products in our guide. Here’s a full look at the list:

• Vitamin A (as vitamin A palmitate): 540mcg
• Vitamin B1 (as thiamine): 5mg
• Vitamin B2 (as riboflavin): 1.5mg
• Vitamin B3 (as niacinamide): 30mg
• Vitamin B5 (as calcium pantothenate): 10mg
• Vitamin B6 (as pyridoxal 5 phosphate): 25mg
• Vitamin B12 (as methylcobalamin): 500mcg
• Vitamin C (ascorbic acid): 100mg
• Vitashine vegan vitamin D (as cholecalciferol): 1,000IU
• Vitamin E (as D-alpha-tocopheryl Succinate): 100IU
• Calcium citrate: 100mg
• Choline bitartrate: 100mg
• Folate: 1mg
• Magnesium citrate: 20mg
• Selenium chelate: 100mcg
• Zinc citrate: 50mg
• Algae oil DHA (omega-3): 300mg
• L-Arginine: 500mg
• L-Carnitine: 500mg
• N-Acetyl cysteine: 500mg
• Trans-resveratrol: 60mg
• CoQ10 (ubiquinone): 200mg

We consider zinc and vitamin D among the ingredients with the most potential to support healthy semen, not least of all due to their connection to testosterone levels. Bird & Be offers one of the highest zinc doses we’ve seen, with 50mg of zinc citrate. That’s a chelated form of zinc, which is easier for your body to absorb than some other forms and delivers a higher percentage of elemental zinc than most (34%, or 17mg of elemental zinc per serving).

One potential downside here is that it opens you up to over-supplementation and possibly even toxicity if you already get plenty of zinc in your diet or plan to combine a volume pill with your current multivitamin regimen. Bird & Be doesn’t run that risk with its vitamin D dose. At 1,000IU, you get a dose that should support healthy levels without putting you at risk.

Something else we really appreciate about Bird & Be has nothing to do with its formula and everything to do with respect for its potential customers. The company offers supplements for “males” or “females” but not for “men” or “women.” Its founders explicitly state that they name their products to reflect the physical sex as assigned at birth to be “inclusive of all individuals who are trying or preparing to conceive.”

Bird & Be pricing

Bird & Be offers its Powers for Males as either a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription. Monthly subscriptions earn you a 10% discount. You can also elect to increase the CoQ10 dose in your shipment from 200mg to 600mg for a small upcharge. This is ideal for men who know they have motility issues, as well as those who are more susceptible to free radicals from lifestyle (e.g., smokers or drinkers) or age.

Here’s how the pricing works out with all of your subscription and CoQ10 options:

The worst thing we can say about Bird & Be is that there’s no money-back guarantee or return policy for your purchases. If the supplement doesn’t seem to work for you, you just have to move on. But based on its ingredients and doses, it should be one of the more reliably effective volume pills for most people.

Best bulk value and best for use before freezing sperm

Semenax has one of the more exhaustive lists of ingredients among its peers, including amino acids and botanicals like pine bark extract. The variety of ingredients might make up for the fact that so many of them appear at suboptimal doses, especially when you consider the results of a double-blind, placebo-controlled study performed on Semenax. That study resulted in a 19.7% increase in semen volume and an uptick in orgasm quality reported by more than 60% of participants in the Semenax group. Of course, Leading Edge Health — Semenax’s parent company — funded the study, so there might be a little bias there.

We consider Semenax to be your best option if you're thinking about freezing your sperm for later use thanks to its 250mg dose of lysine, which, as we discussed above, improved motility in post-cryostasis buffalo sperm. That said, dose equivalency between buffalo and humans isn't something with a standard conversion rate, and competitors like Bird & Be would better serve immediate fertility concerns.

Here’s a look at Semenax’s complete ingredient list:

• Swedish flower pollen: 50mg
• L-Arginine HCL: 250mg
• L-Lysine: 250mg
• Epimedium leaf: 150mg
• L-Carnitine: 500mg
• Zinc: 30mg
• Catuaba bark: 200mg
• Maca: 400mg
• Pumpkin seed: 30mg
• Vitamin E: 60IU
• Pine bark extract: 300mg
• Muira puama: 100mg
• Hawthorn berry: 50mg
• Cranberry: 50mg
• Avena sativa extract: 50mg
• Sarsaparilla: 50mg
• Butea superba: 500mg
• Tribulus terrestris: 50mg

Semenax promotes its use of Swedish flower pollen as though it’s a particularly special ingredient. This is pure marketing. Our research found some literature supporting the pollen’s use as part of an approach to reducing prostate inflammation but nothing that supports Semenax’s claim that it contains “all the bio factors that are the precursors for the sex hormones.”28

Semenax pricing

Semenax is available in 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month supplies for the following prices:

• 1-month supply: retails for $60.
• 3-month supply: retails for $155 but costs $132 using INNERBODY45.
• 6-month supply: retails for $480 but costs $264 using INNERBODY45.
• 12-month supply: retails for $399.

The cost per month at the highest shipping tier is $33.33. Shipping from Semenax is free at all purchasing levels.

Semenax offers a 67-day money-back guarantee that allows you to use the supplement for up to two months and still return it if it doesn't work for you. This is about mid-range for a guarantee on a volume pill. It should be enough time for you to feel some effect if it does work for you, but possibly not the full effect. We’d prefer to see at least 100 days for a guarantee on a product in this class, such as the one from Ultraload.

You can learn more about Semenax in our full review of its product.

Best for erectile strength

Ultraload and Beli are both supplements that utilize shilajit, which we’ve seen has some potential to boost testosterone levels and, in turn, improve semen parameters. In one 2010 study, participants saw a 61% increase in total sperm count and up to a 17% uptick in motility.30 The study consisted of only 60 men, which is well below significance, but it also only used 100mg of shilajit compared to Ultraload’s 200mg dose.

We consider Ultraload to be the best option for men looking to improve erectile strength along with semen quality, thanks in large part to its doses of L-citrulline and maca.31 Granted, studies looking at L-citrulline’s ability to improve erectile performance often use higher doses, but the 500mg present in Ultraload is still close to what has succeeded in the research.32

Ultraload’s ingredients are as follows:

• L-Citrulline: 500mg
• Black Maca: 2400mg
• Shilajit: 200mg
• Pine Bark Extract: 100mg
• B6 (as pyridoxal 5 phosphate): 20mg
• B12 (as methylcobalamin): 240mcg
• Zinc: 30mg
• BioPerine: 10mg

Ultraload is a little more expensive than the rest of the field. It occasionally runs discounts that can save you up to 20%, but these are hard to predict. Here are the company’s typical retail prices:

• One-month supply: $69
• Three-month supply: $178
• Six-month supply: $297

At the six-month level, the cost per bottle is $49.50, which is a little less than Bird & Be’s Powers for Males at the subscription level without the CoQ10 boost. And considering that Bird & Be provides you with 22 ingredients (compared to Ultraload’s eight), more than twice the dose of B12, and nearly twice the dose of zinc, that might be the better deal. But for men concerned with erectile strength, Ultraload’s maca and L-citrulline content may make it a superior investment.

Ultraload provides free first-class shipping on all domestic orders. It also offers a 100-day money-back guarantee, which is the most generous guarantee in our guide and the only one long enough for a man to ascertain whether the pills he’s using have any effect.

Beli Vitality falls more in the fertility camp than traditional volume pills, but its collection of ingredients would give most of those volume pills a run for their money. It’s a decidedly well-balanced supplement; the only two ingredients that stand out as particularly high in dosage are the 2,000IU of vitamin D and 134mg of vitamin E.

The doses of most other ingredients appear at or just below the low end of ranges used in clinical research. The weakest of these doses is likely the B12 dose at 14mcg. Compare that to 500mcg from Beli’s closest competitor, Bird & Be, and you see how slight this allotment is. However, 14mcg is still almost six times your daily recommended dose of vitamin B12 (2.4mcg).

Beli divides its Vitality into two ingredient sections, one of which is a multivitamin and the other of which is the company’s Vitality Blend (note that this is not a secretive proprietary blend, just a name for an ingredient section).

Here’s what the full ingredient list looks like:

• Vitamin B6 (as pyridine HCl): 2mg
• Vitamin B12 (as methylcobalamin): 14mcg
• Vitamin C (ascorbic acid): 100mg
• Vitashine vegan vitamin D (as cholecalciferol): 2,000IU
• Vitamin E (as D-alpha-tocopheryl Succinate): 134mg
• Folate: 1,020mcg
• Selenium chelate: 70mcg
• Zinc citrate: 15mg
• L-Arginine: 200mg
• L-Carnitine: 100mg
• N-Acetyl L-cysteine: 25mg
• CoQ10 (ubiquinone): 100mg
• L-Taurine: 110mg
• Shilajit extract: 250mg

While it is well-balanced, the multivitamin side of Beli’s Vitality is missing a number of vitamins you get from Bird & Be for nearly an identical price. But Beli’s inclusion of shilajit and an increased dose of vitamin D help bring it in line with Bird & Be’s performance, especially where testosterone is concerned.29

Beli Vitality pricing

Beli has the easiest pricing structure to understand of any product in this guide. There is no option to buy a single bottle just once, nor are there any bulk levels to offer you additional savings. That said, the one and only way you can purchase Beli Vitality for Men — as a subscription — comes at a competitive price of $50/month.

Fortunately, it’s free and easy to cancel if you so choose, and you never have to pay for shipping in either direction. If you request a refund within 30 days of your first purchase, Beli will give you your money back without you having to return the product to them. This seems generous at first, but when you consider that it can take 2-3 months for many of these ingredients to show any effects in your system, 30 days isn’t really enough.

Volume Pills is another product by Leading Edge Health, the parent company that produces Semenax. It uses a formula made mostly from botanicals with roots in ancient Eastern medicines.33 Because of that, a lot of its ingredients weren’t included in our list of common ingredients above. The formula does include zinc, a known testosterone booster, but it’s worth looking into some of its other components.

Evidence shows that emotional and mental health can play an enormous role in sexual satisfaction and even semen volume.34 That’s why Volume Pills says it includes Solidilin in its formula. The website says that this ingredient contains L-Dopa, a dopamine precursor that can help regulate mood. The only problem is that there are no studies looking at Solidilin. In fact, outside of the Volume Pills website, there’s barely any information on the substance. Another ingredient, Emblica officinalis, is a fruit from India that the site claims can increase nitric oxide production, which, according to studies, leads to better erections.45 But the study cited by Volume Pills says nothing about nitric oxide or semen parameters, and it was conducted in fruit flies. We could not find studies into the ingredient’s nitric oxide interaction.

Does this mean Volume Pills is a joke or a scam? Well, the zinc dose might be enough to supplement an otherwise healthy diet for men who have a slight deficiency. And one significant review looked at several ingredients common to traditional Chinese medicine and examined their influence on semen quality. The study included several ingredients found in Volume Pills. Results were generally positive, but it’s worth noting that the paper was part of a doctoral thesis, not a peer-reviewed journal.35

Ultimately, Volume Pills might be a good place to start for those who are confident in traditional Chinese medicine or who want to stick to a predominantly botanical ingredient profile for one reason or another. For most people, though, it’s not something we’d recommend for starters. Here’s the full list of ingredients in Volume Pills. Remember that, other than the 24mg of zinc gluconate, the formula is hidden behind a proprietary blend measured at 1,458mg.

• Zinc gluconate: 24mg
• Solidin
• Rou Gui
• Ku Gua
• 4, 5, 7 Trihydroxyflavone
• Arjuna
• Dong Chong Xia Cao
• Ling Zhi
• Xian Mao
• Tian Men Dong
• Drilizen
• Fucus Vesiculosus
• Hong Hua Fen
• Emblica Officinalis

Volume Pills pricing

Volume Pills sometimes runs discounts on its products, but there are also Innerbody discount codes you can use to save a little more than the company’s discounts provide. You can buy Volume Pills in 1-, 2-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month supplies for the following prices:

• 1-month supply (normally retails for $60): $56 using INNERBODY30
• 2-month supply (normally retails for $110): $96 using INNERBODY40
• 3-month supply (normally retails for $155): $144 using INNERBODY40
• 6-month supply (normally retails for $290): $216 using INNERBODY55
• 12-month supply (normally retails for $400): $288 using code INNERBODY70

At the highest level, the monthly retail cost of Volume Pills is $33.33, but that comes down to $24 with the INNERBODY70 discount code.

Shipping for Volume Pills is free at any purchasing level, and the company gives you Leading Edge Health’s standard 67-day money-back guarantee. As with Semenax, this is just enough of a guarantee that you might see an effect or two before the time comes for you to decide whether to stick with the product or request a refund. A slightly longer guarantee, like Ultraload’s 100 days, would be better.

Learn more from our complete Volume Pills review.

Many men look into volume pills based on one or more of the claims manufacturers tend to make. These range from increased fertility to cures for erectile dysfunction. Many of these claims of inappropriately overblown or don’t apply exactly to the ingredients included in a given supplement. But some of them are reasonable, especially among the volume pills aimed at fertility.

If you’re mostly interested in improving the quantity or quality of your ejaculate — and especially if you’re looking for a nutritional supplement that might help boost fertility — volume pills and fertility boosters are where you want to look. But there are other product categories that can solve similar problems, as well as categories that can address different meal sexual health needs altogether. Let’s take a close look at these alternative options to make sure you get exactly what you need.

Male enhancement pills and testosterone boosters

Male enhancement pills and testosterone boosters share a lot of ingredients with volume pills., but male enhancement pills differ in some ingredients and ingredient quantities. Volume pills will often contain more ingredients that target fertility and semen quality, often in larger quantities, whereas male enhancement pills focus on increasing blood flow to improve erectile performance.

Testosterone boosters often boast a superior ingredient crossover with volume pills. That’s because they seek to treat male sexual health issues from the root by increasing testosterone first and letting it provide the benefits. That means they contain things like zinc and ashwagandha, which studies show can both improve testosterone36 and reduce anxiety.37

Among the three types of pills — male enhancement pills, testosterone boosters, and volume pills — we would likely steer most men concerned with sexual performance and fertility toward volume pills, specifically the subset that are marketed as fertility supplements. The best of these tend to offer the widest range of well-researched ingredients at doses similar to what researchers use in their studies.

For a closer look at these types of pills, check out our guides to the best testosterone booster and the best male enhancement pills.

Multivitamins

When you see things like vitamin complexes, zinc, selenium, magnesium, and other vitamins and minerals in volume pills, you might reasonably ask yourself whether you’d be better off just taking a good multivitamin. After all, really good multivitamins often cost less than the average volume pill. You’re also less likely to see in multivitamins some of the questionable ingredients used in a few volume pills.

The main drawback to using a multivitamin rather than a volume pill or fertility supplement is that some of those ingredients — the type you don’t often see in multivitamins — might make a real difference. Ingredients like shilajit, L-arginine, maca, and ginseng aren’t in the average multivitamin, and there is some clinical evidence that they can help with sexual function.

Another reason to opt for volume pills over regular multivitamins is dosing. Most multivitamins try to give you a little bit of a lot of vitamin and mineral ingredients. But volume pills tend to be more focused on the components that studies show can help with semen parameters, and they provide those in higher doses than the average multivitamin.

Take one of our top-rated multivitamins for men: Ritual Multivitamin for Men 18+. Here’s how the doses of its 10 ingredients compare with two of our top volume pills:

As you can see, there are a few small areas in which Ritual’s multivitamin can compete, namely in its magnesium, vitamin D, and DHA content. But there are several important ingredients left off Ritual’s list, such as CoQ10, L-arginine, and selenium.

Due to a risk of over-supplementation and toxicity for certain ingredients (often vitamin D or zinc), we do not recommend combining a multivitamin with any volume pills.

Lifestyle changes

If you’re trying to do everything you possibly can to improve your semen quality and fertility, there are several lifestyle changes that can give you an edge. Some of these are easier to accomplish than others, but attempting at least some should yield results.

Penis extenders

Penis extenders rely on physical forces to create microtears in the penile tissue. This works in much the same way as lifting weights. Unlike muscle that you lose if you aren’t consistent over many years, gains in penis length can reach upwards of an inch and will remain after using a device for at least 12 weeks.41

If you’re more interested in the size of your penis than in the output of your testicles, these devices might be worth your consideration. Check out our guide to the best penis extender for more information.