Nutrafol vs. Hims

Most people experience hair loss at some point in their lives. The most common form of hair loss is called androgenetic alopecia, and it affects something like 50 million men and 30 million women in the United States alone.1

For many people, their hair is an extension of their personality and is thus deeply tied to their self-perception. It’s understandable, then, why someone experiencing androgenetic alopecia would want to take measures to restore their locks to their original, voluminous glory.

Nutrafol and Hims are two companies that aim to help in that regard. One is a supplement company, the other a telehealth platform with prescription options, and hair loss products are the point at which they intersect. In this review, we assess each company on their ability to accommodate people’s hair loss needs.

If you’re in a hurry, know that Hims is our overall recommendation here. We feel that Hims’ prescription-strength ingredients are best suited to regrowing hair lost to androgenetic alopecia.

To be sure, Nutrafol makes some of the best nutritional supplements for hair loss. Its thoughtful formulations might help you maintain healthy hair and could play a supportive role in your effort to regrow hair, but we just need to be clear that no hair loss supplement has the amount of research-based substantiation that prescription-strength treatments like minoxidil and finasteride bring. Moreover, the ingredients often used in supplemental formulations can interact with certain medications or may not agree with individual health histories. Their effects are harder to predict.

That being said, supplemental approaches have a definite place in people's hair recovery journeys, namely for those who can't take hair loss prescriptions and those who prefer a nonprescription alternative. And if you're among the subset population for whom supplements are contraindicated, there are other options at your disposal, such as low-level laser therapy (laser caps for hair loss) or hair transplantation.

Here’s a visual breakdown of how Nutrafol and Hims measure up in key evaluative criteria. Keep in mind that some categories require a more nuanced view that a table can’t rightly illustrate. For example, Hims is bound to have the advantage in effectiveness and safety because the company deals in prescription hair loss treatments, which have a lot more scientific research to support them compared to supplements. We encourage you to read the pertinent sections later in this review to gain a more complete understanding in these areas.

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

Our team has covered the subject of hair loss for many years now, so for this comparative review, we had the advantage of thousands of cumulative hours of research and hands-on experience with prescription and supplemental hair loss treatments. We’ve also reviewed Nutrafol and Hims separately and found them to be among the leaders in their respective niches. Building on our existing knowledge base, we identified key points of comparison between the two companies and centered our attention on these intersections/diversions.

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 and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team.

In evaluating Nutrafol and Hims on their respective merits, we focused on the following five criteria:

• Effectiveness
• Safety
• Cost
• Website user experience
• Customer support

Here’s how we determined which company held the advantage in each category:

Effectiveness for hair loss

Advantage: Hims

Hims has an easy advantage in effectiveness because it sells minoxidil and finasteride — two of the most widely prescribed medications for hair loss.

Remember what we said about supplements versus prescriptions? Even though both options treat androgenetic alopecia via the same biological mechanism, prescriptions have much more scientific support to validate their effectiveness for restoring hair in the highest possible proportion of people. That isn’t to say there’s no scientific support for supplemental ingredients, only that the magnitude of research favors the prescription route.

Hims’ superiority in this field extends to its nonprescription catalog as well, at least in a head-to-head of counterpart products. Take shampoos, for example. While Nutrafol’s shampoo has the makings of a premium hair care product, it lacks much of anything that can treat hair loss, whereas Hims’ Thick Fix Thickening Shampoo features saw palmetto, a botanical that has demonstrated the potential to reduce shedding and promote hair growth whether it’s used orally or topically.2 Had Nutrafol included saw palmetto in its shampoo, as it does in almost all of its oral nutraceuticals, we might have had a more neck-and-neck comparison here.

However, we do think Nutrafol’s marquee nutraceuticals clearly outperform Hims’ biotin gummies — Hims’ sole oral hair loss supplement. Unless a rare biotin deficiency is contributing to your hair loss, the dietarily abundant B vitamin is unlikely to help.3

Safety

Advantage: Hims

In the case of Nutrafol versus Hims, being the safer option doesn’t mean causing fewer or less severe side effects. In fact, for some users, a treatment such as oral finasteride through Hims may cause erectile dysfunction (ED) that persists even after discontinuation, which can pose a real danger to a man’s psychological well-being.4 5 But it does mean the products in Hims’ hair loss catalog products are subject to greater regulatory oversight because they’re prescriptions, which — unlike supplements — must receive FDA approval before they hit the market.6 Also, it’s worth mentioning that Hims offers a topical version of finasteride that enters the bloodstream at much lower levels and, therefore, poses a significantly reduced risk of causing ED.7

But say that we pretend Hims doesn’t sell prescriptions, only supplements. In that case, too, Hims’ ingredients are less risky than Nutrafol’s. The main one to examine is saw palmetto, which features in several of Nutrafol’s oral supplements as well as Hims’ Thick Fix Thickening Shampoo. When taken orally, saw palmetto can cause digestive symptoms, nausea, and headache, whereas topical application might result in some mild skin irritation.8 Most days of the week, we’d take minor cutaneous discomfort over systemic upset.

Cost

Advantage: Hims

In terms of the monthly cost breakdown, you’ll pay less for any one of Hims’ prescription treatments than you would for one of Nutrafol’s main supplements. The most expensive non-bundle option in the Hims prescription catalog is $39 per month for Rx Hair Loss Spray + Ketoconazole + Biotin, which contains both minoxidil and finasteride. That’s around half the cost of Nutrafol’s $79 nutraceutical on a subscription plan and about 40% as much as a one-time purchase ($88 plus $6.95 shipping).

Of course, when we talk about “per month” pricing with certain Hims’ prescriptions, we’re referring to equivalent costs because there’s often no true month-to-month option. The $39 price point above is the monthly cost for a 150-day supply. Quarterly supplies are costlier per month, at around $50.

In other words, Hims does require an up-front commitment, but seeing as you need to keep using hair loss treatments to continue seeing results, we think the pricing structure is reasonable. At any rate, paying for a whole 150-day supply of a Hims product up front is still less expensive than three months of a Nutrafol subscription.

How about if we focus exclusively on Hims’ nonprescription offerings? Even then, Hims wins out. Its shampoos cost $18-$19 and its conditioners are $18-$22, whereas Nutrafol’s counterparts are $44 a pop. If that weren’t all, Hims offers bundles that shave off around 10%. Nutrafol has bundles, yes, but they don’t yield any savings.

The one cost-adjacent field that Nutrafol does better, albeit barely, is refunds. Which is to say that Nutrafol has a defined refund policy, and Hims doesn’t. We get into the matter in a later section, “Nutrafol vs. Hims’ refund policies.”

Website user experience

Advantage: Nutrafol

Neither company has what we would call a user-friendly website. Both are visually noisy and more difficult than necessary to navigate. However, the Nutrafol site is just a hair less frustrating because it requires significantly less scrolling just to find the information you need, and the layout is somewhat more intuitive. At the very least, we never had to resort to a search engine to locate a page we were looking for on the Nutrafol site, but we did have to do that with Hims.

Also, exact pricing is much more of a challenge to find for a Hims product. Seeing as cost is one of the primary factors informing consumer choices, we prefer to see exact pricing options prominently displayed on the product page, the way Nutrafol does it.

Customer support

Advantage: Nutrafol

One of our testers had complained previously about Nutrafol’s slow response times to customer queries, but our most recent testing has found the company’s customer support to be much speedier than before.

We’re speaking specifically about Nutrafol’s chat feature. In the lower right-hand corner of every page, you’ll find a green button with a white speech bubble silhouette — click on that to access the chat. It was in this way that we were able to connect with a live representative within seconds and receive a satisfactory response to our question in under two minutes.

Hims has a chat function, too, and it’s an expedient way to get comprehensive same-day responses to your questions, but you need a Hims care team (i.e., you need to be an existing customer) to use it. Also, for some reason, Hims makes it a bit too difficult to find its contact page at all. To reach it, you must first locate the Customer Help Center link at the bottom of a separate page, click it, and then select the Contact Us link at the top right-hand corner of the ensuing page.

Nutrafol and Hims are both major players in the health and wellness industry but with different business focuses:

• Nutrafol specializes in supplements and care products for hair loss in both women and men.
• Hims is the men’s-health side of the giant telehealth platform Hims & Hers Inc. It sells both supplements and prescriptions for a wide range of concerns: not just hair loss but also weight loss, ED, premature ejaculation, mental health, and skin care.

Both companies are accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB). On their respective BBB profiles, each one has an A+ Bureau rating but a drastically different customer review rating.

At this writing, Nutrafol’s BBB customer review rating stands at 1.12 stars out of 5 based on 50 reviews. The most common complaint among negative reviewers appears to be undue subscription charges (i.e., the customers were charged for subscriptions they claim to have canceled). As we’ve only ordered one-time purchases from Nutrafol, we can neither corroborate nor disconfirm these issues.

On the other hand, Hims’ BBB customer review rating currently stands at a strong 3.78 out of 5. The most recent customer complaints, which are relatively few, relate to unsatisfactory customer support and a user-unfriendly website. At least the issue about the website aligns with our own experience.

Hair loss treatment is the point at which Nutrafol’s and Hims’ separate business focuses intersect. Nutrafol’s treatments are limited to supplements and hair care products, whereas Hims offers prescription treatments in addition to supplements and care products.

Let’s more closely examine how each company treats hair loss.

Nutrafol for hair loss

Nutrafol’s marquee products are a line of once-daily oral nutraceuticals that deliver different blends of vitamins and botanicals that can potentially reverse hair loss:

• Nutrafol Men: A formulation targeted at men’s hair loss
• Nutrafol Women: For women aged 18-44 with thinning hair
• Nutrafol Women’s Balance: Similar to Nutrafol Women but aimed at women aged 45 and older
• Nutrafol Women’s Vegan: The vegan version of Nutrafol Women
• Nutrafol Postpartum: For women with thinning hair in the first year after giving birth

Elsewhere in the catalog are various support products that may help reinforce the benefits provided by the nutraceuticals. They include but aren’t limited to shampoos, conditioners, serums, and a scalp mask. The shampoos, conditioners, and scalp mask are unremarkable and appear to be formulated more toward general hair health, but the serums has some promising ingredients.

Speaking of — here are what we consider to be the primo ingredients used in Nutrafol’s best products:

You’ll have noticed that the Postpartum supplement differs significantly from the other nutraceuticals, but its more distinctive formulation has its own merits. Most notably, it contains pea sprout extract, which was shown in a 2020 study to be capable of improving hair density and reducing hair loss.18

We wish we could specify how much of each ingredient is in every four-capsule serving of a Nutrafol nutraceutical, but dosages are hidden behind proprietary blends. That limits how much we can say about Nutrafol’s efficacy, and it’s a small part of why we consider Hims to be the better brand for hair loss.

Hims for hair loss

Hims’ hair loss treatments include prescription medications along with supplements and hair care products.

The prescriptions, specifically, are minoxidil and finasteride — oral or topical — as well as combinations of both and/or supplemental ingredients. Here’s the full catalog of Hims’ prescription hair loss treatment options in 2025, excluding bundles:

Hims is generally the safer option because its products are mostly prescription drugs, and drugs go through a series of rigors on their developmental path. In a nutshell, the drug development life cycle involves multiple phases of clinical testing. Safety is the focus of the first phase, and it remains a key consideration as a drug advances to phases two and three. Later, it must be approved by the FDA before it hits the market, and once on the market, it undergoes active safety monitoring.23 24 Minoxidil and finasteride have withstood this crucible, and they continue to do so. The same can’t be said for supplements. The FDA doesn’t monitor supplements at all unless adverse events are reported to the agency by consumers, healthcare professionals, or the supplement companies themselves.25

Of course, prescription drugs cause adverse effects, too, and the most common one associated with finasteride can be worrisome to men. Specifically, oral finasteride has been associated with around a 2-5% incidence of sexual side effects such as ED, which may persist even after discontinuation of use.26 4 That’s because finasteride prevents the conversion of testosterone into DHT, and DHT is necessary for normal sexual function. Fortunately, you can probably circumvent the risk by using Hims’ topical finasteride treatments, as topicals enter the bloodstream at low enough levels so as to be unlikely to cause systemic sexual effects.7 Alternatively, if you currently experience or have experienced ED, you might consider the Sex Rx + Hair Hero treatment to offset the potential for sexual effects.

As for Nutrafol, apart from the fact of being largely un-monitored supplements, the nutraceutical ingredient quantities are obscured behind proprietary blends, so it’s impossible to verify whether they’re present in safe dosages, and most of the nutraceuticals contain ingredients that can be unsafe for lactating mothers.10 12 16

Although Hims’ catalog centers mostly on prescription drugs, its hair loss products are still substantially less expensive than anything you can get from Nutrafol. Of course, as we mentioned earlier, Hims doesn’t offer true month-to-month pricing, so you’ll need to make a multi-month commitment to its treatments, but the long-term savings compared to Nutrafol are significant.

Outside of bundles, Hims’ most expensive hair loss treatment is the Rx Hair Loss Spray + Ketoconazole + Biotin, which starts at an equivalent $39 per month for the 150-day supply and $50 per month for the quarterly (three-month) supply. The other 150-day finasteride/minoxidil blends mostly start at $35 per month, and the single-treatment solutions (oral finasteride, topical minoxidil) are $15-$20. And the supplemental items? The shampoos and conditioners are $18-$22 apiece, and the biotin gummies are $16.

In comparison, any one of Nutrafol’s main nutraceuticals is $79 as a subscription and $88 as a one-time purchase. The other items range from $44 for a shampoo or conditioner to $49 for a serum or scalp mask. And if you want a booster, you can expect to add at least $10 to your nutraceutical order. After just three months on a nutraceutical subscription, you’ll have paid more than you would have for five months of a Hims treatment.

Of note, Hims adds a $5 processing fee on all orders, and Nutrafol offers free shipping for U.S. subscriptions. Even so, the price analysis deeply favors Hims.

Refund policies

We said earlier that Nutrafol has a better refund policy than Hims does. That’s true because Nutrafol actually has a refund policy delineated on its website, which states that you can return any unopened item within 30 days, with free return shipping in the United States. No, it’s not a good policy, seeing as you can’t even use the product to see if you like it, but at least it exists.

Hims doesn’t have a set policy at all, or not a general one. Officially, the company states that “the nature of [its] products” means it can’t accommodate returns. The one possible exception is if you have an active subscription but decide to cancel a delivery before the pharmacy processes your order, in which case you’ll have to reach out to customer support to work out an arrangement — which isn’t guaranteed.

Nutrafol’s website has problems. So does the Hims’ website. But the Hims’ website has way more problems.

With Nutrafol, the problems relate mostly to a non-optimized layout. Here’s a screenshot of the Product dropdown menu to illustrate:

Do you see how the links seem to extend past the bottom of the screen? That’s called putting things below the fold, a phrase adopted from the newspaper world. Whatever you put below the fold is less visible than the things above it, so no priority information should be below the fold. Here, though, the links below the fold include the See All Products link, which is by no means less important than what is visible. What’s more, there’s no simple way to scroll down on the menu to view below the fold. Using a 14in laptop screen, we had to zoom out to 80% in the browser settings before we even glimpsed the top of the See All Products link.

Yet as frustrating as Nutrafol’s website is, we were much more frustrated with Hims. Here, take a look at this part of the Hims’ Hair Loss page:

It takes below the fold to another level. Notice where the scroll thumb is located — about two-thirds down the page. That’s how far we had to move the page before it began to show us what hair loss treatments were available through Hims. Above them were things like customer testimonials, a chart of hair loss patterns, and statistics concerning minoxidil and finasteride, none of which can be said to take priority over treatment options on a page meant to display treatment options.

Elsewhere on the Hims site, you’ll find a lot of movement:

• Chyron-style horizontally scrolling text
• Vertically scrolling text, like a flip clock
• A video that pops up in the lower right-hand corner and obscures nearly a quarter of the page real estate
• Needlessly animated images (e.g., a semi-rotating semaglutide bottle whose semi-rotation serves no utility)

Not even the questionnaire, which you must complete before you can purchase a prescription, is entirely free of such overindulgent site design. As you work your way through it, you’ll periodically hit an interstitial page with fade-in text, like it’s a PowerPoint presentation. And you usually can’t advance to the next question until Hims decides you’re ready for it.

Ultimately, the Hims site makes finding information harder than it should and makes completing the questionnaire take longer than it ought to. For you longtime Simpsons fans, think of it as the online version of the car that Homer designs for his brother, Herb: just too much going on, and at the expense of functionality.

Nutrafol takes the ribbon for customer support for its responsiveness and ease of access. You can activate chat support by clicking the green button located in the lower right-hand corner of every page. At first, the AI assistant will urge you to consult the knowledge hub, but typing “agent” a few times will connect you with a live representative. In our most recent experience, we were able to connect with a rep within a minute and receive a satisfactory answer in less than two. The company’s email support may still take several days to a week to respond, but the chat function is top-shelf.

Hims has excellent chat support as well, but it seems to be available only to existing customers, not prospective ones. If you have an important question you need answered to make your purchase decision, you’ll have to submit a query through Hims’ contact page.

The thing about Hims’ contact page is that it isn’t the easiest thing to find. Normally, companies have a link on the home page that includes the word “contact,” but Hims doesn’t. Instead, it has a link that reads “Customer Help Center,” which leads to a page that displays a link for the contact page. It’s the sort of excessive layering that stems from the company’s overindulgent website design or, more cynically, its desire to avoid customer interactions.

The primary hair loss treatments from Nutrafol and Hims have common ground in that they both seek to minimize systemic DHT, but Hims’ prescription options have a greater magnitude of scientific research to support their use as effective solutions to androgenetic alopecia. Yet Nutrafol certainly has its place as an alternative to prescription drugs or perhaps a helpful addition alongside more powerful treatments. To determine the best option for you, we recommend that you discuss your health goals with your healthcare provider. Together, you can identify a drug or supplement that presents the best odds of restoring your hair.