Puritan’s Pride Review: Quality Supplements at a Low Price?

Most Americans are deficient in at least one micronutrient, which can be attributed to “energy-rich, nutrient-poor” diets.1 In 2021, approximately 40% of Americans reported eating less than one serving of fruit per day, up from 36% in 2017.2 There are dozens of factors that affect our dietary choices, from cost and food deserts to personal preference.3 However, it's still crucial to get enough of the necessary daily vitamins and minerals. We need to get some, like iron and folate, from our diet because our bodies don't make them on their own.4

Supplements — non-food sources of vitamins, minerals, and herbs — can help to fill in the gaps of a less-than-ideal diet. More than one in three Americans take a multivitamin and even more take individual vitamins, minerals, or other supplements.5

Puritan's Pride is a supplement supplier selling hundreds of different vitamins, minerals, and herbs to keep your body functioning at its best. We dug deep into Puritan's Pride and tested its supplements to help you understand if they could be a good fit for your health needs.

Puritan’s Pride is a nice choice for low-cost, high-quality supplements. We appreciate that the company adheres to Good Manufacturing Practices and that the science behind many of the brand’s supplements is prominent and accessible. However, a decent amount of products are consistently out of stock, and some supplements can’t boast the same research-backed evidence of efficacy (or safety, in a few cases) as the others.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers like you make more informed decisions to live healthier lives. We extensively test each health service and product we review, including Puritan’s Pride — the marketplace and the supplements themselves.

For this review, our team spent 170+ collective hours gaining hands-on testing experience and researching Puritan's Pride (and its close competitors). We investigated the research behind the brand’s supplements, tested how user-friendly the website is, interacted with customer support, and purchased some products to observe factors like shipping and delivery times. We also compared the data we collected for Puritan’s Pride to the data from its competitors to help you find the supplement provider for your unique needs.

Additionally, this review of Puritan's Pride, like all health-related content on this website, was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.

When evaluating something as broad as an entire brand (and marketplace), it's important to focus on the qualities that matter most to the majority of consumers. With that in mind, we examined Puritan’s Pride based on quality and safety, cost, variety, and overall customer experience.

Quality and safety

Puritan’s Pride cites multiple scientific studies and sources for the reasoning behind many of its supplements, particularly those in its “Wellness Journey” section of the website. For instance, selecting “Eye Health” brings you not only supplement recommendations, but an explanation of how vision works, the anatomy of the eye, factors that affect vision, the nutrients to support sight, an FAQ, and a common myths section — all leading up to a nice references list of scientific journals and articles. Competitor Life Extension has a similar focus on science, which we always appreciate.

Puritan’s Pride products are manufactured in facilities in the U.S. that comply with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP).6 However, the company doesn’t have USP verification — an optional, but rigorous quality assurance program for dietary supplements.7 This doesn’t mean Puritan’s Pride makes poor-quality products, but it does mean that its supplements haven’t been tested according to the USP’s standards. Puritan’s Pride does claim that all of its supplements are tested or inspected up to 15 times during manufacturing, but without the involvement of an independent third party, there’s no way to know the details of this testing.

Looking at the Puritan’s Pride supplements themselves, they seem to perform as advertised. When we tested two popular tablets, we found that they disintegrated quickly, meaning your body should be able to digest and absorb them properly. This contrasts our results from testing Life Extension’s tablets, which didn’t disintegrate or dissolve properly. (Of course, that’s only one form of supplement; there are also caplets, capsules, softgels, and more.)

Cost

If there’s one thing that sets Puritan’s Pride apart from the competition, it’s the price of its supplements. The base prices, alone, are often extremely affordable — and you’ll almost always be getting at least two bottles for that low price (it’s impossible to purchase just one in most cases). The majority of Puritan’s Pride brand supplements are between $6 and $26, with some outliers in the other price categories. Nature Made is another brand that offers relatively affordable supplements (mostly in the $10-$25 range), but that’s often for a single bottle, only.

Puritan’s Pride also frequently runs additional sales and deals, sometimes it’ll be buy one get two free (instead of one free) or 50% off the entire store. Few, if any, competitors can boast prices per dose similar to those of Puritan’s Pride. (The most bottles we could add to the cart was 50, netting 75 free.)

Shipping costs are also reasonable, it’s a flat rate of about $5 if you don’t qualify for free shipping (starting at an order total of $49). Competitor brand Life Extension costs nearly the same for shipping — it’s $5.50 if you don’t qualify for free shipping with an order of $50.

And, additionally, most supplements on the Puritan’s Pride marketplace are eligible for subscribe and save automatic shipments. Subscribing to receive a delivery every 1-6 months nets you 20% off your purchase, and the free shipping threshold drops to $30. While it’s a bit disappointing that subscribing alone doesn’t get you free shipping, it makes sense due to how inexpensive the supplements themselves are. It’d be more upsetting if pricier competitors, like Thorne, didn’t offer free shipping with a subscription signup.

Variety

Puritan's Pride offers traditional and nontraditional supplements in various forms and doses. There is some redundancy in certain products, so you may occasionally have to compare what looks like the same product in different listings. For example, you can purchase krill oil, krill oil plus, and red krill oil — all with the same maroon label. In these scenarios, variety can be a bit of a hindrance. It might be more accessible if Puritan’s Pride had only one listing per general supplement type but allowed you to select the specific sub-type, along with the usual options for quantity and potency. Or even something as simple as a variation in label color could go a long way.

When considering the variation in supplement forms, most of the Puritan’s Pride offerings are types of pills — capsules, caplets, tablets, and softgels. While there are some gummies for certain focuses (like hair, skin, and nails vitamins), it’s a pretty rare form on the website. If you’re interested in gummy vitamins, a competitor like Nature Made might be a better choice.

Additionally, in recent years, the selection on the Puritan’s Pride website has dwindled. A fair amount of products are out of stock or plain unavailable. We’re unsure if this is due to Nestlé’s purchase of the company in 2021 or another factor. When one of our testers reached out to inquire about this, they were only given an apology for any inconvenience and informed that they could sign up for email updates on the products they’re interested in.

If you’re looking for a supplement marketplace with a wider range of products, then GNC (which currently sells products from hundreds of other brands) may be a good alternative.

Customer experience

It's not always easy to find what you want on the Puritan's Pride website. There are a few categories you can search through — such as by issue or by brand — but if you're just aiming to flip through the entire selection, you might run into some difficulties. It's easiest to navigate through this site if you enter knowing what you already want, which contradicts the beginner-friendly feeling of the site.

However, we do appreciate that Puritan’s Pride supplements are otherwise well-organized and given clear names (usually just what the contents are). In comparison, competitor Life Extension’s website can be even more intimidating due to the frequent use of scientific terminology and trademarked supplement names, like “Geroprotect” or “Migra-Eeze.”

In terms of customer support, Puritan's Pride offers multiple ways to get in contact with a representative — email, phone, and messaging. When agents are available, live chat is likely your best (and fastest) bet for getting the information you need. We did notice that agents aren’t always available during regular East Coast business hours, though.

Additionally, despite some testers running into communication difficulties regarding order status in the past, Puritan’s Pride seems to have remedied this. All of our testers received prompt emails for each and every step of the shipping process — from order confirmation to the package being out for delivery. This is similar, if not identical, to how well Life Extension keeps you informed.

Originally founded as a brand of dietary supplements in 1973, Puritan’s Pride (based in Oakdale, NY), now operates as a supplement marketplace offering several brands of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other nutritional supplements (including its own).

Puritan's Pride was formerly a parent company for many other brands as well, such as Biorganic Life and Aromappeal, but the categories for a majority of these brands on the Puritan’s Pride website are either empty, nonexistent, or only house out-of-stock products. Only the sub-brand Puritan’s Pride Organic has a few in-stock items at the time of this review, but they’re all on sale, which leads us to believe that they may be heading for discontinuation like the other sub-brands. This may be due to Nestlé's purchase of Puritan’s Pride (along with Nature Made, Osteo Bi-Flex, and other core brands of The Bountiful Company) in 2021.8

Besides the discontinuation of many sub-brands, Puritan's Pride still has a nice selection of supplements of all types and potencies. And the company strives to keep a commitment to quality — all Puritan's Pride brand products are made and tested in-house in the U.S., with transparency about the 106 countries where its ingredients are sourced. However, Puritan’s Pride brand products are not third-party tested (as confirmed by the company itself in an Amazon Q&A answer), so we can’t be sure how accurate this sourcing and testing information ultimately is.

Puritan’s Pride online reputation

On the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website, it’s noted that any reviews or complaints for Puritan’s Pride include all of those submitted either for the business itself or its “headquarters listing,” Nature’s Bounty. This means that, technically, the information on the Puritan’s Pride BBB page can’t really be used to judge the company. A few of the complaints do specifically mention Puritan’s Pride, however, and mainly involve billing issues or customers frustrated with the frequency of promotional emails.

On Trustpilot, Puritan’s Pride has its own standalone page. The profile is claimed and verified, but the company hasn’t replied to any negative reviews within the past 12 months. Currently, out of 244 reviews, the company stands at 1.8 out of 5 stars, or “Poor” by Trustpilot’s standards. Many of the most recent complaints and negative reviews reflect things we noticed, such as multiple out-of-stock products and difficulties with customer service communication.

You may have seen the words “vitamin” and “supplement” used interchangeably, but that isn’t quite accurate in all cases. Since Puritan’s Pride specializes in these products, we felt it necessary to quickly clarify the differences and similarities between the two.

Vitamins are either fat- or water-soluble compounds that our bodies need for normal cell function, development, and growth. These thirteen essential substances are typically “lettered” and include:9 10

We mainly get vitamins from various food sources, but when you take vitamins in tablet, capsule, or any other non-food form, they are considered supplemental — making them fall under the umbrella of “supplements.”11

Vitamins are supplements (outside of food sources), but not all supplements are vitamins. Supplements can also be minerals, herbs, botanicals, amino acids, live microbials (probiotics), and more.11

With some vitamin and supplement brands having a specific audience in mind — like GNC and athletes — you may be curious as to who Puritan’s Pride is for. In this section, we’ll break down who may benefit from shopping at Puritan’s Pride and who might be better off looking elsewhere.

Location

Whether you live in California or Copenhagen, Puritan's Pride will be able to send you vitamins, though shipping is more expensive for international customers. However, it’s important to note that citizens of certain countries with Puritan’s Pride distributors will need to purchase from the distributor’s website.

Currently, the countries with distributors include:

To find more information about a distributor, the dedicated page with all of their websites, phone numbers, and email addresses can be found here.

Health concerns

Most people don’t need to supplement with vitamins and can get all they need from eating a healthy, balanced diet.12 However, some people can benefit from taking them, including, but not limited to:

• Pregnant individuals (and those who may become pregnant) should take 400mcg of folic acid each day (in addition to eating folate-rich foods) to prevent birth defects like anencephaly and spina bifida.13
• Those with a malabsorption condition, such as celiac or ulcerative colitis, that increases the risk of various nutrient deficiencies, can benefit.14
• People who don’t get enough Vitamin D (which is extremely common) could benefit from supplementation.1 15
• Individuals who eat a vegetarian or vegan diet are more likely to have B12 deficiencies, as the vitamin isn’t found in plants.16

No matter the reason you may want to supplement with vitamins, it’s important to discuss it with your doctor before taking them to make sure they’re safe for you. This is especially essential when you’re on prescription drugs. For example, vitamin E can thin the blood, making it potentially risky to take with blood thinners.17 And artificial vitamin C can cause some types of chemotherapy to work less effectively and even increase your risk of cyanide poisoning.18

Additionally, fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) don't get quickly excreted in your urine like water-soluble ones, making it easier to exceed your upper daily limit and cause health problems instead of helping them.19 For example, adults 19 and older who take more than the upper limit of 3,000mcg of vitamin A may experience:20

• Headaches
• Blurred vision
• Nausea
• Dizziness
• Muscle aches
• Coordination difficulties

And, in very severe cases, an excess of vitamin A can even lead to coma or death.20

Puritan's Pride is generally good at not overdosing its vitamins outside of the upper daily limit, but we recommend making sure to double-check.

When it comes to other types of supplements, one example, St. John's Wort is notorious for interacting with medications, including all major antidepressants, benzodiazepines, anti-nausea medication, and painkillers.21 As mentioned before, if you have any questions or concerns about potential drug interactions, contact your primary care provider for their advice.

Who should shop elsewhere?

While Puritan’s Pride can be a nice choice for picking up some “everyday” supplements at a low price, some people may not be able to find exactly what they’re looking for. Here are some reasons you may want to shop elsewhere:

• If you’re interested in an athletic focus for your supplements, then GNC or Thorne could be good alternatives. The former’s main focus is on sports nutrition, and both offer NSF Certified for Sport supplements.
• People looking for some more targeted and obscure combinations may be interested in Life Extension’s offerings, many of which include proprietary blends intended for certain concerns (like anti-aging, mood support, brain health, and more).
• For those who can’t swallow pills or simply prefer supplements in gummy form, Nature Made offers a much wider selection versus Puritan’s Pride.22

Generally, Puritan's Pride brand products have decent scientific backing, with citations to prove it. While some offhand claims raise an eyebrow (such as the “About Us” page stating that the FDA has a heavy hand in regulating vitamins and supplements, which it does not), a majority of the science is sound.11

Wellness guide

While some product pages have scientific citations and sourcing on them, the majority of this research information can be found on the “Wellness Guide” section of the Puritan’s Pride website. Here, you can read detailed, yet easy-to-understand infographics or articles about whichever focus you choose. Currently, the available focuses include:

• Immune support
• Heart health: Fish oil
• Heart health: Co Q-10
• Joint support
• Eye health
• Digestive support
• Multivitamins
• Bone health
• Sleep and relaxation
• Brain health

Clicking on any of these links will bring up three recommended products, along with related information.

Some of these focuses have more scientific information than others. Immune support, both heart health focuses, joint support, and eye health all include thorough infographics detailing the science and research (with several sources) behind Puritan’s Pride's supplements for that concern. There are also definitions and explanations for what those systems or organs do, such as a diagram of different parts of the eye or details on the various types of joints in the body.

The remaining focuses — digestive support, multivitamins, bone health, sleep and relaxation, and brain health — only include the three recommended supplements and three relevant articles from the Puritan’s Pride blog, Healthy Perspectives. These articles are informative in their own way, but they don’t include the same robust sourcing or feel as accessible as the infographics.

While the information is relatively up-to-date — the immune support section cites a 2020 study on nutrition and immune function — there haven’t been any changes to these sections in the recent past.23 Considering that there are no studies post-2020 cited, despite this type of research almost always evolving (there’s even a scientific journal dedicated to dietary supplements), perhaps the lack of recent updates may be due to Nestlé’s acquisition of the company in 2021.24

Do Puritan's Pride's tablets disintegrate?

As is common with other vitamin and supplement brands (like GNC, Thorne, Nature Made, and Life Extension), there are several different forms that Puritan’s Pride brand products come in. The most common forms are softgels, capsules, caplets, and tablets. Many types of supplements also come in gummy, liquid, or powder form.

Tablets, which are common hard-pressed medications, may sometimes be difficult for our bodies to break down. They are one of the more likely forms of vitamins and supplements that can pass through without proper disintegration or dissolution.25 Depending on the tablet, this could be due to excessive binding ingredients or poorly distributed disintegrant ingredients.26

For vitamins and supplements to work, they need to be absorbed through the stomach into the bloodstream. However, this can only happen if the pill disintegrates (falls apart) and dissolves (combines with liquid). Without disintegration, a supplement or vitamin can pass right through without you seeing any of the benefits.

Since there’s no formal federal oversight to verify that vitamins and supplements sold are actually going to work, we decided to scientifically analyze the disintegration of some of Puritan’s Pride’s most popular tablets. To do this, we created an artificial stomach-like environment to see how well the tablets break down. While dissolution is difficult to test in experimental settings, we were still able to test if these supplements would properly disintegrate.25

All of the tablets we tested disintegrated completely by the end of the experiment. This is promising — it means that it's likely Puritan’s Pride brand tablets will enter your bloodstream and absorb into your body properly.

Concerns

Unfortunately, Puritan's Pride does sell a few products that aren’t based on any scientific legitimacy. Fluoride-free toothpaste, for example, is less effective at preventing cavities than fluoridated toothpaste, yet the Puritan’s Pride beauty section has a few different varieties of fluoride-free toothpaste.27

Some products, particularly in the sports and diet category, exist to fill a market trend rather than having real, fact-based health benefits. One example is apple cider vinegar, touted to promote weight loss with mixed results, which Puritan's Pride sells in tablet, liquid, and gummy forms.28 29 We recommend exercising caution before purchasing any product on the basis that it can provide a quick fix for an issue or concern. The company itself doesn’t make this claim outright, but the fact that you can find apple cider vinegar in the sports and diet category speaks for itself in a way.

It’s also worth noting that the company’s claim that “the FDA regulates vitamins and supplements closely” is a bit misleading. Yes, the FDA inspects labeling and manufacturing facilities, and it can step in to enforce the law when manufacturers don’t adhere to certain standards and put consumers at risk. But there are currently “no provisions in the law” for the FDA “to approve dietary supplements for safety before they reach the consumer.” The only scenario when a supplement manufacturer must submit safety information to the FDA before selling its product is when said product contains a “new dietary ingredient.”30 (A new dietary ingredient is one not sold in the U.S. as a supplement before October 15, 1994.)31

Additionally, Puritan’s Pride boasts about having a close relationship with the Council for Responsible Nutrition, but the same council allows Plexus Worldwide to be a part of it. Plexus is an MLM (multi-level marketing) supplement company with no scientific research on the safety of its products.32 And certain Plexus products, such as Plexus Slim, have been linked to adverse health effects, like immune thrombocytopenic purpura (a blood disorder).33 34 This makes us a bit skeptical of any potential benefits of the relationship between Puritan’s Pride and the Council for Responsible Nutrition.

Puritan's Pride has a fairly diverse selection of vitamins, supplements, and more to choose from. The main offerings are broken down into a few categories on the website, namely “Vitamins & Supplements,” “Herbs & Minerals,” and “Lifestyle.” You can also find products in the ”Shop By” and “Health Focus” categories, but these sections contain various collections of the same products found in the aforementioned areas.

Additionally, Puritan’s Pride used to offer items and supplements for pets (mainly dogs), but those appear to have been recently discontinued, along with many of its sub-brands like Myology, Aromappeal, and Biorganic Life. Some, but not many, of the listings for these products still exist, but they’re all out of stock or simply say “no longer available.”

Vitamins, supplements, herbs, and minerals

Puritan's Pride offers hundreds of different supplements. (We use "supplements" as an umbrella term in line with the FDA's nomenclature to refer to minerals, vitamins, botanicals, and so on that you add to your daily routine as an addition to a healthy diet.)11 These supplements include:

• Vitamins (such as vitamin C, vitamin D, and biotin)
• Minerals (such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc)
• Herbs (such as elderberry, turmeric, and St. John's Wort)
• Other miscellaneous supplements (such as fish and krill oil, probiotics, and melatonin)

These vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other supplements are sold individually and in blends for specific purposes. For example, you could get vitamin C on its own or in a single-pill blend with bioflavonoids for additional immune support.35 36 This way, there may be more opportunities to tailor your supplements to your health goals without having to take as many pills.

With so many different supplements to choose from, there are a few ways you can search for what you want. You can shop by:

• Brand (such as Puritan's Pride)
• Category (like "Ayurvedic" or "Heart Health")
• Health focus (including digestion, eyes, brain, joints, and others)
• Top sellers
• Price
• Lifestyle (like “Beauty” or “Sports & Diet”)

Despite the multiple options for searching or filtering your search, the website's navigation isn't always intuitive. There isn’t any option that lets you scroll through everything that Puritan's Pride has to offer. Instead, you'll need to select an option on the website’s navigation bar in order to see any products.

Clicking on "shop by category" takes you to a page with almost 300 different ingredients, brands, and themes, from top-selling letter vitamins to salmon oil. If you're not sure what it is you're looking for or just want to browse, this setup makes the process more complicated than it needs to be. And even if you click “All Supplements” (or any of the other “All” options), you’ll be directed to the “Top Selling” category for those items, which doesn’t list everything.

Once you get into a category and begin looking through products, there are more ways to personalize your search. You can either flip through the pages to find something you need, or refine your search by:

• Potency
• Product form
• Pill size
• Price
• Brand
• Rating

The listing for each supplement includes the name, item number, dosage (potency, if applicable), number of supplements per package (size), price, and customer review rating.

It's important to note that none of the Puritan’s Pride brand supplements are USP verified. Since the FDA doesn't regulate dietary supplements, the USP offers a non-mandatory quality testing service to indicate the product:7

• Contains what it says on the label in the correct potency and amounts
• Does not contain harmful levels of contaminants (like lead, mercury, pesticides, and others)
• Will break down and release into the body within a certain amount of time
• Has been made according to FDA current Good Manufacturing Practices

Puritan's Pride supplements are made in the U.S. in facilities adhering to current Good Manufacturing Practices, and a lack of USP verification doesn't mean that the product is inherently flawed.6 It just means that the supplements haven't been formally tested to the USP's rigorous standards. In every product summary, Puritan's Pride notes that all of its supplements are tested or inspected up to 15 times throughout the manufacturing process for quality assurance. And, while this may be completely true, without independent third-party testing and some additional transparency, it’s unknown how rigorous this testing really is.

Lifestyle products

The “Lifestyle” section of the Puritan’s Pride website is a bit odd compared to the others — it’s almost like a miscellaneous category in some aspects. While certain products, like the food and beauty ones, can’t be found elsewhere, many of the offerings in this section are repeat listings of supplements from other categories.

There are five different subcategories of lifestyle products offered:

• Beauty
• Sports and diet
• Men’s health
• Women’s health
• Food

The following chart breaks down the basics of what you can find in each of these subcategories.

Digital catalog

We used to recommend the Puritan’s Pride digital vitamin guide as an easier way to search through the brand’s top 50 vitamins, supplements, and ingredients. Unfortunately, it appears the company no longer updates this catalog. For example, clicking on the link to the “Absorbable Calcium” product on page 11 brings you to a 404 error page, and most of the others are out of stock or otherwise unavailable.

However, this digital guide does contain some interesting scientific information about many of the vitamins and supplements the company sells (or used to sell). It’s still a worthwhile, quick read if you’re interested in learning more about one of the supplements covered. These include:

• Antioxidants (astaxanthin, alpha-lipoic acid, resveratrol, turmeric, pycnogenol)
• Beauty (retinol cream and hair, skin, and nails vitamins)
• Bone health (calcium, magnesium)
• Brain health (ginkgo biloba, Neuro-PS, acetyl l-carnitine)
• B vitamins (biotin, vitamin B-12, vitamin B complex)
• C vitamins
• Digestive health (probiotics, psyllium, digestive enzymes, milk thistle)
• D vitamins
• E vitamins
• Eye health (beta-carotene, bilberry, lutein)
• Heart health (omega-3 fish oil, coenzyme Q-10, flaxseed, ubiquinol, garlic, niacin, berberine)
• Immune health (echinacea, zinc, elderberry)
• Joint support (glucosamine, chondroitin, MSM, SAM-e, collagen)
• K vitamins
• Men's health (lycopene, saw palmetto)
• Sugar metabolism support (cinnamon)
• Multivitamins
• Sleep and relaxation (ashwagandha, melatonin, theanine)
• Women's health (black cohosh, cranberry)
• “Innovative new products”

Each page of the vitamin guide features one product or ingredient and includes a summary of what it is, what it does, and how it can support the body. Another section, titled "studying up on" the ingredient, summarizes a few relevant studies (some more recent than others) on the ingredient. The bottom of the page highlights a product featuring that component, with the customer rating out of five stars, a snippet of a positive customer review, and a link to the product page.

Knowing the details of a brand and what it offers is important, but it can be just as beneficial to know what it’s like to purchase from it. Below, we’ll delve into the various aspects of shopping from Puritan’s Pride, including finding a supplement, pricing, discounts, shipping, and more.

Finding a supplement or vitamin

Even with a smaller selection than it once had, Puritan’s Pride still offers a decent mix of supplements for a variety of health concerns and goals.

In our testing experience, the various products we’ve purchased weren’t very hard to find. But it can sometimes be tough to track down the exact variety of the product you’re looking for. This is particularly true if you’re unaware that you can choose your potency and quantity on the product page. For example, there are multiple entries for the same krill oil product with different potencies in the “Fish Oils” category, but they’re spread out across multiple pages. However, clicking on one of them lets you choose whichever potency and quantity you want from all of the available options — even though it appears so, you don’t actually have to find the exact listing for it. We feel that condensing the product varieties into one entry would make navigating the Puritan’s Pride website much easier. (The same can also be said for the Nature Made and GNC websites.)

It’s pretty much impossible to purchase most supplements from Puritan’s Pride in single quantities. The only way to do so is by purchasing a supplement available in the “Trial Size” category (which are full-size bottles of 30 pills). Currently, the only trial-size options are vitamin C with bioflavonoids and rose hips, ginkgo biloba, vitamin D3, and melatonin.

Pricing

Puritan's Pride is well-known for frequently running some steep discounts on its products — like buy one get two free (instead of one) deals and sales for 50% off everything in the entire store.

If you shop by brand, select Puritan’s Pride, and sort by price (low to high), then you’ll see that the lowest-priced item — for $1.99 — is the trial size 30-count vitamin C with bioflavonoids and rose hips at a potency of 500mg. On the opposite side, the most expensive product is the buy two get three free option for the 240-count 200mg Q-Sorb CoQ10 at a whopping $262.98. But, while some of the high-potency offerings run in the $50-$100 range, a vast majority of Puritan’s Pride brand supplements fall somewhere between $6 and $26.

As an example of how the Puritan’s Pride buy one get one (or buy two get three) systems work, we’ve put together a quick chart using one of the company’s best-sellers, a 500mg magnesium supplement with 100 tablets.

Free shipping in the U.S. kicks in once your cart total reaches at least $49. If your shipment doesn't quite make that cutoff, base shipping starts at $4.95, which is comparable, or less, than some other vitamin suppliers. In comparison, Life Extension’s shipping becomes free at $50 purchases but starts at a $5.50 fee otherwise; Thorne offers free ground shipping on all supplement purchases; and Nature Made’s free shipping starts at $25 and costs $8 otherwise.

Additionally, most Puritan’s Pride supplements can be subscribed to for recurring deliveries every 1-6 months at 20% off, with free shipping starting at $30 (instead of $49).

Customer support

If you contact the Puritan’s Pride customer support team, real human beings field concerns via three platforms: phone, email, or live instant messaging. This is in contrast to Nature Made, which uses a virtual assistant bot for messaging. However, it can be tough to find a time when the Puritan’s Pride chat option is available, even during normal business hours. This is in stark contrast to previous years when our testers started chats with customer support and were almost immediately linked with a representative.

When you do get in contact with a representative, they’re usually friendly enough and can easily explain the answer to most questions. Some inquiries won’t get straight answers, however. For instance, when one of our testers asked about the reason for so many products being out of stock, the representative only apologized and explained that the tester could sign up to receive an email when the items they wanted came back.

While there are no hours listed for when customer service representatives staff live chat, you can call the customer support line between 8 a.m. and midnight (eastern time) every day of the week. You can also email customer support and get a response within 24-48 hours. If available, live chat is the fastest way to get most of your questions answered.

How your items arrive

Our testers’ packages arrived impressively fast. One tester’s order even showed up at their door the day after the order was placed. This likely won’t be the case for everyone’s order, however, so we’d recommend expecting a wait of at least three days, on average.

All of the bottles of our testers’ pills arrived packaged in Puritan’s Pride-branded cardboard boxes full of packing peanuts. (The good news is that these packing peanuts are starch-based and biodegradable — you can actually wash them down your sink with warm water or compost them.)45 Everything was easy to find and clearly assembled with care, though the bottles were in a bit of disarray after travel.

Overall, even with a few bumps in the road along the way, our testers felt their experience with Puritan’s Pride was a positive one.

Puritan’s Pride is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of prominent supplement brands across the internet. Below, we’ll briefly touch on a few of its closest competitors — and go over some of the pros and cons of choosing them.

GNC

Where Puritan's Pride focuses on holistic wellness at low prices, GNC is a powerhouse that leverages its household name to sell mostly athletic products, including supplements, food, drinks, and equipment.

Similar to sorting by health focus on the Puritan’s Pride website, the GNC website has 13 major product goals. These goals run the gamut from weight management and gut health to healthy aging, gaming supplements, and even items that are specifically tested for banned substances.46

GNC also has a much larger marketplace, selling considerably more products (from its own brand and others) than Puritan's Pride or other competitors like Nature Made and Thorne.

That said, Puritan's Pride is often a much less expensive option. For example, a 500mg bottle of 30 krill oil softgels costs $19.99 from Puritan’s Pride (for two bottles) and $29.99 (for one bottle) from GNC. Of course, it’s worth mentioning that GNC’s offering boasts more total omega-3s (including EPA and DHA) and utilizes Superba Krill Oil, one of the world’s leading sustainable krill oil brands.47 But, on the other hand, the Puritan’s Pride krill contains fewer additives.

In situations like this, your supplement of choice may ultimately depend on your preferences — such as whether you place more value on cost or potency.

Nature Made

If you walk into any pharmacy or grocery store, chances are you’ll see Nature Made vitamins on one of the shelves. Even though the two brands have a few things in common, such as being purchased by Nestlé in 2021, Nature Made and Puritan’s Pride do have some notable differences.

The Nature Made website is a bit more streamlined and user-friendly than that of Puritan’s Pride, and the brand has received verification from the United States Pharmacopeia (USP).48 On the other hand, Puritan's Pride has no organizational certifications but does manufacture its supplements in the U.S. in line with current Good Manufacturing Practices (which USP verification requires).

Nature Made also sells more vitamins and supplements in gummy form compared to Puritan’s Pride. While some sources state that gummy vitamins can lose their potency quickly, part of USP verification is that supplements contain ingredients in the “declared potency and amounts.”7 49 And certain supplements, like vitamin D, may actually be more bioavailable in gummy form.50

Similar to GNC, however, Nature Made tends to be more expensive than Puritan’s Pride. For example, a single 40-count bottle of CoQ10 100mg softgels from Nature Made costs $26.39, while two 30-count bottles of the same from Puritan’s Pride cost $10.49. With something like CoQ10 supplements that really only have one main ingredient, it’s tough to determine what could cause such a large price difference.

Thorne

Thorne, similar to competitor Life Extension, offers supplements and health tests that can help you determine what your body may benefit from. Thorne, however, provides you with health recommendations based on your specific goals and results. Puritan’s Pride briefly tried to enter the customized vitamin market in 2022, but it was short-lived, and the option to receive a tailored regimen from the company no longer exists.51

If you’re only interested in adding a supplement to your routine if there’s solid reasoning behind it, then Thorne’s at-home tests and health panels may be a good starting point. The company offers you guidance and the tools you need to find any potential nutritional gaps at home. Tests vary from fertility and sleep to gut health, biological age, and more — and they can be bundled with vitamins for nutritional packages. You can also take one of Thorne’s 15 supplement quizzes that ask questions about your health history and recommend supplements based on your habits and personal health goals.

In terms of selection, Thorne offers less than Puritan’s Pride, but its supplements are often a higher potency — and a higher price. But, a higher potency doesn’t always make a supplement better. For example, both Puritan’s Pride and Thorne go well above the daily value of vitamin B12 in their respective men’s multivitamins. Puritan’s Pride ($18.99) provides 750% of your daily value, while Thorne ($48) provides 18,750% of your daily value. This might seem like Thorne is the obvious winner in this case, but your body only absorbs as much B12 as it needs — the rest passes through your urine.52 When it comes to B12, and other water-soluble vitamins (like the 3,333% of your daily value’s worth of thiamine) Thorne may just be giving you expensive urine.53

Life Extension

The main draw of Life Extension is the science-focused basis and presentation of its products. This focus can, however, lead to people feeling a bit overwhelmed when trying to purchase items from its website. Unlike Puritan’s Pride, Life Extension allows you to browse everything all at once, though it’s only by supplement name sorted A-Z — which would be fine if Life Extension didn’t use trademarked (often non-specific) names for many of its supplements.

Something we appreciate about Puritan’s Pride over Life Extension is the straightforward naming of its supplements. With Puritan’s Pride, there’s rarely any unclear titles given to its products and, when there are, it’s usually followed up with something to clarify it.

For instance, the CoQ10 from Puritan’s Pride is actually dubbed “Q-SORB CoQ10” — but at least this explains that it is, in fact, CoQ10. While there are some straightforward, single-ingredient supplements, a fair amount of Life Extension’s products have trademarked names for proprietary blends like “Neuro-Mag” or “Cognitex Elite” that do very little to actually explain what’s in the supplement. The components are listed on the bottle under the name, but the initial piece of information you get is often unclear.

This means that customers may need a crash course in what each supplement does. Thankfully, like Puritan’s Pride, Life Extension offers this information on each product page. The downside is that, while Life Extension does list its sources, the company cites the journal and applicable page numbers, but doesn’t name the study or article the information came from (knowing this information can make verifying the claims a bit easier).

Similar to Thorne and GNC, Life Extension also offers a wide range of products beyond just supplements, including food and drinks, pet care, skin care products, and testing (at-home or in-lab at Labcorp locations) for more than 230 concerns.

As with the other competitors, Life Extension’s products are more expensive than those from Puritan’s Pride. Using curcumin as an example, the Puritan’s Pride 500mg is $32.49 — for two bottles, or $16.25 for each bottle — while Life Extension’s Curcumin Elite is $21.60 for a single bottle. The former gets you 360 doses, while the latter gives you only 60 (each uses single-capsule doses).