Life Extension Review: Everything you need to know

The prevalence of chronic disease is predicted to increase 99.5% by the year 2050. And many of these conditions (especially if comorbid with another, such as having both type 2 diabetes and hypertension) are associated with a reduced quality of life and increased mortality.1 Additionally, experts note that diet and nutrition — including nutrient deficiencies — contribute to the development of chronic disease.2

Unfortunately, most Americans are deficient in one or more micronutrients.3 With this in mind, you may be wondering how to go about filling in these nutritional gaps, and that’s where supplement companies like Life Extension try to step in and help.

But, with so many supplement brands on the market, how do you know if Life Extension is the right one for your unique needs? To help you decide, our team did deep research to compare Life Extension with its competitors and personally tried out the brand’s products and services to bring you all of the pros and cons.

Life Extension supplements are third-party tested and distributed by an NSF-certified facility. But while the products should generally be safe for most people, some of the ambitious promises the company makes about its supplements aren’t likely to live up to reality. Otherwise, Life Extension’s cost is pretty middle of the road, and its selection has recently expanded to include a few other brands.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions to live healthier lives. We extensively test each health service we review.

For this review, our team spent over 165 collective hours testing and researching Life Extension and its close competitors. We purchased the products to try for ourselves, investigated the company’s various claims, and spoke with customer service representatives at length to ensure our information is as up-to-date and accurate as possible.

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

In order to give you a complete picture of Life Extension’s products and experiences, we considered fundamental factors including your user experience and the quality and variety of products the company offers.

Quality and safety

Life Extension does a good job of covering the basics of making a safe supplement: independent third-party testing, adhering to cGMP regulations, and acquiring certifications (in its case, an NSF-certified distribution facility).4 5 The brand’s supplements also don’t contain food coloring or unnecessary additives.

However, our own testing raised some quality concerns in terms of tablet disintegration and dissolution — they didn’t fully break down. This is in contrast to the tablets from competitor Puritan’s Pride, which broke down more readily in a stomach-like environment and would likely absorb fully into your bloodstream.

Additionally, Life Extension has a rocky history with the FDA, due to the company making unsupported treatment claims (among other things). While the effectiveness of the supplements may not be as grandiose as Life Extension claims, they should, ultimately, be generally safe to use.

Cost

Overall, Life Extension’s products are middle-of-the-road in terms of cost — they’re usually more expensive per bottle than supplements from Puritan’s Pride or Nature Made, but less per bottle than those from Ritual or Thorne.

Using a 500mg curcumin supplement as an example (all are single-capsule doses):

You can also save money on Life Extension supplements by subscribing for auto-deliveries, or by buying in bulk; when you purchase four or more, you get a percentage off (it varies by product). And if you aren’t happy with your purchase, Life Extension offers a generous 12-month return policy.

When it comes to lab testing, Life Extension’s tests are competitively priced, and, similar to at-home tests from companies like Everlywell, they could be a cost-effective alternative for those who lack insurance coverage but need lab testing done. As a quick comparison, we’ll look at tests for vitamin D:

• Life Extension’s in-lab (Labcorp) Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy Blood Test costs $47
• Thorne’s at-home Vitamin D Test is $99
• Everlywell’s at-home Vitamin D Test Kit is $49

If you don’t mind collecting your own blood sample, we’d recommend spending the extra money to go with Everlywell in this scenario — particularly for the added convenience.

Variety

In the past, Life Extension only sold its own products, but it has since expanded to include offerings from 16 other supplement and wellness brands. The variety of its own products — including everything from basic wellness staples to trademarked targeted formulas — has also continued to grow, culminating in a fairly lengthy “Supplements A to Z” page with every Life Extension brand item (and dose and quantity) currently available. In comparison, competitor Puritan’s Pride has no way of searching through every available product, only by health goal or brand.

And, similar to competitor brand Thorne, Life Extension offers lab services for a multitude of health concerns. Currently, there are over 230 different tests to choose from.

However, even though its variety has grown more robust over time, Life Extension’s product selection still pales in comparison to retail behemoths like GNC (which has 3,923 products at the time of this review).

Customer experience

Purchasing from Life Extension can be intimidating if you don’t know quite where to begin. However, the categories and quizzes make it a bit easier to find what you need. Competitor Puritan’s Pride has a similar issue where there are so many products listed that it becomes almost necessary for the company to have perhaps a few too many categories available.

Again like Puritan’s Pride, Life Extension offers a nice amount of scientific information along with its supplements in an accessible and easy-to-understand manner. The only thing against Life Extension’s product information is the use of non-specific or non-descriptive supplement names, like “X-R Shield.” This can quickly add confusion to a customer’s shopping experience, particularly when browsing through the website’s A to Z section. The A to Z section is basically just a large list (no images or other information) of the available Life Extension supplements, so these non-descriptive, trademarked names don’t provide enough information.

On the customer service side of things, Life Extension makes it easy to get in touch with a representative via multiple methods of communication, including specific ways for getting in touch with wellness specialists. The support staff over the phone is available 24/7, so even night owls on the West Coast can get assistance.

All customer service representatives we spoke with were kind and knowledgeable — and those who didn’t know an answer for us knew how to get us in touch with someone who did. For example, when we had a question that a staff member over the phone was unsure about, they got back to us via email the next day with an answer.

Originally founded as the Florida Cryonics Association in 1977, Life Extension (renamed in 1980) began as an organization dedicated to extending the human lifespan. However, in more recent years, the organization has split into two parts (there was a third part, the Life Extension Pharmacy, but it was short-lived and no longer exists):

• The non-profit organization Biomedical Research and Longevity Society, Inc. (formerly The Life Extension Foundation), which researches health developments and provides funding to advance research in cryobiology, interventive gerontology, and cryonics.6
• The Life Extension Buyer’s Club, which “promotes, sells, and distributes” vitamins, supplements, lab tests, and more. This is the portion of the organization focused on in our review.

Throughout this review, we refer to the Life Extension Buyer’s Club as simply “Life Extension,” to keep things simple (and because that’s how it's written on all of the product branding).

Life Extension boasts a lot of firsts in supplement development, particularly with the goal of fighting aging and the conditions that often come along with it. The company’s “Track Record” page lists all of its perceived accomplishments, broken down by decade, but we’ll delve into a few notable ones in the chart below.

An important note: If you decide to investigate the full Life Extension Track Record page, we recommend taking some of the information with a hefty grain of salt. The company uses a lot of inflammatory language that can feel like an attempt to sway bias in its favor — such as saying the FDA’s “censorship” of CoQ10 resulted in “more American deaths than all the major wars combined.”

Life Extension’s apparent distaste for the FDA is likely due to the relatively antagonistic relationship and troubled past the two share. There have been multiple criminal charges levied against the founders, including distributing unapproved drugs after a warehouse raid from the FDA, but all charges were dropped by 1996.15 Then, in 2017, Life Extension was issued a warning for claiming that its products could cure diseases such as breast cancer.16

Because the FDA doesn't regulate supplements, it’s illegal for companies like Life Extension to claim that supplements will treat, diagnose, prevent, or cure diseases.17

Most recently, in April 2023, Life Extension was named as a recipient of the FTC’s Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Substantiation of Product Claims. However, there are no further details about what the notice was specifically for, and the FTC notes, “The fact that a company is on this list is NOT an indication that it has done anything wrong.”18

Safety and transparency

We do appreciate the high standard that Life Extension holds its products to, such as third-party testing and obtaining NSF certification for its distribution facility.5 The company maintains transparency about its scientific processes and health and safety protocols — you can even call the customer service line to get the Certificate of Analysis for any product you want. And, while the ingredients are sourced globally, almost all of its products are manufactured in the United States.

The availability of the certificates is a nice showing of transparency that you, unfortunately, don’t always see from companies. Puritan’s Pride, for example, does all of its testing in-house and doesn’t provide results or similar information. Ritual, on the other hand, places a large focus on ingredient traceability — it provides detailed information on sources, suppliers, and even the final location of manufacturing.

Health and Wellness Market

Life Extension has one brick-and-mortar retail location in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The company’s Health and Wellness Market has several components:

• A retail market full of all the company’s health and wellness products
• A grocery section full of fresh produce and other foods for standard and specialty diets (gluten-free, paleo, vegan, and so on)
• In-store lab testing, including results consultations with Wellness Specialists
• A lecture hall for monthly guest speaker events
• A juice bar and cafe
• An on-site clinical research facility

The grocery store carries other brands of supplements and health foods beyond Life Extension, including Nature’s Plus, Garden of Life, Arrowhead Mills, and MegaFood. If you’d like to order a blood test, you can have it drawn there. While you might not get your results the same day, there are Wellness Specialists on location — you can bring any of your Life Extension results in with you, and they’ll gladly sit down with you to help interpret your results.

Currently, the Health and Wellness Market is open:

• 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM Monday-Friday
• 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturdays
• 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Sundays

The lab has more limited hours, closing at 2:00 PM on weekdays and 1:30 PM on Saturdays, and it’s closed on Sundays.

Life Extension’s online reputation

On the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website, there are two profiles with the “Life Extension” name. The real page is for “Lifeextension.com,” while the other page, “Life Extension Vitamins,” appears to be for a fake (or even counterfeit) version of Life Extension upon further inspection.

The actual BBB Life Extension profile is not accredited; it has an A rating, zero reviews, and only three total complaints over the past year.

Life Extension’s Trustpilot profile isn’t much better — there really isn’t a lot of information to go on. The profile is unclaimed, and the company has a 3.5 out of 5 rating from only 13 total reviews. Fifty-four percent of the reviews are 5-star, while 2- and 1-star reviews make up the other 46%. The complaints seem to mainly be from people who experienced side effects from a supplement, or individuals experiencing delays with shipments and lab test results.

Ultimately, neither the BBB page nor the Trustpilot one has enough information to make a concrete judgment about Life Extension.

Life Extension’s offerings can really be for anyone interested in supplements or other wellness products with a heavy focus on scientific research, even though people who are just starting out on their wellness journey may find it a bit intimidating. However, the presentation of the science and research, thankfully, is often accessible and easy to understand.

As with all supplements, if you’re taking any medications or have any medical conditions, it’s important to consult with your doctor before beginning a new supplement or making drastic lifestyle changes. There are lots of interactions between supplements and medications, some of which can be fatal. Vitamin K can reduce the effectiveness of blood thinners,19 for example, and DHEA may reduce the effectiveness of antipsychotics.7 Supplements aren’t substitutes for conventional medications — they cannot cure, diagnose, prevent, or otherwise treat diseases.

Life Extension’s lab tests are only available in the continental United States (except for Maryland) and Anchorage, Alaska. If you live in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts, you will have to go through your preferred medical provider’s blood-testing lab rather than Labcorp.

Who should look elsewhere?

Even though Life Extension has a nice selection of products, there may be cases where shopping elsewhere would suit you better.

• If you’re looking for an athletic-focused supplement brand or store, then GNC may be a good alternative.
• If Life Extension’s products cost a bit more than you’d like to spend, then Puritan’s Pride or Nature Made could be ideal.
• If you’re concerned about transparency, Ritual’s fully traceable supply chain for its supplements may bring you peace of mind.

Breaking down Life Extension’s scientific merit gets complicated fast. From the outside, the company appears extremely scientific and accurate, with certifications, extensive testing, and the involvement of independent third parties. After all, the other half of Life Extension is the Biomedical Research and Longevity Society, an organization dedicated to research and testing.

There are frequent mentions of scientific studies on product pages; some have links and citations, but others don’t. Life Extension also seems to suggest that it can predict things or solve issues years in advance of mainstream science’s understanding. Some instances of this happening are legitimate, but there’s also some liberal truth-stretching as well.

In many cases, this sense of embellishment is due to the language Life Extension uses; instead of saying that its research found potential for something or suggested it could be the case, the company “revealed,” “uncovered,” or even “exposed” it.

What this means for its products is that many of them are inherently experimental, whether or not research suggests benefits. Life Extension takes pride in its ability to be groundbreaking, but it doesn't always acknowledge that experimental doesn’t mean “better, but no one wants you to know.” Experimental simply means something new, whether it’s a known ingredient in a new application or a new formula altogether.

Thankfully, more often than not, Life Extension makes its science clear. Virtually every page on the site has scientific information woven throughout, from product pages to blogs. And a majority of its supplements are dosed properly by taking into account daily intake recommendations or upper limits (when applicable). For example, there is no recommended amount or concrete upper limit for curcumin — but Life Extension’s Curcumin Elite provides a 500mg dose, which is much less than the potential upper limit of around 8g,20 but still enough for you to possibly see some benefit.21

Blog posts and research

Life Extension offers a blog for science and health news. The Wellness Blog is broken down into a few categories — such as aging, weight, and pet health — and new articles are posted frequently (at least once a month). Each piece is reviewed or written by medical professionals, much like our own. A typical article breaks down the topic into easy-to-understand language and then explains the science of it (along with citations and links to the sources).

Links to the blog can be found under the “Education” and “Science and Research” tabs on the website header. If you go to the latter, you’ll see that the research information on the Life Extension website is divided into six sections:

• Health Protocols
• Magazine Archive
• The Wellness Blog
• Health News
• Clinical Research (for people who wish to participate in trials)
• The Life Extension Newsletter

Interestingly, the Wellness Blog and Health News both provide similar information, but there really isn’t a clear distinction between the purposes of each, making it a bit confusing as to why the two exist as separate entities. For example, there’s a recent nutrition article in the Health News portion of the site about watermelon being a potential superfood — yet the designated “Superfoods” section of the Wellness Blog shows no trace of this piece.

We hope Life Extension will consider consolidating these two sections of the website in the future to make the information more accessible.

However, the standout portion of the Science and Research section is Life Extension’s Health Protocols, which are very thorough, scientific pages (often with hundreds of sources) covering various aspects of a wide range of health conditions and concerns. Each individual page generally includes:

• An overview
• An easy-to-understand introduction to the condition or concern
• Details about the parts of the body that can be affected
• Potential causes or risk factors
• Typical treatment approaches
• Novel and emerging treatments
• Dietary and lifestyle considerations

Of course, it’s important to talk with your doctor about any potential supplements or lifestyle adjustments you wish to try — they’ll be able to determine if it's right (and safe) for you.

Life Extension Magazine

Life Extension offers a monthly magazine that you can subscribe to through the website. This magazine is similar in content to the company blogs. Throughout each issue, there are scientific study results relevant to that month’s chosen topic (like sleep, dopamine levels, body fat, and so on). Each issue is about 80-100 pages long and is accessible in physical and PDF forms.

If you’re comfortable reading the magazine in its PDF form, then it’s always free. The only time you’d be charged for the Life Extension magazine is if you were to order or subscribe to physical copies.

Do Life Extension’s tablets disintegrate?

For any pill or supplement to work, it needs to both disintegrate (crumble into small pieces) and dissolve (combine with liquid) after it’s been taken. The rate of disintegration and dissolution depends on the supplement, how soluble it is, the ingredients, and more. However, the fact remains that your body can’t properly use a supplement if it isn’t absorbed into the bloodstream before being excreted. Tablets, or hard pills, are one of the more difficult forms of supplement to absorb.22

There is no formal federal testing agency for verifying whether or not supplements actually work.17 Instead, we took matters into our own hands and created an artificial stomach-like environment to test some of Life Extension’s most popular tablet supplements for proper disintegration.22 This allowed our testing team to check the disintegration quality of Life Extension’s tablets.

In contrast to our test of Puritan’s Pride tablets, none of the Life Extension tablets we tested fully disintegrated over the course of our experiment. Some mostly disintegrated but left a full-length sliver of material by the end; some barely began flaking when the experiment was over.

Considering Life Extension promotes its consistent, high-quality testing, we were surprised by these results. These findings indicated to us that there is a chance that some of these supplements may not be adequately absorbed by your body when you take them. Based on our testing, we would recommend opting for supplements that don’t arrive in tablet form.

Life Extension’s product selection has grown and changed over the years. Some categories have expanded (like lab testing) while others (such as skin care) have been reduced to only a couple of options. Below, we delve a little deeper into what Life Extension has to offer.

Supplements

A vast majority of Life Extension’s products are supplements, and you can look through all of them at once via the “Supplements A to Z” page. However, this is mostly useful for those who know just what they’re looking for (the A to Z page only shows product names, no other details).

You can also shop by type of product, which includes filters for:

Or you can view supplements by health goal, including:

There is considerable overlap between categories. Some supplements can be found in multiple categories with different purposes, but for the most part, each category has 5-15 distinct supplements specific to the category's focus.

If you’re not sure where to begin, you can take a “Health Needs” quiz, which evaluates your current health background and health goals and then recommends products for you.

A vast majority of these are softgels or vegetarian capsules, with some others being tablets and caplets. The sizes and doses found in each bottle depend on the supplement itself. Every supplement is sold in counts of 30, up to 300 pills per bottle. A few supplements offer multiple doses or quantities, but most only come one way.

You can buy bottles individually or in a bulk order of four bottles or more at a slightly discounted price (which varies from item to item). And while this is a nice option, competitor Puritan’s Pride’s buy-one-get-one format still presents customers with a better deal overall.

Food and drink

Aside from supplements, Life Extension offers a limited catalog of edible products. These are specifically from the Life Extension brand and focus much more on potential health benefits than other supplement companies that also sell diet products. These include:

• Coffee (ground, whole bean, and whole bean decaf)
• Spearmint herbal tea
• Wellness bars (chocolate brownie flavor)
• California Estate extra virgin olive oil
• Whey protein isolate (vanilla and chocolate flavors)
• Whey protein concentrate (vanilla and chocolate flavors)
• Advanced whey protein (vanilla flavor only)

This isn’t the widest variety of supplemental foods — for more choices, GNC is likely a good bet — but it’s a nice addition to Life Extension’s lineup.

Skin and personal care

Life Extension also offers a handful of products for skin, nails, hair, and oral care. These include supplements like collagen or biotin, and other items like toothpaste or probiotic lozenges to support overall oral health.

The brand’s skincare products have been reduced to only a few items over time. Life Extension used to have a robust catalog of skincare products akin to something you’d see in a mainstream skincare brand, but now only offers:

• Two UV protection supplements
• A day cream
• A night cream
• A ceramide supplement
• Anti-aging serum
• Hair, skin, and nails supplement
• Two varieties of collagen peptides (powder and gummies)

Many of these products have common ingredients to help promote better skin health, such as ceramides and vitamin A.

If you’re not sure what your skin needs, Life Extension also offers a quiz to dive deeper into your current skincare routine (if you have one) and your overall skin needs. Like the general supplement quiz, it recommends products for you based on your results.

Pet care

Recently, in addition to Life Extension’s nutritional mixes for dogs and cats, the brand has come out with four new supplements for dogs, specifically.

• Skin and coat chews
• Hip and joint chews
• Multivitamin and probiotic chews
• Stress and behavior calming chews

Both the new and original Life Extension pet supplements (which are mainly for dogs) contain dozens of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, and probiotics you might not find in the average pet food.

And while the new selection is focused on specific needs, the originals are well-balanced mixes for adult pets who are average in size. Life Extension notes that the serving sizes are based on six- to nine-pound cats and approximately 30-pound dogs, so you’ll have to adjust accordingly if your pet is larger or smaller than that.

Lab testing

Life Extension offers the opportunity to order virtually any available lab test that you can have evaluated by the clinical laboratory company Labcorp. That’s over 230 tests in every form:

• Blood
• Breath
• Saliva
• Urine
• Feces

You can even do some of the blood tests at home if they’re finger-prick tests, but larger blood tests must be drawn in person at Labcorp. Most of these labs are walk-in, but you can make an appointment for yourself on Labcorp’s website to save yourself some time since people with appointments get prioritized. With over 2,000 locations around the United States, it’s likely that you’ll be able to find a location near you.

Because you’re ordering these tests through Life Extension, you cannot pay with insurance. Costs can get prohibitively expensive, but if you don’t need to test your epigenetic age ($549) or a complete blood youth panel ($805), then you can find tests for single vitamins or biomarkers for as low as $20. After you get your test results back through Life Extension, it’s suggested that you call the Wellness Specialist line to review your results and get answers to any questions. However, if you have a primary medical provider, we recommend you let them know of your results so that they have a complete picture of your medical health.

Other brands

Life Extension previously only sold its own supplements, but has recently grown to offer products from 16 other brands.

Each of the companies’ product pages lists their supplements by category, along with comparable or related Life Extension products. For instance, NOW Foods’ D-Mannose page comes with a recommendation for Life Extension’s Cran-Max cranberry supplement, likely because both are often used to prevent UTIs (though, the results of using cranberry products are mixed at best).23 24

To be able to provide the most accurate look at the Life Extension customer experience, our testers utilized various services, reached out to customer support, and purchased a collection of products to try for themselves. We’ll delve further into each step of the Life Extension experience below.

Choosing a supplement or other product

Whether you sort by your specific health goal, select a product from the A to Z list, or use the Health Needs quiz, our testers felt that it wasn’t the most difficult process navigating the Life Extension website in search of a supplement.

Our testers did, however, express that the Life Extension website could definitely be overwhelming for someone who’s just starting out on their wellness journey. And this becomes especially true when you take into account the fact that Life Extension tends to use trademarked names for its supplements — seeing “Pycnogenol” on the A to Z list with no other information will likely leave people wondering exactly what that is. Some are easier to figure out, like “Cran-Max” being cranberry, but “ArthroMax with Theaflavins and AprèsFlex” is a whole different story.

Cost

Life Extension is relatively middle-of-the-road when it comes to how much you’ll have to pay for its products. While not horribly expensive, they aren’t necessarily cheap either. A majority of its supplements cost between $10 and $30 for a single bottle, though they can cost as much as $75 or as little as $4. Of course, these bottles also can have anywhere between 30 and 300 capsules, so in some cases, you can get a lot more product for a lot less money.

Some popular product costs, for example, include:

• 25mg DHEA (100 capsules): $12.00
• 450mg Cognitex Alpha GPC (30 capsules): $24.00
• 500mg Curcumin Elite (30 capsules): $13.00

If you know you’ll be purchasing the same product repeatedly, it might be worth it to sign up for an auto-ship subscription. With auto-ship, your products are shipped to you in monthly intervals without having to reorder them, and you’ll get both free shipping and a discount.

Life Extension’s other major product — lab testing through Labcorp — is considerably more expensive across the board. These can cost anywhere between $20 and $805, depending on the size of the panel and what you are hoping to have tested.

While there aren’t any observable trends between the testing methods, tests for single vitamins or biomarkers cost around $47. Panel tests, or those that look at more than one element of your health, sit around $150. The more complex the test, the more it will cost. If you know the test you would like to have done, then we recommend comparing the Life Extension price to the prices of similar direct-to-consumer lab order companies, such as Walk-In Lab or HealthLabs. For example, the Life Extension thyroid panel is $75, but the panel from HealthLabs is $59.

Premier Rewards

If you know you’ll be shopping from Life Extension regularly, it offers a paid rewards program called Premier Rewards. After paying an annual $49.95 subscription fee, you’ll unlock:

• Unlimited free shipping via standard delivery
• Discounts on rush and international shipping
• 4% back on every purchase
• Exclusive content and webinars from Life Extension’s health experts
• 12-month subscription to Life Extension magazine
• Surprise gifts during your birthday month and randomly throughout the year

You’ll also receive a one-time $50 credit to your account to offset the first year’s subscription fee. Every purchase you make will add “LE Dollars” to your account, where every dollar spent is a dollar added. You can then redeem these LE Dollars to use on other Life Extension products.

Premier Rewards are also available internationally for a slightly higher fee of $59.95. However, not every perk is available in every country, so make sure that you’ll be able to get what you want before registering.

Even if you aren’t interested in the Premier Rewards program, every purchase you make with a free rewards account will still earn 2% of the order’s cost in LE Dollars.

Customer support

Life Extension offers three ways to contact customer support: phone, email, and in-browser chat.

In-browser support is available between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM (Eastern time) on weekdays. This is a pretty standard setup: a pop-up appears in the bottom right corner of your screen, where you’ll plug in:

• Your name
• Email address
• Reason for messaging (customer service/pricing or health questions)
• Message

Once you’ve sent that basic form in, you’ll see your place in the queue (so you’ll know how long you’ll need to wait before hearing from a representative). You’ll also get a notification when your agent connects so that you can be ready in case you’ve wandered into a new tab. In our testers’ experience, it took less than five minutes to get answers to any questions, and they were always the first in line.

If you’d prefer to talk to someone over the phone, customer support phone lines are open 24/7. We had short wait times, if any, when we connected with Life Extension’s customer support, and we were greeted by knowledgeable, friendly customer service representatives every time.

One interesting note is that Life Extension will send you the Certificate of Analysis for any supplement you request. These are summaries of reports the company receives from manufacturers and the laboratories that test both the ingredients and the final products. As we’ve mentioned previously, this is a nice amount of transparency, but Ritual’s traceable supply chain still wins in regard to the overall transparency of supplement ingredients.

Wellness Specialists

Life Extension has a team of naturopaths, nutritionists, and nurse practitioners specializing in the medical components of Life Extension’s supplements. They’re called Wellness Specialists, and they are on hand at all times to help answer your more technical questions about Life Extension products, as well as to give guidance to your overall health journey.

These Wellness Specialists are available both over chat and phone. In fact, there is a separate dedicated phone line to speak with a Wellness Specialist from 7:30 AM to 12:00 AM ET on weekdays and 9:00 AM to 12:00 AM on weekends. This service is completely free and available for anyone who has questions about Life Extension. A dedicated, free helpline like this is fairly unique to Life Extension, and we haven’t seen anything similar from its close competitors.

How your package arrives

Our testers received their boxes of product in Life Extension branded cardboard packaging with inspirational quotes on the inside folds. The bottles themselves were packed tightly and safely with Life Extension branded tissue paper — ultimately the boxes appeared to have been packed with care.

Shipping times were fast; the packages only took three days from shipment to delivery, and our testers received emails confirming both.

Life Extension is but one of many supplement brands on the market, and it may or may not fit your lifestyle for one reason or another. Below, we discuss some of Life Extension’s close competitors, to help you decide which is best for you.

GNC

While Life Extension mainly offers its own brand with a few others sprinkled in occasionally, GNC carries over 375 outside brands. The GNC marketplace is one of the largest in the supplement world, with more products than a vast majority of competitors (including Life Extension, Puritan’s Pride, Nature Made, and most others).

Another difference is that GNC’s main focus is on athletic and diet products, not longevity like Life Extension. GNC has multiple categories filled with products dedicated to different aspects of diet and fitness, while Life Extension’s “active lifestyle and fitness” category has 13 products in total.

In terms of cost, GNC is about equal to Life Extension — both brands may cost a bit more or less than the other depending on the product in question.

Puritan’s Pride

Puritan’s Pride can be a nice introduction to supplements for people who aren’t as familiar with them, or for those who just want a straightforward supplement without any special blends or proprietary ingredients.

Compared to Life Extension’s focus on innovation, Puritan’s Pride has a stronger focus on natural health, holistic remedies, and organic products. However, science is still quite important to Puritan’s Pride, which provides easy access to multiple scientifically-sourced guides and thorough information about the research the company used to formulate products.

Puritan’s Pride’s most substantial benefit is its low prices and frequent deals — it’s common to see buy-one-get-two-free sales on all bottles of supplements, as well as “50% off everything” sales. If you’re looking for a cost-effective, simple supplement, then Puritan’s Pride may be the option for you.

Nature Made

With how popular Nature Made supplements are, you’ve likely seen them on the shelves of your local grocery store or pharmacy. The company’s offerings are similar to Puritan’s Pride in terms of accessibility for beginners, but the products are a bit more expensive. (Life Extension is still often more expensive than Nature Made, however.)

Nature Made is also a great option for those who prefer gummy supplements over swallowing pills; the company offers more gummy supplements than any of the other competitors mentioned in this review.

Additionally, while Life Extension is NSF-certified, Nature Made is USP-verified.25 Both NSF and USP are third-party programs for ensuring product safety and quality.26 Either way, these considerations are evidence that both brands are committed to the quality and safety of their products.

Thorne

If you’re interested in going further to investigate your body’s supplement needs, then Thorne’s personalized vitamin program could be a good option for you.

Like Life Extension, Thorne provides a combination of supplements and at-home health tests (though it’s hard to beat Life Extension’s 230 total Labcorp tests). Thorne also offers guidance and the tools you need to find and fill your nutritional gaps at home — including tests that range from fertility to gut health and more, that are easily bundled with the proper supplements to help. The company also, like Life Extension, has vitamin and supplement quizzes to determine your needs based on your habits and health goals.

Thorne’s supplements range from about the same to a bit more expensive than Life Extension’s. Also, our testers felt that Thorne’s website was easier to navigate due to filterable tags and a more minimalist approach.

Ritual

Ritual’s focus on transparent and accurate science is reminiscent of Life Extension. The company explicitly makes its policy against pseudoscience known – “We're not about pseudoscience and half-truths” is one of the first things on its homepage. And, even though Ritual has only been involved in one clinical trial, both it and Life Extension boast some research-suggested benefits to their products.27

However, Ritual goes beyond Life Extension and makes its entire supply chain (ingredients, sources, studies, and suppliers) readily available on its website instead of requiring you to call customer support to track down that information. But this level of transparency, apparently, comes at a cost; Ritual’s products are often nearly twice as expensive as Life Extension’s.

For example, both brands offer 30-serving two-per-day multivitamins — but Ritual’s is $33, while Life Extension’s is $8.94. Ritual’s multivitamin also only contains nine ingredients compared to Life Extension’s 27; however, the former includes plant-based omega-3s, which aren’t found in the latter. Ultimately, situations like this come down to your personal preferences, needs, and goals.