Why We Exist

About Supplements Mag

We got tired of two things: supplement labels that say almost nothing useful, and "review" sites that quietly rank products by commission instead of quality. Supplements Mag is our attempt to fix both at once.

The Short Version

Supplements Mag is run by a small team with backgrounds in nutrition science, sports performance, and health journalism. We don't manufacture anything, and no brand gets to touch our scoring. The only money that changes hands is standard affiliate commission on some of the products we link to — spelled out in full on our affiliate disclosure page — and it has no bearing on where a product lands in our rankings.

Why We Started This

Between us, we've spent a lot of years around the supplement industry, and the same pattern kept showing up: the products with the biggest ad budgets got the best coverage, whether or not the formula backed it up. Roundup posts where the order tracked commission rate, not actual results. Glossy sponsored content dressed up as "research." We figured there was room for something that worked the other way around.

So that's the premise here — a product's score is a function of what's actually in it, full stop. We built our rating system so it can be applied the same way to a five-person startup and a household name, with no advantage to either.

The Ground Rules

We're not neutral about honesty — we're strict about it. A score reflects what the evidence says, even when that's not the answer a brand was hoping for. If anything, that friction tells us the process is doing its job.

In practice:

  • Nobody can pay to get listed, or pay to move up.
  • Brands don't see their score before it goes live.
  • Every affiliate relationship we have is disclosed and gets reviewed periodically for conflicts.
  • Our scoring criteria are public and applied the same way to every product.
  • Products below our bar don't get listed — popularity or an affiliate deal doesn't buy an exception.

How Scoring Actually Works

Each product gets a score out of 10 built from five equally-weighted checks: ingredient quality (source, form, absorption), whether the dosing matches what the research actually supports, third-party testing (lab certificates, contaminant screening), label transparency and manufacturing standards, and — where we can get it — verified outcomes from real buyers.

Anything that scores below 5 on any single check, or under 6 overall, doesn't make it onto the site. That keeps the bar noticeably higher than the supplement market's average.

What We Owe You

We'll keep our scoring independent, keep our commercial relationships out in the open, update ratings as new research comes in, and pull products that no longer meet the bar. None of that is optional from where we sit — it's the whole point of publishing this site.

Got a question about how we scored something, or how the whole system works? Reach out through our contact page — we read everything that comes in.