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Medical disclaimer: This article reviews commercially available NAD+ precursor supplements. It is informational only and is not medical advice. Not medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any supplement, especially if you take prescription medications or have existing health conditions.

What you are actually sorting through

You have a few browser tabs open: Tru Niagen in one, Elysium Basis in another, maybe ProHealth Longevity NMN or DoNotAge or Alive By Science. The reviews are uniformly enthusiastic. The prices vary by $20–40 a month. The ingredient names look similar until you read closely — and then they do not.

The clearest frame for this comparison: two of these five brands contain NR (nicotinamide riboside), not NMN. That distinction has regulatory and formulation implications that matter before you get to dose or price.

NMN vs NR: why it matters for this list

Both NMN and NR are NAD+ precursors. Both raise blood NAD+ levels in published human trials. The underlying cellular biology is closely related. But they are different molecules with different regulatory histories:

• NR holds an accepted New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notification from the US FDA. It is unambiguously a legal dietary supplement in the US.
• NMN entered regulatory ambiguity in 2022 when the FDA determined NMN did not qualify as a dietary supplement due to its prior investigational drug (IND) status. Commercial NMN sales continue under legal challenge, but the status remains unsettled in the US. Japanese regulation has no comparable restriction.
• Tru Niagen and Elysium Basis are NR products, not NMN.
• ProHealth Longevity, DoNotAge, and Alive By Science are NMN products.

This is not a quality ranking. NR has slightly more total published human trial data. The point is that the five brands do not compete on equal terms if regulatory clarity is one of your criteria.

Side-by-side comparison

Brand	Active ingredient	Standard dose	Third-party testing	Approx. monthly cost
Tru Niagen (ChromaDex)	NR (NIAGEN®)	300 mg/day	NSF Certified	~$40–55
Elysium Basis	NR 250 mg + pterostilbene 50 mg	2 caps/day	NSF Certified for Sport	~$60–70
ProHealth Longevity	NMN	250–500 mg/day	CoA available	~$40–70
DoNotAge	NMN	500–1000 mg/day	CoA published on site	~$50–75
Alive By Science	NMN (oral, sublingual, liposomal)	250–1000 mg/day	CoA available	~$50–100

Prices reflect approximate 30-day supply at stated doses as of mid-2026. Check current listings; prices change frequently.

Brand breakdown

Tru Niagen (ChromaDex)

ChromaDex owns the patent on NIAGEN-brand NR and has co-sponsored more human NR trials than any other company. Much of the published evidence that NR raises blood NAD+ levels was conducted using NIAGEN formulations — the research relationship is documented in peer-reviewed literature rather than implied by marketing copy.

NSF Certification indicates an independent body has tested the product for label accuracy, purity, and absence of contaminants. This is a higher verification bar than a self-reported certificate of analysis.

What the patent does not provide: any evidence of a biological advantage over non-NIAGEN NR at comparable doses. The NAD+ raising effect appears in trials using multiple NR sources. Buyers paying for Tru Niagen are partly paying for ChromaDex’s patent position, which has operational value but is not a pharmacological one.

Available on Amazon US and iHerb.

Elysium Basis

Elysium positions Basis as a NAD+ precursor stack: NR at 250 mg per serving combined with pterostilbene at 50 mg. The rationale is that pterostilbene — a resveratrol analogue found in blueberries — may activate sirtuins, enzymes that use NAD+ as a substrate and appear in aging biology research.

The stack argument has biological plausibility. However, no published human trial has tested Basis against NR alone in a controlled design. The pterostilbene addition is a theoretical contribution, not an empirically validated one from a head-to-head comparison.

NSF Certified for Sport adds banned-substance screening beyond standard NSF Certification, making Basis one of the few NAD+ precursor products with that specific credential. One caution specific to this formulation: pterostilbene has shown LDL-elevating effects in some small trials at 50 mg/day. Buyers monitoring cardiovascular lipid markers should discuss this before starting Basis specifically.

Available directly from Elysium Health.

ProHealth Longevity

ProHealth has distributed dietary supplements in the US since the 1980s and added NMN as the category entered mainstream awareness around 2018–2020. Their lineup includes multiple NMN SKUs at different dose points. Certificates of analysis are available for their products.

For US buyers who want NMN specifically — rather than NR — from a supplier with a documented quality history, ProHealth is among the more established options in the category. The brand is listed in reference data for this site as one of the US-based NMN suppliers with third-party testing documentation.

Available on Amazon US and the ProHealth website.

DoNotAge

DoNotAge is a UK-based supplier with a reputation for publishing its CoA data and sourcing documentation on its public website — a transparency practice more consistently maintained there than among most US supplement companies. NMN is regulated as a food supplement in the UK and EU without the FDA’s IND-based ambiguity.

For European buyers, DoNotAge is typically price-competitive once shipping is factored in. US buyers importing from the UK do pay shipping, but the product is manufactured outside the FDA’s regulatory jurisdiction — a distinction some buyers weigh when US-market NMN legal status is a concern.

Available directly from DoNotAge.

Alive By Science

Alive By Science (also sold under the LMNITL label) offers NMN in formats not available from the other brands on this list: standard oral capsules, sublingual tablets, and liposomal preparations. The sublingual format is marketed with the claim that it delivers NMN directly to circulation via the oral mucosa, bypassing first-pass gut and liver metabolism.

The mechanism is pharmacologically plausible — sublingual delivery does allow compounds to reach systemic circulation differently than swallowed capsules. However, no published human trial has directly compared sublingual NMN to oral NMN at equivalent doses for blood NAD+ levels or clinical outcomes. The sublingual delivery advantage for NMN specifically remains ahead of the published trial evidence.

For buyers interested in non-standard delivery formats as a differentiated approach, Alive By Science is the most visible option in the category.

Available on Amazon US and directly from Alive By Science.

What the comparison actually tells a buyer

Three practical filters worth applying:

Regulatory position: If FDA NMN status is a concern, Tru Niagen and Elysium Basis (both NR with accepted NDI) offer the cleaner regulatory baseline. If the FDA question does not concern you, the three NMN brands give you access to higher dose points and a faster-growing research pipeline.

Testing certification level: NSF Certification (Tru Niagen, Elysium Basis) is a higher bar than a self-published CoA. DoNotAge’s website CoA transparency is notable within the NMN category. The question is whether you trust the testing source — a self-published CoA has value if the methodology is sound, but a third-party certification body is structurally independent of the seller.

Price per effective dose: The three NMN brands offer higher milligram doses at lower per-mg cost than the NR brands. This comparison is imprecise because NMN and NR have different molecular weights and conversion pathways. But at the dose range where most published trials show NAD+ raising — 250–500 mg for NMN, 250–300 mg for NR — the cost differential between mid-range NMN and NR brands is typically $10–20/month rather than a factor of two.

For most buyers: any of the five brands reviewed here clears a reasonable quality floor. The prior decision is which molecule (NMN or NR) and whether regulatory status matters to you, and that decision narrows the list before price or brand preference enters.

Side effects and interactions

Both NMN and NR have clean tolerability records across published trials at studied doses: occasional digestive upset, mild nausea at higher doses, and rare headache are the most commonly reported adverse events, at rates broadly comparable to placebo. No serious adverse events attributable to either compound have been published from a completed randomized trial.

Populations for whom a clinician conversation is appropriate before starting either compound:

• Anyone on active cancer treatment — NAD+ metabolism intersects with pathways that are relevant to cell biology; this is mechanism plausibility, not confirmed risk in either direction, but the conversation with your oncologist is warranted
• Anyone taking anticoagulants or immunosuppressants — no formal drug-interaction data exists for NMN or NR with these drug classes
• Pregnant or breastfeeding individuals — neither compound has been studied in these populations
• Anyone with active liver disease — both compounds involve hepatic metabolism
• Adolescents and children — trial populations have been adults

The clean short-term tolerability record in published trials extends only to the populations that were actually enrolled. That is the reason these caveats exist — not because harm is established, but because absence of data is not the same as absence of risk.

Practical next steps

The trial evidence for NAD+ raising with NMN clusters at 250–500 mg/day, with dose-response compression above roughly 500–600 mg. For NR, the replicated range in published trials is 250–300 mg/day. If you are still working through the starting dose question — particularly how age bracket and budget affect it — How Much NMN Should You Take? Dose Ranges by Age and Budget covers that specifically from the trial data.

Neither a higher price point nor a higher dose per capsule is evidence of efficacy. The practical filter in this category — published CoA matching label claims, stable and opaque packaging (NMN degrades in heat and humidity), and a manufacturer you can research — matters more than brand premium.

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See also: NMN vs NR: What Human Trials Actually Compare, NMN Supplements and Japan: Hype vs Evidence.