SuppCo launches a certification to verify actives in dietary supplements
The program expands on SuppCo’s TrustScore supplement quality rating system and builds on earlier testing efforts that found about half of top-selling supplements bought off the shelf didn’t meet basic label accuracy standards.
“SuppCo was born from my frustration with trying to make informed supplement choices, and I soon realized this wasn’t an isolated issue but a systemic industry failure,” said Steve Martocci, co-founder and CEO of SuppCo, in a press release. “With TESTED by SuppCo, we’re establishing a clear, independent standard for transparency and accountability so people can trust what they’re buying, and responsible brands can prove it.”
TESTED by SuppCo launched in collaboration with brands such as Momentous, Thorne, Metagenics, Gaia Herbs, Designs for Health, Fatty15, Solaray, Niagen, Integrative Therapeutics, and Pendulum.
Certifying what’s on the shelf and surfacing failures
Jordan Glenn, head of science at SuppCo, explained that the certification is a natural extension of the company’s prior examination of about 44 popular supplements sold on Amazon last year, which revealed that roughly half of the products failed to meet basic label accuracy standards.
The certification adds another layer to the TrustScore feature, which highlights formulation decisions, manufacturing standards, and transparency practices that indicate quality before a product ever reaches a lab.
“TESTED tells you what’s actually in the bottle you buy off the shelf,” Glenn stated. “Together, they form a closed loop where TrustScore helps users identify products that should be trustworthy, and TESTED confirms whether that trust holds up in the real world.”
SuppCo’s initial testing rounds focused on creatine, NAD+, urolithin A, and berberine supplements, finding that 22 of the products contained 0% to 3% of their listed active ingredients. Failures were especially common among brands that claimed the highest serving sizes, which SuppCo noted often concealed weak or missing active ingredients.
“These aren’t marginal misses; they reflect breakdowns at nearly every level of quality control, from raw ingredient sourcing to final formulation verification,” SuppCo stated in its 2025 testing retrospective.
“Whether the root cause was manufacturing shortcuts, supplier variability, a lack of internal testing, or deliberate deception somewhere in the supply chain, the end result was the same: products that boasted strong claims yet delivered little to none of what they promised.”
TESTED by SuppCo submits all products for testing at an independent ISO 17025–accredited laboratory, and those meeting or exceeding 95% of their labeled active ingredient claims earn certification. All results, regardless of certification status, are posted on SuppCo’s product pages so consumers can make informed decisions.
“With more than 650,000 users actively tracking their supplement routines on SuppCo, certification results, including failures, are shown directly to people making purchase decisions,” Glenn noted. “That visibility complements existing certifications, which are valuable but weren’t designed with a direct consumer audience in mind.”
Testing is repeated annually to ensure ongoing compliance, and products that fall short are guided through remediation before retesting. Brands pay a certification fee to cover independent testing costs, program operations, and licensing.
Overcoming structural issues and closing a meaningful loophole
SuppCo isn’t the first to monitor the marketplace for supplements that miss labeling and identity standards, especially as the industry leans more toward self-regulation and good manufacturing practices.
“The supplement industry is at an inflection point,” Glenn said. “Consumer expectations are rising, regulatory scrutiny is increasing, and independent verification is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator.”
He added that brands joining TESTED at launch understand that transparency is the only durable competitive advantage in an increasingly noisy category. Here, verification, accountability, and transparency are foundational, and brands that embed quality in their operations and prove it independently help define the category at scale.
“It’s easy for brands to talk about quality and boast big claims, but much harder to prove them,” said Jeff Byers, CEO of Momentous. “We chose to participate in TESTED by SuppCo because trust and accountability are how this industry moves forward. Transparency shouldn’t be optional, and brands that stand behind their products (like us) should be willing to prove it.”
Like ConsumerLab, NSF International, and the United States Pharmacopeia before it, SuppCo aims to ensure and certify supplement label accuracy, identity, purity, and quality, but presents its certification as addressing a fundamental structural issue in how testing is conducted.
“Most existing certifications rely on manufacturer-submitted samples or production lots,” Glenn said. “TESTED buys products anonymously, off the shelf, after normal retail aging, the same way a consumer would. That distinction closes a meaningful loophole where a product can pass a certification test using a carefully selected lot and still underdeliver in the bottle a consumer actually opens.”
Other players in the space—NOW Foods, in particular—have conducted their own testing of supplements largely purchased on Amazon and identified widespread labeling and potency problems.
NOW has conducted 19 rounds of testing of “no name brands” purchased on Amazon since 2017, monitoring ingredients such as St. John’s Wort, methyl B-12, SAM-e, resveratrol, berberine, astaxanthin, bromelain, magnesium glycinate, quercetin, CoQ10, glutathione, curcumin, phosphatidyl serine, acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, and creatine.
In most cases, NOW described the results as “alarming,” “abysmal,” or “persistent,” flagging multiple concerns and warnings for buyers to proceed with caution.
