Examine.com is one of the most popular websites for supplement users, along with Labdoor and ConsumerLab. The site summarizes clinical research about many popular vitamins and supplements, and can be more convenient than parsing through hundreds of clinical trials yourself.
Examine.com describes whether a vitamin or supplement has been studied to treat a specific health condition, and what the outcome of those trials were.
But is Examine worth the money? How does its utility compare to ConsumerLab and Labdoor? How much does the service cost? And is some of its information outdated?
In this article we’ll answer all of these questions and more, as we give our take on some of the pros and cons of Examine.com to conclude whether or not we believe the service is worth the money.
Pro — Convenience
Using Examine.com can be very time-efficient compared to evaluating tens or hundreds of clinical trials to determine the safety and efficacy of a dietary supplement, and to determine what dosage is effective.
This is especially the case with supplements that have been studied extensively like panax ginseng.
Reading all of the available clinical research on Panax ginseng would take thousands if not tens of thousands of hours. It's been studied in thousands of clinical trials and meta-reviews published in peer-reviewed journals.
On Examine, users can just search the compound and read the summary, dosage recommendations and some highlighted medical studies.
The user experience (UX) is high-quality (much moreso than ConsumerLab given its visual nature), and the content is concise and well-written.
Another convenience of using Examine is the writing is accessible, and doesn't require a scientific background to understand.
Published clinical trials are often written in an academic manner with arcane terminology, which may be difficult for someone without a specific background to interpret.
Pro — Medical Expert Writers
As a consumer, you can generally tell a website is serious about the accuracy of its health content by whether it's written or reviewed by a credentialed medical professional.
It’s one of the reasons we've built a team of credentialed medical experts to author and review our health articles, such as medical doctors (MD) and registered dietitians (RD).
Examine follows a similar strategy: most of the team has an advanced degree in science or nutrition.
Many Examine articles are reviewed by the company's founder Kamal Patel, who’s been a nutrition researcher for 20 years and has published various papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Examine's About page highlights information about all of their team members, and it appears that they've added a significant number of medical experts since we originally published this article, which is a good sign.
Con — Price
At the time of updating this article, Examine costs $29/month, or $799 for lifetime access, which is relatively expensive compared to competitors.
As a comparison, ConsumerLab currently costs $105 for two full years of access, or less than 20% of the cost of Examine's monthly rate.
ConsumerLab conducts proprietary research on supplements, while Examine has no such overhead.
Examine vs. the Competition
Examine.com, ConsumerLab and Labdoor are three of the most popular online resources for health information and supplement testing.
Here's our take on how Examine stacks up against the two:
ConsumerLab
Cheaper and offers supplement and nutrition product test results.
For consumers more interested in test results than general health summaries, ConsumerLab is a better choice than Examine in our opinion.
Labdoor
Offers supplement test results and no general health information.
Product tests are often outdated, and this is a much less useful resource than ConsumerLab, as we documented in our Labdoor reviews article.
Examine is vastly more useful than Labdoor in our opinion.
For health-conscious consumers, we recommend signing up both for Examine (for the best general health and research summary site) and ConsumerLab (for specific product test results).
