Comparison guide
Which NAD+ supplement should you take?
All four are sold to raise NAD+, but only nicotinamide riboside and NMN have been shown to do it reliably in human trials. Even then, raising the biomarker has not translated into better metabolism, muscle or blood pressure, so the real question is whether to pay for any of them.
The options, compared
| Option | Evidence | Best for | The honest note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nicotinamide Riboside | Limited evidence | Best-studied option, if any | Reliably raises blood NAD+ with a clean short-term safety record and US GRAS status, but well-controlled trials show no functional benefit; the NAD+ rise plateaus around 1,000 mg/day. | View |
| NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) | Limited evidence | Similar to NR, harder to buy | Raises blood NAD+ in a dose-dependent way, but meta-analyses find no effect on metabolism or muscle, and it is not lawfully sold as a US supplement, so purity is a concern. | View |
| NADH | Limited evidence | Not worth the money | Probably broken down in the gut before absorption, and the fatigue trials are tiny or paired it with CoQ10; a 5–20 mg capsule is a very small dose of nicotinamide at many times the price. | View |
| NAD+ (Oral/Liposomal) | Limited evidence | Least supported option | NAD+ is too large and unstable to be absorbed intact, and no human study shows it is; liposomal products list 100–500 mg with no bioavailability data. | View |
Our verdict
None of these has convincing human outcome data, so skipping them all is a reasonable choice. If you want to raise blood NAD+ anyway, nicotinamide riboside is the best-studied option, with NMN similar where it is legally sold; avoid both with an active cancer unless your oncologist agrees. Skip NADH and oral or liposomal NAD+, the least supported ways to do it.