What is the best free supplement review site?

Who pays for free: the four business models of a review site, what each pays the site to say, and why only two of the four are paid to be right

What is the best free supplement review site is a question that is answered by a prior one, who pays for free, because a website costs money to run and a free one is paid for by someone other than the reader, and whoever pays decides, through the model rather than through any conspiracy, what the site is paid to say. There are four models. The first is affiliate: the site links to a retailer, the retailer pays a commission on each sale the link produces, and the site earns when a review ends in a purchase and earns nothing when it ends in a refusal, so that the model pays the site to recommend. The second is advertising: the site shows advertisements and is paid per visit or per view, so that the model pays the site to rank in search results and to keep the reader on the page, which rewards long lists, superlatives and a new article every day, and is indifferent to whether the advice is right. The third is subscription: the reader pays, and the model pays the site to be right, because a subscriber who is misled leaves; this is the model of the independent testing services and of a few serious publications, and it is not free, which is the question's problem. The fourth is the public body: the taxpayer pays, the model pays the site to be accurate, complete and dull, and the sites it produces are not called review sites, which is why they are overlooked.

The models can be told apart in a minute, and the first thing read on any free review site is the disclosure. The advertising rules require a site earning affiliate commissions to say so, and the disclosure is usually a line at the foot of the page or behind a link in the header, worded to be true and quiet; its presence tells the reader the model, its placement tells the reader how the site feels about the model, and its absence on a site that plainly links to retailers tells the reader the site is breaking the rules, which is its own review. An advertising-model site is told by the advertisements and by the shape of the content, a hundred best-of lists refreshed by date. A subscription site is told by the paywall. A public body is told by the domain.

The affiliate and advertising sites are not dishonest by nature, and a page that said so would be wrong; many are written by people who know the subject and some of their lists are sound. The point is narrower and more useful: the model pays them to recommend and to rank, so that a reader cannot tell from the page whether a product is there because it is good or because it converts, and the reader's own checks have to do the work the site is not paid to do. For those checks the free sites that are actually free and actually about the product are the public registers, which the next section lists, and the paid lists have one honest use, which it also gives.

Four models and a disclosure line that tells them apart, and the four free registers that are paid by nobody to say anything, the one honest use of a paid list, and the worked example placed in the registers, which is the next section.

The four free registers that are actually free and actually about the product, how each is used in a minute, the one honest use of a paid list, the worked example placed in the registers, and the verdict

The first register is the health claims register, the public list of every health claim a food supplement may lawfully make, with the wording and the conditions of use for each, maintained on the Great Britain register and the EU register and searchable by nutrient. It is used in a minute: a buyer takes the claim on the label, searches the register for the nutrient, and finds the claim there in its authorised wording, or does not, in which case the label is unlawful and the brand has reviewed itself. No affiliate site can do this for the reader because no affiliate site is paid to find that a product's claim is not on the list. The second register is the certification databases, the public lists maintained by the sports certification programmes of every enrolled product and every tested lot, searchable by brand, product and lot number; they answer, for free, the question of whether a given tub was screened for banned substances, which no review of any kind answers otherwise. The third is the food safety alerts, the public record of every supplement withdrawn or recalled in the UK and the reason, searchable by product and brand, which is the only free site that reports what went wrong rather than what was promised. The fourth is the web archive, the free record of what a brand's website and labels said on past dates, which lets a buyer check whether a claim, a testing promise or an ingredient list has changed quietly, and which catches a brand that has rewritten its history.

Used together, the four registers do what a review site claims to do and cannot: they tell a buyer what a product may claim, whether its lot was screened, whether it was ever recalled, and whether its story has changed, for free, from sources paid by nobody to recommend. They do not tell a buyer whether a product is good value or whether its dose is sensible, which is the one honest use of a paid list: an affiliate or advertising site is a quick way to learn what products exist in a category, what they cost and what their labels say, a catalogue rather than a verdict, and a reader who uses it as a catalogue and runs the registers on anything they like has used the model correctly. The reviews themselves, the ratings and the rankings, are the part the model is paid to produce and the part the reader discounts.

This page is on a site that uses the affiliate model, and says so where the rules require and where the reader will see it: the product link below earns a commission and is marked as sponsored. The honest way to run the model is to put the registers above the recommendation, which is what the page has done, and to make the recommendation checkable in them, which the worked example is: {FL} carries four claims that are on the health claims register in their authorised wording, normal muscle function, normal psychological function, normal nervous system function and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue; it appears in no food safety alert; its label and testing statements are archived and unchanged; and it is not in a sports certification database, which the page states. It is 1500mg magnesium bisglycinate stated as 300mg elemental at 80% NRV, two capsules with the evening meal, batch tested for lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium with the certificate on request, UK made, 180 capsules for £19.99 at 22p a day. The full label breakdown is here.

The verdict: the best free supplement review site is not a review site, because a free review site is paid by its model to recommend or to rank, and the free sites that are paid by nobody to say anything are the public registers: the health claims register for what a product may claim, the certification databases for which lots were screened, the food safety alerts for what was recalled, and the web archive for what a label used to say. Use the paid lists as a catalogue, read their disclosure first, and run the registers on anything they recommend, including this page's.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

Is there a free website that reviews supplements honestly?

The honest free sites are the public registers rather than review sites: the health claims register lists every claim a supplement may lawfully make with its wording, the sports certification databases list every enrolled product and tested lot, the food safety alerts record every recall and its reason, and the web archive records what a label used to say; each is free, about the product and paid by nobody to recommend, while a free review site runs on an affiliate or advertising model that pays it to recommend or to rank, so its lists are a catalogue and its ratings are discounted.

How do affiliate supplement review sites make money?

A commission from the retailer on each sale a link produces, which means a review that ends in a purchase pays and one that ends in a refusal does not, so the model pays the site to recommend; the advertising rules require the site to disclose the arrangement, usually in a line at the foot of the page, and the disclosure's presence, placement and wording are the first thing a reader checks, with an undisclosed affiliate relationship on a site that plainly links to retailers being a rule breach and its own review; this site uses the model and marks its product links as sponsored.

How do I check a supplement claim for free?

On the health claims register: take the claim from the label, search the Great Britain or EU register for the nutrient, and find the claim there in its authorised wording with its conditions of use, or find it absent, in which case the label is unlawful and the brand has reviewed itself; the search takes a minute, costs nothing, and does something no affiliate site is paid to do, which is to find that a product's claim is not on the list.

What is the best use of a supplement review site?

As a catalogue: an affiliate or advertising site is a quick way to learn what products exist in a category, what they cost and what their labels say, and a reader who uses it that way and then runs the free registers on anything they like, the claims register, the certification databases, the food safety alerts and the archive, has used the model correctly; the ratings and rankings are the part the model is paid to produce and the part the reader discounts, however well written the rest of the page is.

Can I check this site's magnesium in the free registers?

Yes, and the page invites it: its four claims, normal muscle function, normal psychological function, normal nervous system function and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, are on the health claims register in their authorised wording, it appears in no food safety alert, its label and testing statements are archived and unchanged, and it is not in a sports certification database, which the page states plainly; the product link earns this site a commission and is marked as sponsored, and the product is 300mg elemental at 80% NRV, batch tested for four metals, UK made, at 22p a day.

Sources

1. The UK advertising and consumer protection rules on affiliate marketing and paid rankings: commercial relationships behind a recommendation or ranking must be made clear, and presenting a paid or commission-earning list as independent editorial is a misleading practice. https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/affiliate-marketing.html
2. Retained Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods, and the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/great-britain-nutrition-and-health-claims-nhc-register
3. The Food Standards Agency's published food alerts and product recalls: a public, searchable record of allergy alerts, product recalls and withdrawals, including food supplements, with the business named and the reason stated. https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/search/alerts
4. The independent supplement testing services: subscription laboratories that purchase products at retail and test them for label accuracy, contaminants and disintegration, publishing pass and fail results by product, the one kind of review that reports what was in the tub rather than how it felt. PubMed record

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