One product, one panel, one record.
CVS Health CVS Extra Strength Daily Probiotic Capsules, 30 Ct — label audit
CVS's dedicated Ingredients page for this product renders exactly this, in full - "MULTI STRAIN B. INFANTIS B. LONGUM L. ACIDOPHILUS L. RHAMNOSUS". Four genus-abbreviated species names. No strain designators, no per-organism CFU, no milligrams, no other-ingredients list and no Supplement Facts table. The same brand prints a designator on its own sibling SKUs, so the omission here is a choice rather than a supplier constraint.
This page is an audit of a label. It records what this product’s panel discloses, what of that could be checked against a primary record, and what could not. The score below ranks this product on that disclosure and on nothing else.
The record this page rests on
- NIH label record
- No NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record is on file for this product in this teardown.
- Label read on
- The most recent dated artefact behind this page. Labels change; this is how old our reading of it is.
- Cohort
- Addendum — outside the founding denominators Audited 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes and contributes to none of them.
- How deep this went
- Label audit — the lighter pass What the label says, what basis it gives for its CFU number, whether the strains are coded, whether a government label record exists — checked and published. No full claim inventory was written for this SKU. It is a real result, and it is a shallower one than the teardowns above it, which is why the page says so before you weigh it against them.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced Everything on this page was read from CVS's own web copy, not from a photographed Supplement Facts panel. The carton image at cvs.com/bizcontent/merchandising/productimages/high_res/5042860708*.jpg returns HTTP 403 to every header combination tried, the URL has no Internet Archive capture, and the delivery-app mirrors either returned 403 or resolved to a different CVS SKU. The four organism rows below therefore come from CVS's dedicated Ingredients page rather than from a panel, and no per-product percentage over that list is printed anywhere on this page. There is a second, sharper reason this record is flagged. A search-engine summary of the same Ingredients page reported that this SKU's panel carries NI-series strain designators - L. rhamnosus NI332, B. longum NI316, B. infantis NI313, L. acidophilus NI317 - and a dual CFU basis reading "minimum of 5 billion CFU when manufactured, minimum of 1 billion CFU at expiry date". The live Ingredients page contains no such text, and the claim could not be confirmed from any source read directly. It is plausible, because CVS is a Lallemand customer and its sibling Digestive Probiotic does carry NI313 - and it is unconfirmed. Those designators and that CFU basis are not quotable for this SKU and appear nowhere on this page as fact. A physical carton photograph is what would resolve it. Until then this page publishes the weaker, verified reading - species-only disclosure and an unstated basis - and says out loud that a stronger reading exists and could not be stood up.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
No score and no rank
No Label Verifiability Score is published for this product, and none is estimated. A score must rest on at least 50% of the rubric by weight; this record answers 22%, so a number here would present an average of one or two components as a summary of five.
The product stays in the audit and stays on this site. It is listed, unranked, on the label audit, and it is absent from the ranking rather than placed at the bottom of it: an unanswered question is not a bad answer, and ranking it as though it were would be a number about our reach dressed up as a fact about the product.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | The panel is not fully transcribed — 4 organism slots are on this record and they are the ones a cleared finding named. A share computed over them would describe our transcription, not the label. | Not answered |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | The panel is not fully transcribed — 4 organism slots are on this record and they are the ones a cleared finding named. A share computed over them would describe our transcription, not the label. | Not answered |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "none-stated": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated no, basis reaches expiry no — 1 of 3. | 1 / 3 = 0.3333 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | The panel is not fully transcribed — 4 organism slots are on this record and they are the ones a cleared finding named. A share computed over them would describe our transcription, not the label. | Not answered |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | Every certification on this record is brand-asserted with the register unreachable, or not yet queried. An unreachable register is a fact about the verification infrastructure, not about this brand, so it may not move its position. | Not answered |
This record answers 22% of the rubric by weight, below the 50% floor a published score requires. Scoring it would present an average of one or two components as a summary of five. Listed, unranked, and the components it did answer are shown above.
The ranking of the 154 products that can be scored is on the home page, with what the score measures and what it does not.
What this label discloses
Everything in this table is what the product itself states — on the printed panel, on the brand’s own page, or in the label record the manufacturer filed. Nothing in it is checked yet; checking is the next section.
| Disclosure | As recorded |
|---|---|
| CFU as printed | a minimum of 5 billion live bacteria cells per serving |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 4 — partial; the panel is not fully transcribed |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
"Each serving contains a minimum of 5 billion live bacteria cells per serving along with four strains of healthy bacteria." Recorded from CVS's own product copy, not from a panel — no "at manufacture" and no "at expiration" appears anywhere in any CVS-hosted text that could be read.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
A CFU number appears with no temporal basis of any kind. A count with no basis is not a quantity; there is no date at which it is claimed to be true.
The panel names species only, with no strain designator anywhere. A species name is not a claim: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species can contain thousands.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B. INFANTIS | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| B. LONGUM | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. ACIDOPHILUS | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| L. RHAMNOSUS | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
What of that is verifiable
A disclosure is verifiable when a reader can open a record that neither we nor the brand controls and see the same thing. Below is every dated artefact this page rests on. What is absent from this list is not verified, however reasonable it sounds.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — cvs-com-prodid-371456-ingredients-2026-07-31https://www.cvs.com/shop/ingredients/cvs-extra-strength-daily-probiotic-capsules-prodid-371456 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured CVS's dedicated Ingredients page for this product, retrieved through a reader proxy because a direct fetch of cvs.com returns HTTP 403. It renders, in full - "MULTI STRAIN B. INFANTIS B. LONGUM L. ACIDOPHILUS L. RHAMNOSUS". That is the entire ingredient disclosure and it is the surface the four organism rows on this page were read from. It is web copy, not a Supplement Facts panel, and this page treats it as web copy throughout.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — cvs-com-prodid-371456-product-page-2026-07-31https://www.cvs.com/shop/cvs-extra-strength-daily-probiotic-capsules-prodid-371456 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The product page, retrieved through the same reader proxy. Source of the price ($26.49), the count (30 Ct), the item number (371456), the out-of-stock state at this pass, the "minimum of 5 billion live bacteria cells per serving" wording, the "proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains" phrase, the acid-resistance claim and the money-back guarantee footnote.
How many of its strains have a human trial for what it is sold for
Across the frozen founding cohort, 0 of 294 organism slots (0.0%) carry an organism with a human randomised controlled trial for any male-specific outcome. Not for this product — for all 27 of the founding teardowns, taken together. That is the number to hold against any men’s probiotic, including this one.
Two further founding-cohort figures for context: only 43 of 294 organism slots carry a strain with any human RCT at all under the exact code printed on the label, and only 2 of 27 products have a published human trial of the finished formula — the thing actually in the bottle. All three figures divide by the frozen cohort of 27 teardowns and 294 organism slots, never by every teardown on this site.
For this product specifically, 0 organism slots carry a strain with a human RCT under the exact designator printed on the label. That count was made against a panel this record has not fully transcribed, so treat it as provisional.
A word on what a designator has to clear before it counts here. The organism must be named with the exact strain code that appears in the trial, the trial must be in humans, and the code must return that trial when a reader searches it. A species name does not qualify: the trials in this field are of strains, and a species contains thousands of them.
What it costs per day
$0.88 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $26.49 USD
- What that buys
- 30 Ct bottle, 1 capsule daily, 30 servings. CVS Item
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.cvs.com/shop/cvs-extra-strength-daily-probiotic-capsules-prodid-371456 — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
What certification it holds, checked at the issuer’s own register
A badge on a bottle is a claim like any other. Every row below was checked — or not checked — at the certifier’s own public register, never at the badge. Across the frozen founding cohort, 2 of 27 products hold a certification we could confirm at the issuer — a founding-cohort figure, not a count over every teardown on this site.
| Programme | Status at the issuer | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Any third-party certification | Not checked | 31 July 2026 |
Any third-party certification
We have not queried this register for this product. It does not mean the product holds nothing.
None is claimed on the product page, on the Ingredients page, or in any CVS marketing copy that could be retrieved - no UL, NSF, USP, Informed Choice or Non-GMO mark. There is therefore no issuer register to query and no basis to assert that a certification exists. Whether the physical carton bears a mark is unknown, because no carton photograph could be obtained. What CVS offers instead is a commercial guarantee rather than a quality one, and it is easy to misread - "CVS offers a money-back guarantee on all probiotics", footnoted "subject to CVS Pharmacy Return Policy and third-party verification process". The third-party verification there verifies the refund, not the product.
How it differs from the same brand’s women’s version
Across the fourteen same-brand men’s-versus-women’s label diffs run inside the frozen founding cohort, zero men’s or default formulas contain a probiotic strain, identified by designator, that was selected on male-specific evidence. In eight of the fourteen the sex-specific differentiator is a botanical or a mineral, and in five of the fourteen the women’s SKU is better-specified, cheaper, or both — “better-specified” meaning the panel that discloses more, never the panel with more in it. The rule behind each of those counts, and all fourteen pairs classified against it , are published in full. Diffs run on teardowns added since sit outside this fourteen, and outside the sentence above.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 species-only-disclosure-on-a-brand-whose-sibling-skus-carry-designators
CVS's complete ingredient disclosure for this product is four genus-abbreviated species names. The same brand's CVS Health Digestive Probiotic carries "Bifidobacterium Infantis Strain NI313" in the NIH transcription of its label (DSLD 276003), inside a side-by-side comparison table against Align, and the CVS Men's Wellness Probiotic names Rosell-52, Rosell-175 and Lafti B94. Same brand, same category, designators present there and absent here. The omission is a choice, not a supplier constraint.
The record: CVS Ingredients page for prodid-371456 against DSLD 276003 (CVS Health Digestive Probiotic) and the CVS Men's Wellness Probiotic page, item 620557 - all read 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 cfu-basis-unstated
"5 billion live bacteria cells per serving" with no time anchor anywhere. No "at manufacture", no "at expiration", in any CVS-hosted text that could be read. A count with no basis is not a quantity - there is no date at which it is claimed to be true.
The record: CVS product page and Ingredients page for prodid-371456, retrieved via reader proxy 2026-07-31, both searched for a temporal qualifier
Finding 3 lowest-dose-highest-price-per-day-in-its-batch
5 billion CFU at $0.88 a day, against three Walgreens store-brand probiotics in the same audit delivering 10, 20 and 30 billion at $0.60 to $0.67 a day - two of them with an explicit at-expiry floor. Across those four SKUs, price and disclosure quality run in opposite directions.
The record: CVS listed price for item 371456 against Walgreens listed prices for items 300435852 ($29.99 / 50 ct), 300417758 ($19.99 / 30 ct) and 300437566 ($19.99 / 30 ct), all read 2026-07-31
Finding 4 four-strains-is-false-precision
The copy says "four strains of healthy bacteria" and "a proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains". Four species are disclosed. A species is not a strain, and the trials in this field are of strains.
The record: CVS product page copy for prodid-371456, verbatim, read 2026-07-31
Finding 5 the-prebiotic-is-never-named-or-quantified
A "proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains" is asserted and the prebiotic is identified nowhere - not on the product page, not on the dedicated Ingredients page.
The record: CVS product page and Ingredients page for prodid-371456, read 2026-07-31
Finding 6 acid-survival-claim-on-organisms-identified-only-to-species
"Beneficial bacteria that are resistant to stomach acid" is a performance claim about specific organisms, made about organisms the label does not specifically identify. Acid tolerance in this field is a strain property.
The record: CVS product page copy for prodid-371456, verbatim, read 2026-07-31
Finding 7 the-brands-own-two-pages-give-two-different-ratings
4.8 out of 5 on the product page, 5.0 on the ingredients page, both against the same 98 reviews. Cosmetic on its own; a quality-control signal on a listing that publishes no panel.
The record: CVS prodid-371456 product page and ingredients page, both retrieved 2026-07-31
Finding 8 no-government-label-record-while-nine-cvs-probiotic-records-exist
Five search routes return no DSLD record for this SKU, against 9 CVS Health probiotic records and 8 CVS Pharmacy ones that do exist. The company's labels are in the federal database; this one is not, so there is no neutral transcription to check the retailer's own four-word ingredient list against.
The record: DSLD v9 brand filters "CVS Health" and "CVS Pharmacy", free-text "Extra Strength Daily Probiotic", designator queries "NI317" and "NI332" - all run 2026-07-31
What we could not verify
Every gap below is published rather than deleted. Most are derived automatically from the empty fields in this page’s own record, so a gap cannot be hidden by leaving a box blank.
- The full Supplement Facts panel
- Only 4 organism slots are transcribed here, and they are the ones a cleared finding named. The rest of the panel has not been read into this record, so no per-product percentage may be computed from it.
- Any third-party certification status
- None is claimed on the product page, on the Ingredients page, or in any CVS marketing copy that could be retrieved - no UL, NSF, USP, Informed Choice or Non-GMO mark. There is therefore no issuer register to query and no basis to assert that a certification exists. Whether the physical carton bears a mark is unknown, because no carton photograph could be obtained. What CVS offers instead is a commercial guarantee rather than a quality one, and it is easy to misread - "CVS offers a money-back guarantee on all probiotics", footnoted "subject to CVS Pharmacy Return Policy and third-party verification process". The third-party verification there verifies the refund, not the product.
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- The physical carton and its Supplement Facts panel
- Never obtained. cvs.com/bizcontent/merchandising/productimages/high_res/5042860708*.jpg returns HTTP 403 to every header combination tried, the URL has no Internet Archive capture, and the DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates mirrors either returned 403 or resolved to a different CVS SKU. Every figure on this page comes from CVS's own web copy rather than from a photographed panel, and the strain rows below are therefore recorded as web copy, not as a transcription.
- The per-organism CFU split, the milligram amounts, the other-ingredients list and the allergen statement
- None of them appears anywhere in CVS's disclosure. The Ingredients page renders four species names and nothing else; the product page adds only the phrase "a proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains".
- What the prebiotic in this product is
- It is named nowhere. The copy asserts a "proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains" and never says what the prebiotic is or how much of it there is.
- Whether this SKU's panel carries strain designators or a dual CFU basis
- Unresolved, and deliberately not published. A search-engine summary of the Ingredients page reported NI-series designators (L. rhamnosus NI332, B. longum NI316, B. infantis NI313, L. acidophilus NI317) and a "minimum of 5 billion CFU when manufactured / minimum of 1 billion CFU at expiry date" dual basis for this SKU. The live Ingredients page does not contain that text and it could not be confirmed from any source read directly. It is plausible - CVS is a Lallemand customer and its sibling Digestive Probiotic carries NI313 - and it remains unconfirmed. It must not be published as fact for this SKU without a carton photograph.
- Any government label record
- None exists. The search was run five ways - DSLD brand filter "CVS Health" plus probiotic returned 9 records (Senior, Probiotic, Advanced Probiotic Gummies, Digestive Probiotic, Adult 50+, Adult Probiotic, Adult Probiotic Gummies Strawberry, Acidophilus x2) with no "Extra Strength Daily"; the alternative brand spelling "CVS Pharmacy" returned 8 records including a different "Extra Strength Probiotic 15 mg" from 2013; free-text searches on the product name returned nothing; and designator searches on NI317 and NI332 returned 0 hits each.
- Whether the star rating on this product is 4.8 or 5.0
- CVS's own two pages for this SKU disagree - the product page renders 4.8 out of 5 and the ingredients page renders 5.0, both against the same 98 reviews. Recorded as an inconsistency, not resolved.
How to check every line of this page yourself
Nothing on this page requires trusting us. Every claim above resolves to a record you can open:
- Open the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record linked at the top of this page. It is the label the manufacturer filed, not our transcription of it.
- Compare the CFU line and the suggested-use line against the disclosure table above. If they disagree with us, we are wrong and we want to know.
- Take any strain designator from the panel and run the query printed beside it. The query is published precisely so you can get a different answer than we did.
- Divide the price by the number of days the label’s own dose instructions make the container last. That arithmetic is the whole of the cost-per-day row.
- Search the certifier’s own register for this product, not for the brand. A company can participate in a programme without this product being on its list.
Here is CVS’s complete ingredient disclosure for this product, from its own dedicated Ingredients page, in full:
MULTI STRAIN B. INFANTIS B. LONGUM L. ACIDOPHILUS L. RHAMNOSUS
That is the whole thing. Four genus-abbreviated species names. No strain designators, no per-organism CFU, no milligrams, no other-ingredients list, no allergen statement, no Supplement Facts table. The product page adds “a proprietary blend of beneficial prebiotic and probiotic strains” and “four strains of healthy bacteria” — using the word strains for what are disclosed as species — and never names the prebiotic at all.
The omission is a choice. CVS demonstrably can print a designator: its own CVS Health Digestive Probiotic carries “Bifidobacterium Infantis Strain NI313” in the NIH transcription of its label (DSLD 276003), and its CVS Men’s Wellness Probiotic names Rosell®-52, Rosell®-175 and Lafti® B94. Same brand, same category, same suppliers. The designators are present on those cartons and absent here.
The potency claim has no time anchor. “Each serving contains a minimum of 5 billion live bacteria cells per serving” — no “at manufacture”, no “at expiration”, nowhere in any CVS text that could be read. And 5 billion is the smallest dose in the batch this was audited alongside, at $0.88 a day, the highest cost per day in it. Three Walgreens store-brand probiotics in the same pass deliver 10, 20 and 30 billion at $0.60 to $0.67, two of them with an explicit at-expiry floor printed on the carton. Across those four SKUs price and disclosure quality run in opposite directions.
One piece of certification-shaped language deserves reading twice. CVS claims no third-party mark of any kind. What it offers instead is “a money-back guarantee on all probiotics”, footnoted “subject to CVS Pharmacy® Return Policy and third-party verification process”. The third-party verification in that sentence verifies the refund. It says nothing about the product.
And this page is flagged for something it deliberately does not say. A search-engine summary of the same Ingredients page reported that this SKU carries NI-series designators and a dual 5-billion-at-manufacture / 1-billion-at-expiry basis. That would make it a materially better label than the one described above. The live page contains no such text, and nothing read directly could confirm it. It is plausible — CVS buys from Lallemand, whose NI-series library is on the sibling SKU — and plausible is not verified. Those designators and that basis are not published here as fact. A photograph of the carton would settle it in thirty seconds, and no photograph of this carton could be obtained.