One product, one panel, one record.
Nutricost Probiotic Complex 50 Billion CFU, 60 Capsules — label audit
The label carries a storage notice the product page never mentions: "Notice: Keep refrigerated to preserve potency." A refrigeration instruction is an admission that potency degrades at room temperature — and this product states no potency basis at all, so the ">50 Billion CFU" is a number with no measurement point and a known decay pathway the shopper is not told about.
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
- 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 Torn down 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator the site publishes.
- How deep this went
- Full forensic teardown Panel transcribed, every strain designator queried, every certification chased to its issuer’s own register, and the literature behind each marketing claim opened and read.
- What did not survive verification
- Part of this page was refuted or could not be reproduced One limit sits on this record and it constrains a negative. Nutricost's own quality page, /pages/our-misson-guarantee, returned HTTP 429 with a JavaScript challenge before it could be read, so this site does not claim Nutricost publishes no certificate of analysis anywhere. What is established, and all that is quotable, is that no COA is linked from the product page and no laboratory is named on it. Everything else here — the refrigeration notice, the three dosing generations under one UPC, the panel transcription — is corroborated against government records and stands as written.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
8.5 out of 100
Rank 147 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 4 other products — 5 products sit on 8.5 and are tied. They hold the position jointly; no tiebreaker is applied, because every tiebreaker available here would be a number the rubric deliberately refused to weigh, smuggled back in to make a list look tidier.
The score measures one thing: how much of what you are buying this company tells you, and how much of that survives being checked against a source that is not the company. It does not measure whether the product works — this site holds no efficacy data of its own, and 0 of 294 organism slots in the founding cohort carry a strain with a human randomised trial for any male-specific outcome, so nobody in this category has evidence that would support a ranking by effect.
Computed over 86% of the rubric by weight — the share of the five questions below this record could answer. The remaining question is unanswered, and unanswered is not nought: it leaves the divisor rather than dragging the score down. That share travels with the number and is never dropped — this score over 86% of the weight and the same score over all of it are different claims.
| Component | Weight | What was counted, and where | Fraction | Weight × fraction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strain identity printed on the panel | 0.24 | 0 of 10 organism slots carry a printed strain designator. | 0 / 10 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 0 of 10 organism slots have an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 0 / 10 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 | 0.073333 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 0 of 10 checked organism slots resolve to at least one human randomised trial under the designator exactly as printed. This counts whether the identity leads to a trial, never what the trial found. | 0 / 10 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
| 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 | — excluded from the divisor, not counted as nought |
0.073333 — the last column added up — divided by 0.86, the weight this record could answer, is 0.0853. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 8.5 above.
See this product’s row in the full ranking, alongside the other 153 scored products, or read what each of the five components asks and how to check it .
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 | >50 Billion CFU (Probiotic Complex, 230 mg) |
| What that count is measured against | No basis stated |
| Strain designators | None — species only |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 10 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
No at-expiry or at-manufacture language appears anywhere: not on the Supplement Facts panel, not in the product description, not in the on-page FAQ, and not in any of DSLD 306383's sixteen transcribed label statements. The only formulation statement in the government record is "Probiotic Complex >50 Billion CFU per serving".
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lactobacillus acidophilus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus plantarum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus rhamnosus | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus casei | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactococcus lactis | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Saccharomyces boulardii | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium longum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Bifidobacterium bifidum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus fermentum | — none printed | — not stated separately | No designator printed | — |
| Lactobacillus gasseri | — 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.
- Photograph of the printed panel — NTC_ProbioticComplex_50Billion_60CAP_150CCCOMPAX_SFP_Squarehttps://nutricost.com/products/nutricost-probiotic-complex-50-billion-cfu-60-capsules — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured The brand's 3000×3000 product JPEG, a photograph of the bottle, transcribed by hand and confirmed field by field against DSLD 306383. The panel is not present as text in the page HTML.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 306383 (opens in a new tab) captured On-market, entered 2024-01-24. UPC 7 02669 93455 8 matches the live Shopify barcode 702669934558. Source of the "Keep refrigerated to preserve potency" storage notice, the sixteen label statements and the 2-capsule/30-serving generation of this label.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 223575 (opens in a new tab) captured Off-market, entered 2020-06-24, same UPC. 1 capsule, 60 servings, 50 Billion CFU, storage "Store in a cool dry place" — the generation before the refrigeration notice was added.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — nutricost-probiotic-complex-pdp-2026-07-31https://nutricost.com/products/nutricost-probiotic-complex-50-billion-cfu-60-capsules — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Live page, Shopify JSON and FAQ block, HTTP 200, captured before the site rate-limited. Source of the four-variant pricing, the default-variant behaviour and every claim quotation.
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.
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
$0.37 a day at the dose the label itself instructs.
- Price
- $21.97 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle (60 servings on the current label, 1 capsule daily)
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://nutricost.com/products/nutricost-probiotic-complex-50-billion-cfu-60-capsules — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Third-Party Tested" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "GMP Compliant Facility" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Made in a GMP Compliant, FDA Registered Facility" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Non-GMO" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Gluten Free" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| "Nutricost Quality Guaranteed" | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
"Third-Party Tested"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Claimed on the page and in the FAQ, verbatim: "Nutricost products are tested by an independent, accredited lab to help verify that what's on the label is what's in the bottle." The lab is never named. No certificate of analysis, batch number, method or report ID is published or linked from the product page, so there is no issuer register to query. Note the typography: the page renders "Third-Party Tested †", and the dagger resolves in the footer to "†These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases." A manufacturing-quality claim is being footnoted with the disease-claim disclaimer.
"GMP Compliant Facility"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Note the wording — compliant, not certified. No certifying body (NSF, NPA, UL, USP) is named, so there is no issuer register that could be checked.
"Made in a GMP Compliant, FDA Registered Facility"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
"FDA Registered" is a filing, not an endorsement. Every facility manufacturing dietary supplements for US commerce must register under 21 U.S.C. §350d. It conveys no inspection, no approval and no quality finding.
"Non-GMO"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
A bare self-claim, not "Non-GMO Project Verified". No third-party mark is asserted.
"Gluten Free"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
Self-claim, no certifier named.
"Nutricost Quality Guaranteed"
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
A brand slogan rendered as a seal in DSLD 306383's Seals/Symbols block.
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.
This brand sells no women’s counterpart to this product, so there is no diff to run.
Every finding on this page, with the record behind it
Finding 1 refrigeration-requirement-on-the-carton-and-absent-from-the-page
DSLD 306383 transcribes a storage statement from this label, verbatim: "Notice: Keep refrigerated to preserve potency." It appears nowhere on the e-commerce page. A refrigeration instruction is an admission that potency degrades at room temperature, and this product states no potency basis at all — so a shopper reading only the product page has no way to know the bottle needs a fridge and no at-expiry guarantee to fall back on if it does not get one. The older record, DSLD 223575, says only "Store in a cool dry place", so the refrigeration notice appears to have been added at the 2024 label revision.
The record: DSLD 306383 Storage statement against the live product page, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 one-upc-three-dosing-claims
Under the unchanged UPC 7 02669 93455 8, per-capsule potency has halved and doubled again across three label generations. DSLD 223575 (2020-06-24, off-market): 1 capsule, 60 servings, 50 Billion CFU. DSLD 306383 (2024-01-24, on-market): 2 capsules, 30 servings, 260 mg Probiotic Complex, >50 Billion CFU, with directions reading "take 2 capsules daily with 8-12 oz of water". Live label: 1 capsule, 60 servings, 230 mg, >50 Billion CFU, with the page reading "1 Serving: Just 1 Capsule". The formula changed too — DSLD 306383 records no prebiotic ingredients at all, while the current label carries 200 mg across four.
The record: DSLD 223575 and DSLD 306383 against the live label image, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 3 proprietary-blend-ten-organisms-one-number
"Probiotic Complex — 230 mg (>50 Billion CFU)" covers ten organisms with no per-organism CFU, no per-organism weight and no designator of any kind.
The record: Brand Supplement Facts image, transcribed 2026-07-31; confirmed against DSLD 306383
Finding 4 cfu-basis-unstated-everywhere
Not on the panel, not in the product description, not in the on-page FAQ, and not in any of the sixteen label statements DSLD transcribed from this record.
The record: Brand Supplement Facts image, live page, page FAQ and DSLD 306383, all checked 2026-07-31
Finding 5 a-yeast-folded-into-an-undifferentiated-bacterial-cfu-count
Saccharomyces boulardii is a yeast, listed as one of ten line items inside a single "Probiotic Complex" figure. What fraction of the ">50 Billion" is yeast rather than bacteria is unknowable from the label.
The record: Brand Supplement Facts image, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 6 page-defaults-to-the-cheapest-and-weakest-variant
The URL and page title name the 50 Billion SKU. The page loads with the 1 Billion CFU variant selected at $11.97. Four variants — 1B at $11.97, 10B at $14.97, 40B at $18.97 and 50B at $21.97 — share one product page and one pool of 187 reviews. The product-details copy reads "10/50 BILLION CFU's Per Capsule", describing two of the four variants and ignoring the other two, on a page that defaults to a third.
The record: nutricost.com live product page and Shopify JSON, 2026-07-31
Finding 7 fda-registered-facility-presented-as-a-quality-credential
"Made in a GMP Compliant, FDA Registered Facility." Registration under 21 U.S.C. §350d is mandatory for every facility manufacturing dietary supplements for US commerce. It conveys no inspection, no approval and no quality finding.
The record: nutricost.com product page, quoted verbatim 2026-07-31
Finding 8 gmp-compliant-not-gmp-certified
The wording is "GMP Compliant Facility", not GMP certified, with no certifying body named. There is nothing to check at any register.
The record: nutricost.com product page and DSLD 306383 Seals/Symbols, 2026-07-31
Finding 9 third-party-tested-with-no-lab-named-footnoted-to-the-fda-disclaimer
"Third-Party Tested †" — the lab is never named, no COA is published or linked from the product page, and the dagger resolves in the footer to the FDA disease-claim disclaimer. Either the dagger is misapplied or the brand is disclaiming its own testing claim.
The record: nutricost.com product page and footer, read 2026-07-31
Finding 10 token-prebiotic-dose-split-four-ways
Organic Acacia Fiber 50 mg, Organic Inulin (chicory) 50 mg, Organic Jerusalem Artichoke 50 mg and Organic Agave Inulin 50 mg — 200 mg of total prebiotic. Prebiotic fibre trials generally run in grams. Four separate entries make the panel look substantial while delivering one-fifth of a gram.
The record: Brand Supplement Facts image, transcribed 2026-07-31
Finding 11 zero-strain-designators-across-ten-organisms
No designator of any kind appears on the panel, so no organism in this product can be matched to any tested agent — McFarland LV et al., Front Med 2018;5:124, across 228 trials: "the efficacy of probiotics is both strain-specific and disease-specific."
The record: PMID 29868585; brand Supplement Facts image
Finding 12 transparency-marketing-against-the-panel
The brand's stated pillar, verbatim: "We believe supplements should be simple, transparent, and accessible… quality ingredients, clear labeling, and prices that make sense." The panel discloses zero strain designators across ten organisms, zero per-organism doses, zero CFU basis and zero laboratory identity — and the refrigeration requirement printed on the carton is absent from the page.
The record: nutricost.com product page, quoted verbatim 2026-07-31, against the panel and DSLD 306383
Finding 13 supplement-facts-published-only-as-a-photograph-of-a-bottle
The panel exists only inside a 3000×3000 product JPEG rendered as a photograph of the bottle, and appears nowhere as text in the page HTML.
The record: NTC_ProbioticComplex_50Billion_60CAP_150CCCOMPAX_SFP_Square.jpg, read 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.
- "Third-Party Tested" status
- Claimed on the page and in the FAQ, verbatim: "Nutricost products are tested by an independent, accredited lab to help verify that what's on the label is what's in the bottle." The lab is never named. No certificate of analysis, batch number, method or report ID is published or linked from the product page, so there is no issuer register to query. Note the typography: the page renders "Third-Party Tested †", and the dagger resolves in the footer to "†These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any diseases." A manufacturing-quality claim is being footnoted with the disease-claim disclaimer.
- "GMP Compliant Facility" status
- Note the wording — compliant, not certified. No certifying body (NSF, NPA, UL, USP) is named, so there is no issuer register that could be checked.
- "Made in a GMP Compliant, FDA Registered Facility" status
- "FDA Registered" is a filing, not an endorsement. Every facility manufacturing dietary supplements for US commerce must register under 21 U.S.C. §350d. It conveys no inspection, no approval and no quality finding.
- "Non-GMO" status
- A bare self-claim, not "Non-GMO Project Verified". No third-party mark is asserted.
- "Gluten Free" status
- Self-claim, no certifier named.
- "Nutricost Quality Guaranteed" status
- A brand slogan rendered as a seal in DSLD 306383's Seals/Symbols block.
- Whether Nutricost publishes a certificate of analysis anywhere on its site
- nutricost.com/pages/our-misson-guarantee returned HTTP 429 with a JavaScript challenge on the second request wave. What is established is narrower and is what this page states: no COA is linked from the product page and no laboratory is named there. This site does not claim no COA exists anywhere.
- The per-organism CFU or weight of any of the ten organisms
- One 230 mg figure and one ">50 Billion CFU" figure cover all ten, including a yeast. Nothing on the label or the page permits the split to be recovered.
- What the ">50 Billion CFU" is measured against
- No potency basis appears on the panel, in the description, in the FAQ or in any of the sixteen label statements DSLD transcribed. The number has no stated measurement point.
- Which label generation a given bottle carries
- Under the unchanged UPC 7 02669 93455 8, the dosing has been 1 capsule × 60 servings (DSLD 223575, 2020), then 2 capsules × 30 servings (DSLD 306383, 2024), then 1 capsule × 60 servings again (live label). A buyer cannot tell from the UPC which one they are holding, and the true cost per day is either $0.37 or $0.73 accordingly.
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.
The most useful sentence about this product is printed on the bottle and nowhere on the website.
DSLD record 306383 transcribes it from the label: “Notice: Keep refrigerated to preserve potency.” Search the product page for it and you will not find it. Search the page for what the “>50 Billion CFU” figure is measured against and you will not find that either — not on the panel, not in the description, not in the FAQ, not in any of the sixteen label statements the government recorded.
Put those two absences together. A refrigeration instruction is an admission that the count decays at room temperature. A missing potency basis means the count is not guaranteed at any particular moment. So the headline number has no measurement point and a documented decay pathway the shopper is never told about — while the bottle ships, and sits on a shelf, at room temperature.
Underneath, the panel is a single line: “Probiotic Complex — 230 mg (>50 Billion CFU)”, covering ten organisms. No per-organism CFU. No per-organism weight. No designator on any of them. One of the ten is Saccharomyces boulardii — a yeast — so even the bacterial fraction of that number is unknowable. The 200 mg of prebiotic fibre is split across four entries of 50 mg each, which makes the panel look fuller than one-fifth of a gram usually does.
Then there is the identifier problem, which travels beyond this product. Under the unchanged UPC 7 02669 93455 8, this label has been 1 capsule × 60 servings (2020), then 2 capsules × 30 servings (2024), then 1 capsule × 60 servings again (now). The per-capsule potency claim halved and doubled back. The prebiotics did not exist in the 2024 record and total 200 mg today. Depending on which generation is in your hand, the true cost per day is either $0.37 or $0.73 and the bottle lasts either 60 days or 30 — and the barcode is identical in every case. Any roundup that read this label once is citing a snapshot.
What is genuinely good here deserves saying, because it is not nothing. This is a very cheap probiotic. The current label is single-capsule dosing. There is a real, current government label record. There is a 60-day money-back guarantee. And the claim set is the most restrained of its batch by a wide margin — no disease named, no organ named, no outcome promised, no “clinically studied”, no percentages, no trial. Nutricost barely makes a health claim at all.
The irony is only in the marketing. The brand whose stated pillar is “simple, transparent…clear labeling” discloses no strain designator, no per-organism dose, no potency basis and no laboratory identity — and keeps the refrigeration requirement off the page where the buying decision is made.