One product, one panel, one record.
Thorne Bacillus Coagulans, 60 capsules (SKU SF758) — label audit
The cleanest evidence position in its batch — one strain, named, with a real human randomised-trial literature, at a disclosed minimum potency guaranteed to expiry. And the product page discloses neither the strain designator nor any CFU figure, so a shopper reading only where they shop learns neither fact.
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 Audited 2026-07-31, after the founding cohort of 27 was frozen. It sits outside every D27 denominator this site publishes.
- 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.
The Label Verifiability Score for this product
86.0 out of 100
Rank 23 of the 154 products in this audit the rubric can score. This rank is shared with 3 other products — 4 products sit on 86.0 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 the whole rubric: this record answers all five questions below, so nothing is renormalised away and the divisor is the full 1.00. That share travels with every score on this site and is never dropped — a score over part of the rubric’s 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 | 1 of 1 organism slot carries a printed strain designator. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2400 |
| Per-organism amount printed | 0.20 | 1 of 1 organism slot has an amount of its own; the rest are inside a blend total. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| What the CFU count is measured against | 0.22 | Potency basis "through-expiry": CFU figure printed yes, single basis stated yes, basis reaches expiry yes — 3 of 3. | 3 / 3 = 1.0000 | 0.2200 |
| Printed designators that lead to a human trial | 0.20 | 1 of 1 checked organism slot resolves 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. | 1 / 1 = 1.0000 | 0.2000 |
| Certification confirmed at the issuer’s own register | 0.14 | 1 claimed certification queried at the issuer’s register and not listed there. | 0 / 1 = 0.0000 | 0.0000 |
0.8600 — the last column added up — divided by 1.00, the weight this record could answer, is 0.8600. Multiplied by 100 and rounded to one decimal, that is the 86.0 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 | Contains a minimum of 2 billion CFUs per capsule |
| What that count is measured against | Through expiry |
| Strain designators | All organisms coded |
| Organism slots transcribed here | 1 — the full panel |
| Marketed as | Unisex |
Verbatim from the label: "Contains a minimum of 2 billion CFUs per capsule at time of expiration when stored as recommended." Two qualifications belong in the same sentence as the credit. It is a minimum, not a target. And it is a label statement rather than a Supplement Facts line — the panel itself carries only the 133 mg weight. At the label's maximum of three capsules that is at least 6 billion CFU a day. Storage is a cool, dry place with no refrigeration, which is what a spore-forming organism allows. The label also notes "Lactobacillus sporogenes (alternate nomenclature)" — an obsolete name, correctly flagged as obsolete.
The panel’s own words on potency, verbatim.
The panel guarantees the count through the expiration or best-by date. This is the only basis that is falsifiable by a reader holding the bottle.
Every organism on the panel carries a printed strain designator. Whether those designators lead anywhere is a separate question, answered below.
| Organism as printed | Designator as printed | Quantity as printed | What the designator resolves to | The query we ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacillus coagulans | MTCC 5856 | 133 mg | Human RCT | PubMed designator search, records with human-tagged and randomised-controlled-trial-tagged subsets |
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.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 337852 (opens in a new tab) captured The current label record, on market, UPC 6 93749 75802 0 — the hard match to SKU SF758, 60 capsules. Source for the MTCC 5856 designator, for the 133 mg panel line, for the at-expiry minimum-potency statement verbatim, for the NSF Contents Certified seal, for the storage instruction, and for the "Lactobacillus sporogenes (alternate nomenclature)" note.
- NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database record — DSLD 284188 (opens in a new tab) captured The superseded 2023 label, same UPC. Used for one purpose: it says only "Bacillus coagulans" with no designator, which is what makes the 2025 addition of MTCC 5856 a documented disclosure improvement rather than an assumption. The same brand moved backwards on FloraSport over the same period, and both directions are checkable because DSLD keeps every prior version.
- Dated capture of the brand’s own page — thorne-bacillus-coagulans-pdp-2026-07-31https://www.thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits. captured Read in-browser, because the page is a fully client-rendered Nuxt application with an empty ld+json block and no price in the HTML. Source for the price, the SKU and the dosing schedule — and the artefact behind the central finding, because its complete ingredient table reads "Bacillus Coagulans — 133mg" with no designator and no CFU.
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, 1 organism slot carries 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
$33.00 — the daily cost has not been derived from this price.
- Price
- $33.00 USD
- What that buys
- 60-capsule bottle, 1 capsule two to three times daily — a 20 to 30 day supply
- Price checked
- — the source we read it fromhttps://www.thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans — 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 |
|---|---|---|
| NSF Contents Certified | Brand-asserted, unverified | 31 July 2026 |
| NSF Certified for Sport | Absent from register | 31 July 2026 |
NSF Contents Certified
The badge is displayed, but the register could not be reached to confirm it. We call this unverified, not false.
The seal appears on the 2025 label and is absent from the 2023 label. The product page asserts: "This product has been third-party tested and certified to verify what's in the package matches what's on the label and to confirm it contains no unsafe levels of contaminants, such as heavy metals, pesticides, and microorganisms." NSF's contents-certification register lives at nsf.org, which returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated requests, so it could not be queried. Correct status: brand-asserted and unverified — never "verified", and never "does not hold it".
NSF Certified for Sport
The register was queried and this product is not listed on it.
A cross-check only, and it must not be read as evidence against the contents claim. The Certified for Sport register is a different NSF programme and it is reachable. Two independent keywords were run: - "Coagulans" returns 19 results with zero Thorne-branded entries, and "Bacillus" returns 125 results whose only Thorne hits are the two FloraSport listings. So this product is not Certified for Sport. That is a fact about a programme the brand never claimed.
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 the-product-page-discloses-neither-the-strain-nor-the-cfu
Thorne's live ingredient table reads "Bacillus Coagulans — 133mg" and nothing else. The physical label (DSLD 337852) discloses MTCC 5856 and a 2 billion CFU minimum at expiry. A shopper cannot learn either fact where they shop — the real numbers exist and are public, just not on the page selling the product.
The record: thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans ingredient table, read in-browser 2026-07-31, versus DSLD 337852 — open it (opens in a new tab)
Finding 2 dosing-footgun-in-the-headline-price
One capsule two to three times daily means the 60-count bottle is a 20-day supply at the top of the range. $33.00 reads like a two-month product and is $1.10 to $1.65 a day.
The record: thorne.com dosing instructions against the 60-capsule count, 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 3 hormone-support-benefit-tag-with-nothing-behind-it
The tag appears again here, on a single-strain B. coagulans product, with no hormonal endpoint in the product's content. The same unsupported tag was recorded on FloraSport and on FloraMend.
The record: thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans benefit tags, read in-browser 2026-07-31 — open ithttps://www.thorne.com/products/dp/bacillus-coagulans — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 4 nsf-contents-certified-cannot-be-checked-at-the-issuer
The strongest quality claim on this product is the one that cannot be verified, because nsf.org returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated requests. Treated as unverified. The reachable Certified for Sport register was queried on two keywords as a cross-check and returns nothing for this product — a different programme, and not evidence against the contents claim.
The record: nsf.org 403 on 2026-07-31; nsfsport.com keywords "Coagulans" (19 hits, 0 Thorne) and "Bacillus" (125 hits, FloraSport only) — open ithttps://www.nsfsport.com/certified-products/search-results.php — Address given, not linked: this site does not link out to the products it audits.
Finding 5 the-cfu-minimum-is-a-label-statement-not-a-panel-line
The Supplement Facts panel carries only the 133 mg weight. The 2 billion CFU minimum and its at-expiry basis live in a separate label statement. The guarantee is real and it is not where a reader would look for it.
The record: DSLD 337852 panel versus label statements, 2026-07-31 — open it (opens in a new tab)
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.
- NSF Contents Certified status
- The seal appears on the 2025 label and is absent from the 2023 label. The product page asserts: "This product has been third-party tested and certified to verify what's in the package matches what's on the label and to confirm it contains no unsafe levels of contaminants, such as heavy metals, pesticides, and microorganisms." NSF's contents-certification register lives at nsf.org, which returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated requests, so it could not be queried. Correct status: brand-asserted and unverified — never "verified", and never "does not hold it".
- A men’s-versus-women’s label diff
- The same brand’s women’s SKU has not been compared against this panel.
- A single cost per day
- The label dose is one capsule two to three times daily, so a 60-capsule bottle is 20 to 30 days and the cost is $1.10 to $1.65 a day. No single figure is published because the label itself does not fix one. The three-times-daily ceiling is easy to miss: at label-maximum dosing this is not the cheap option the sticker price implies.
- The NSF Contents Certified listing at the issuer
- nsf.org returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated requests, so the register could not be queried. The seal is on the 2025 label and the claim is on the product page, and both are recorded as asserted and unverified.
- Any strain designator or CFU figure on the product page itself
- Thorne's live ingredient table reads, in full, "Bacillus Coagulans — 133mg". No designator, no CFU. Both facts are on the physical label and in the government record; a shopper reading only the product page can learn neither.
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.
This is the strongest evidence position in its batch, and you cannot see any of it on the product page.
One organism, named: Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856. The Sami-Sabinsa “LactoSpore” strain, with 23 PubMed records, 10 human-tagged and 8 randomised-trial-tagged, including published IBS and mood trials. The potency is guaranteed to expiry — “a minimum of 2 billion CFUs per capsule at time of expiration when stored as recommended” — and the arithmetic checks: 133 mg at LactoSpore’s standard concentration is about 2 billion CFU, which is exactly what the label claims. One strain, real trials, a disclosed floor, and a date attached to it. Very little in this category manages all four.
There is also a documented improvement worth naming. The 2023 label said only “Bacillus coagulans”; the 2025 label names MTCC 5856. Credit where due — and note that the same brand moved backwards on FloraSport over the same two years, which is checkable only because the government keeps every prior label version.
Now the page.
Thorne’s live ingredient table reads, in full: “Bacillus Coagulans — 133mg.” No designator. No CFU. Not the strain that carries the evidence, not the 2 billion, not the at-expiry guarantee. Everything good about this product is on the physical label and in a government database, and none of it is where the product is sold.
Two smaller traps. The dose is one capsule two to three times daily, which makes a 60-count bottle a 20-day supply at the top of the range — $1.10 to $1.65 a day, on a sticker price that reads like two months. And the “Hormone Support” benefit tag turns up again, on a single-strain B. coagulans product, with no hormonal endpoint anywhere in its content.
One thing genuinely could not be checked. The 2025 label adds an NSF Contents Certified seal and the page claims third-party verification of label accuracy and contaminants. NSF’s contents register returns a Cloudflare 403 to automated requests, so it is recorded as asserted and unverified — not refuted. The reachable Certified-for-Sport register was queried on two keywords as a cross-check and does not list this product, and that is a different programme entirely. It is not evidence either way.