Men’s multivitamins help you ensure you have the right critical vitamins and minerals for proper health. Men have different nutritional needs than women, largely because of the unique nutritional demands necessary to sustain high levels of testosterone, growth hormone, and other androgens.
More men are investing money in multivitamins billed as a sort of “health insurance” fix for poor dietary habits and to cut the risk of developing chronic disease. Of course there is no substitute for a good diet and regular exercise, but taking a daily multivitamin for men can help you stay healthy and even look younger, too.
Our research team ranked and reviewed the best men’s multivitamins on the market, plus reported on the latest science on the benefits men can get from a good multivitamin.
Our advisory panel and our research team rank the best health products and supplements based on performance, label accuracy, and the efficacy of the ingredients in the products.
- Best Overall: Ritual For Men 50+
- Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi
- Best For Men Over 50: Dr. Tobias Multivitamin & Mineral Plus Enzymes
- Best For Male Athletes: Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
- Vimerson Health Men’s Multivitamin
Research
Rankings
Last updated: September 29, 2022
Multivitamins considered: 24
Hours of research: 55
Experts reviewed: 12
Scientific papers referenced: 33
IMAGE | PRODUCT | |
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Best Overall | 1. Ritual For Men 50+
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2. Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi
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Best for Men Over 50 | 3. Dr. Tobias Multivitamin & Mineral Plus Enzymes
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Best for Male Athletes | 4. Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
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5. Vimerson Health Men’s Multivitamin
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6. Animal Pak by Universal Nutrition
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Best Multivitamin Without Iron | 7. Rainbow Light Men’s One
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8. MuscleTech Platinum Multivitamin
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9. Kirkland Signature Daily Multi
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10. Centrum Adults
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11. Solimo Men’s One Daily
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1. Ritual For Men 50+
Ritual for men 50+ is engineered for the man who doesn’t mess around. Not only does it contain all the vitamins and minerals that you would expect from a high-quality multivitamin, but it ensures that it gives men that extra strength and “energy”.
Each 2-capsule serving provides 10 unique, clinically-dosed micronutrients that support your bones, muscles, and organs. Ritual also includes delayed-release technology to ensure that you absorb more of what you need to, without feeling nauseous.
It’s also one of the cleanest formulas on the market today. Ritual for men 50+ is free from GMO, soy, gluten, caffeine, allergens and synthetic additives.
All in all, it’s our top overall pick.
2. Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi
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Performance Lab Whole-Food Multi for Men provides the recommended daily intake of more than 18 essential vitamins and minerals, with B-vitamins particularly high. It provides 833% of the daily value (DV) of vitamin B12, for instance, along with 533% B1; 235% of B2, plus 200% of vitamins B5 and B6.
B vitamins are particularly useful for men with stressful jobs, thanks to their ability to help the body’s stress mechanisms.
It also provides 150% DV for zinc, 250% vitamin D and 4mg of boron (there is no daily value established for boron), meaning it also targets testosterone production, the immune system and provides support for strong muscles and bones, making it a great choice for physically active men.
3. Dr. Tobias Multivitamin & Mineral Plus Enzymes
Dr. Tobias provides many of the letter vitamins (A, C, D, E, and the B-complex vitamins) at high concentrations. Vitamin B6, for example, is listed at 2500% of your recommended daily value, and vitamin B1 (thiamin) is listed at 3333%.
The concentration of trace minerals, like magnesium, zinc, selenium, and chromium, is more moderate. These are provided at amounts ranging from 25 to 100% of your recommended daily intake.
In addition to the basic essentials, Dr. Tobias provides a blend of 42 fruit and vegetable extracts like blueberries, spirulina, chlorophyllin, black currant, green tea, and more.
This means each tablet has a powerful anti-oxidant effect in your body, which is good for overall health and longevity. There’s even a concentration of probiotic bacteria for gut health and digestion.
This formulation strategy shows a commitment to understanding what really goes on inside the body, instead of just trying to hit 100% of all recommended daily intakes and moving on, which makes Dr. Tobias one of the best choices if your main goal is to improve overall health.
4. Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
Optimum Nutrition packs a tremendously high concentration of vitamins and minerals into its multivitamin. Several of the B-vitamins are provided at 1600-5000% of recommended daily intake levels, and almost every single metal mineral (copper, chromium, manganese, chromium, etc.) are provided at 100% of your daily intake.
5. Vimerson Health Men’s Multivitamin
Vimerson Health has all the basics that men need, plus a custom blend of herbal extracts like saw palmetto and lycopene for male wellness. Add to this the antioxidant power of green tea extract and you’ve got a potent and versatile multivitamin for men.
6. Animal Pak by Universal Nutrition
The bright yellow tub and the bold-face letters say it all—this is a multivitamin geared towards weight lifters, body builders, and other fitness enthusiasts.
The daily intake numbers are massively high: 9000% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin B6, and over 5000% of thiamin, for example.
The label even gives you a warning: “This is a potent bodybuilding supplement.” If that’s what you need, this is a great choice.
7. Rainbow Light Men’s One
Rainbow Light’s delivers many of its mineral ingredients as easily-digestible salts or amino acid chelates, which means that the bioavailability of the vitamins and minerals it supplies should be very good—i.e. your body will be able to absorb a high proportion of the amount you consume.
It’s a simple multivitamin, but it gets the fundamentals right.
8. MuscleTech Platinum Multivitamin
The focus in MuscleTech Platinum Multivitamin is delivering high doses of many different trace elements in addition to the basics that you need.
For a muscle-focused multivitamin, the range of ingredients you get is great, and moreover, many of them are delivered in a highly bioavailable amino acid chelate form.
9. Kirkland Signature Daily Multi
Kirkland Signature has all the basics, but doesn’t have much in the way of extras, aside from the antioxidant supplements lycopene and lutein.
There are a few other trace minerals provided that don’t have recommended daily intakes, like boron, tin, vanadium, and nickel, but that aside, Kirkland doesn’t really stand out against the competition.
10. Centrum Adults
Centrum is a “just the basics” multivitamin; it provides your standard letter-vitamins and metal minerals, and not much else. Each tablet contains right around 100% of almost every ingredient, aside from a few outliers like biotin, vitamin K2, and phosphorus.
Centrum contains no herbal extracts, amino acids, or other supplements with systemic effects—it’s just the raw building blocks that your body needs to function.
Category winners
Best men’s multivitamins overall: Ritual for Men 50+
Ritual provides a focused blend of vitamins and minerals that is specifically tuned to men’s needs. It targets micronutrients that are often deficient in men’s diets, like omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin vitamin D, magnesium, and zinc.
Best multivitamins for male athletes: Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi
Performance Lab uses all-natural sources to deliver all of the essential vitamins and minerals that serious athletes need—even rare trace elements like manganese, copper, and molybdenum that provide critical enzymatic support for top performance.
Best men’s multivitamin without iron: Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
If you already get enough iron from your diet (or from other supplements), it can be tricky to get a solid men’s multivitamin that doesn’t provide iron. Optimum Nutrition is the ideal choice because it has a wide range of all the essential vitamins and minerals in a simple, cleanly-designed supplement, but without iron.
Best multivitamins for men over 50: Ritual for Men 50+
Men over 50 need to worry more about getting nutrients that sustain high levels of testosterone into old age. Ritual is formulated specifically for these hormonal needs, with compounds like magnesium and zinc for testosterone support, and DHA omega 3 from microalgae for cardiovascular health.
Best multivitamins for men’s sexual health: Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men
Optimizing your sexual health means ensuring your body has the right nutrients it needs to produce androgens (like testosterone) and blood flow simulators, like nitric oxide. Optimum Nutrition has both of these locked down, with zinc, magnesium, saw palmetto, L-arginine, and alpha-lipoic acid.
Best men’s multivitamin with vitamin D: Performance Lab Whole-Food Men’s Multi
Dishing out 1000 IUs of vitamin D, Performance Lab tops other men’s multivitamins that only provide a few hundred IUs of vitamin D per day. It’s ideal for men looking to ensure their vitamin D levels are high enough to sustain proper hormonal function.
Who should buy a multivitamin for men?
Men who are busy, don’t have time to get a high-quality meal in three times per day, train very hard for athletic events, and men who are over 50 all may benefit from a multivitamin specifically formulated for men’s nutritional needs (1).
Why these groups? If you have plenty of time to cook high-quality meals every day, it’s easily possible to get all of your nutritional needs from foods. However, there are a lot of men who travel for work or have to put in long hours, and for them, it can be extremely tough to cover all of their nutritional bases.
Tough training increases your body’s nutritional needs, and as you get older, nutritional deficits become increasingly common.
Trace minerals, like copper or zinc, are quite easy to skimp on, as are some of the less-common vitamins such as vitamin K and some of the B-complex vitamins. Taking a multivitamin for men can be a good stopgap to ensure you don’t develop any latent deficiencies in important nutrients in your diet.
How we ranked
We had a few key points of differentiation that we used to sort and rank our candidate products:
Formulated specifically for men: We weren’t interested in generic formulations that aren’t tailored for the specific nutritional needs of men, so they didn’t make the list.
Hits nutritional needs for basic vitamins and minerals: After compiling the range of options on the market for multivitamins for men, we took a look at the contents. We dropped anything that didn’t meet baseline requirements for the basic ingredients, like vitamins B, C, and E.
Ingredients for androgen support: After taking care of the basics, we then started to look at the most important ingredients for men. First on our list was zinc, a critical mineral for maintaining high levels of testosterone.
Magnesium, too, has been demonstrated to be essential for boosting testosterone levels in older men, so we also checked for high levels of magnesium. We also looked at other androgen-enhancing herbal extracts like saw palmetto and lycopene.
Effective delivery mechanism: Supplements that delivered their ingredients in a soluble form, like zinc gluconate or amino acid chelates, scored much higher than supplements that used something like zinc oxide instead.
That’s because soluble forms of ingredients, particularly minerals like zinc or magnesium, are absorbed more effectively.
Antioxidants for combating inflammation: we favored products that boosted antioxidant levels by including sources of greens like spirulina or antioxidant-rich fruit extracts like blackcurrant or lycopene.
These antioxidants might help protect you from heart disease, one of the most common chronic health problems among men.
Lack of binders, fillers, and artificial ingredients: lastly, we penalized products that used artificial coloring agents or a lot of binders, in keeping with our overall philosophy of purity and simplicity.
FAQ
Q: What is the best multivitamin for men over 50?
A: As men get older, it’s increasingly important to maintain high levels of testosterone to maintain physical, mental, and sexual health. For men over 50, we like Ritual for Men 50+ thanks to its targeted formulation that delivers omega-3 fatty acids plus zinc and magnesium for androgen support.
Q: What kind of multivitamin should men who undereat take?
A: Men who are under eating (for example, as part of a weight loss program) are at a risk for mild to moderate nutritional deficiencies, particularly if they are aggressively cutting out certain foods.
A multivitamin for men that provides adequate level of all the basic vitamins and minerals, such as Dr. Tobias Multivitamin or Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men, is a great option for men who are trying to cut weight.
These well-rounded supplements keep up your levels of soluble nutrients and trace minerals, which can run low when you are chronically undereating to drop weight.
Q: What’s a good multivitamin for men who work out?
A: Men who work out want something targeted for performance. From our list of the best multivitamins for men, the ones that stand out for men looking to get fit are Optimum Nutrition Opti-Men and Animal Pak by Universal Nutrition.
That’s because they are packed with additional performance-enhancing compounds like carnitine, saw palmetto, and pine bark extract. Opti-Men is our recommended pick for athletes, thanks to its inclusion of androgen-supporting herbal extracts.
Q: What multivitamins are safe for heart patients?
A: When you’ve got a specific medical condition like heart disease, you might need a more targeted nutritional intervention than you’ll get with just a multivitamin.
Brands like Ritual for Men 50+ include ingredients like microalgae-derived DHA to improve cardiovascular health, and are a better pick than a generic multivitamin.
As with any supplementation strategy for chronic disease, you should work with your cardiologist to develop a nutritional plan that works for you.
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Recap
Multivitamins for men can help patch up a low-quality diet, which is especially useful for men who are very busy, train very hard, or who travel a lot and don’t have much time to eat multiple high-quality meals every day.
In addition to the basics, men’s multivitamins can provide trace minerals like zinc and magnesium that support higher levels of testosterone and better sexual function.
While not all of the research agrees, men who are 75 or older, or who have particularly low-quality diets, may be able to prevent cognitive decline with a multivitamin supplement too.
For BodyNutrition’s #1 multivitamin for men recommendation, click here.