Proprietary Blends: What Your Supplement Label Is Hiding
What Is a Proprietary Blend?
A proprietary blend is a list of ingredients on a supplement label that shows the total weight of the blend but hides individual ingredient amounts. Instead of seeing "200mg Caffeine, 100mg L-Theanine," you see "Energy Blend 450mg: Caffeine, L-Theanine, Green Tea Extract."
The problem? You have no idea how much of each ingredient you're actually getting. It could be 400mg of caffeine and 25mg of each filler — or the reverse. The label won't tell you.
Why Brands Use Proprietary Blends
Brands typically give two reasons:
"Protecting our formula" — The claim is that competitors would copy their formula. In practice, most supplement formulas aren't unique enough to warrant secrecy.
Cost savings — This is the real reason. By hiding amounts, brands can use tiny doses of expensive ingredients (like branded extracts) while loading up on cheap fillers like maltodextrin.
Why It Matters for You
You can't verify effective dosing. If a study says 3g of creatine monohydrate improves performance, but the label hides the creatine dose inside a "Performance Blend," you have no way to know if you're getting an effective amount.
You can't compare products. Two pre-workouts might list the same ingredients but contain wildly different amounts. Without transparency, comparison is impossible.
Safety concerns. High-stimulant blends that hide caffeine amounts can lead to overconsumption, especially when stacking supplements.
How Common Are Proprietary Blends?
A 2019 analysis published in Nutrients (Jagim et al.) found that a majority of multi-ingredient pre-workout supplements used proprietary blends. This practice remains widespread across the supplement industry, particularly in pre-workouts, fat burners, and nootropic stacks.
How SupplementScore Handles Proprietary Blends
Our algorithm penalizes proprietary blends in the Dosage Transparency category (worth 35 out of 100 points). Products that fully disclose every ingredient amount score significantly higher than those hiding behind blends.
This is why you'll often see budget brands outscoring premium ones on our platform — transparency matters more than marketing.
How to Spot a Proprietary Blend
Look for these signs on any supplement label:
The words "Proprietary Blend", "Complex," or "Matrix" followed by a single total weight
Individual ingredients listed without amounts next to them
A long list of ingredients under one combined dosage
The Bottom Line
If a brand won't tell you how much of each ingredient is in the bottle, that's a red flag. Transparent labels are a baseline quality signal — and it's exactly what SupplementScore measures.
Search any supplement on thesupplementratings.com to see how it scores on dosage transparency.