Alternatives to tongkat ali
If you’re comparing tongkat ali with other botanical or even prescription medications for one issue or another, you’ve likely come across a lot of options. To better understand which one might be right for you, it would help to look at the potential benefits of tongkat ali that have the most scientific support and compare the relevant research to studies into alternatives deployed for similar purposes.
Improving testosterone levels with supplements is relatively achievable, and there are numerous individual ingredients you can try, as well as complexes of ingredients specifically marketed as testosterone boosters. Among those complexes, Innerbody’s Testosterone Support is outstanding, and it includes a generous dose of tongkat ali. Visit our thorough guide on testosterone-boosting supplements for more information.
Alternative single-ingredient supplements include ashwagandha, fenugreek, vitamin D, and zinc.
Suppose you're experiencing significant symptoms related to hypogonadism and have been tested to reveal clinically low testosterone. In that case, you may be better off reaching for a prescription intervention, like traditional TRT, or another medication that can boost testosterone, like clomiphene or enclomiphene.
Lots of things can affect a man’s erectile performance and libido, including low testosterone, so there may be some overlap in the remedies you seek here. But if you’re specifically concerned about ED, you might want to consider prescription interventions. The generic versions of drugs like Viagra and Cialis have been available at low prices for years, and they’re accessible through numerous online companies, eliminating the potential embarrassment of an in-person doctor’s visit to discuss your concern. And the active ingredients — sildenafil and tadalafil — are among the most widely researched medicines on Earth.
For men who are new to such medications, we recommend BlueChew, where you can get a free trial of certain plans and save $20 on others with the coupon code INNERBODY.
Supplemental approaches to fertility are often marketed toward men in the form of volume pills, which claim, first and foremost, to increase the volume of your ejaculate. Indeed, semen volume is a measure used to help understand a man’s potential fertility issues, and many of the drugs and herbal remedies that can improve your chances at conception will also increase semen volume.
But too many of these supplements offer ingredients that lack research or doses that are lower than what research indicates could be successful. In our thorough analysis of the market, we’ve found Bird & Be’s Powers for Males to be the most potent and most likely effective nonprescription approach to male fertility issues.
Combating stress and anxiety can get complicated fast. Triggers based on years-old experiences, current environmental factors, diet, exercise habits, and other factors can all play into your stress response. So approaching the problem with a supplement isn’t always the silver bullet people want it to be. That said, supplements can be part of a multi-pronged approach to control cortisol levels and help you feel more even.
Ashwagandha is the tongkat ali alternative that’s most similar in its potential efficacy, other possible applications, and placement on the market. We have a more extensive comparison of these two ingredients in a dedicated section above (“Tongkat ali vs. ashwagandha”), but here we’ll say that ashwagandha boasts a little more successful research into its stress-busting potential.
Can tongkat ali treat ED?
Can tongkat ali treat ED?
Tongkat ali can’t “cure” ED, per se, but it can help treat underlying causes of ED, like anxiety or low testosterone.30 5 And eliminating an underlying cause of ED is about as close to a cure as you can get.
Nootropics Depot pricing and returns
Nootropics Depot doesn’t offer subscriptions on either of its tongkat ali supplements, but you can buy a higher-count bottle to save money per dose. Here’s how it works out for each concentration:
Since we’ve come to put a fair amount of stock in eurycomanone concentration, we’d recommend the 10% formulation to anyone with the capital to invest in it. The fact that you get free shipping at the 120-capsule level is rather important here, as Nootropics Depot has the highest shipping costs in our guide. Its lowest rate is $10.20, which is high enough to take the 60-count 10% option from $39.99 to $50.19, for a per-dose price increase from $0.67 up to $0.84.
Unfortunately for anyone who’s unsure tongkat ali will work for them, Nootropics Depot doesn’t offer any kind of money-back guarantee, and it doesn’t accept returns on opened products. That’s in pretty stark contrast to Innerbody and Bulk Supplements, both of which let you try a product for 30 days. We’ve seen some evidence that longjack can have an effect in as little as four weeks, so that 30-day mark may be enough to know whether it works for you.16
Best patented extract
Photo by Innerbody Research
Even in our first round of research review, we noticed the frequency with which Physta was specified as the type of tongkat ali used in numerous studies. This is something that undeniably sets it apart from other tongkat ali supplements, and it should put Physta at the top of the list for anyone who needs to see a brand name in the scientific research before reaching for a given supplement. We’ve been impressed by the research that Physta has been subjected to over the years (26 studies over two decades), though we aren’t wholly convinced that its standardization process puts it head and shoulders above similar products.
That standardization provides a 1.5% eurycomanone concentration, 0.5% less concentrated than Nootropics Depot’s 2% option and 8.5% less than the 10% option. Much of the research into tongkat ali assumes that eurycomanone is the primary driver of its beneficial effects, but Akarali goes a little further in its standardization efforts. It creates a consistent delivery of both eurycomanone and the plant’s other constituent parts, which, according to its website, are glycosaponins (48%), proteins (22%), and polysaccharides (30%).
For those of you with calculators at home, you might notice that 48, 22, 30, and 1.5 add up to 101.5%, so there’s clearly some wiggle room in this formula. We got clarification from Akarali on the issue, and here are the actual numbers:
Akarali deploys its Physta in a few ways. Its capsules are the most straightforward option. They each contain 200mg of Physta, a pretty standard dose compared to what we’ve seen in the research. There’s also a version marketed toward women that contains only 50mg per capsule, but we’ve seen no evidence that women would need a smaller dose than men.
In fact, many of the studies we’ve read that explicitly used Physta administered the same 100-300mg dose to men and women alike. And of the studies that used a 50mg dose, the one that was most successful combined its tongkat ali with 200mg of Labisia pumila, a similar herbal remedy with purported antioxidant properties,18 so we don’t recommend the 50mg women’s dose at this time.19
You can also get the plain tongkat ali powder, an instant coffee infused with tongkat ali, or a fizzy tongkat ali energy drink. The powder’s dose is pretty flexible, but the other two products deliver 70mg and 50mg per dose, respectively.
Photo by Innerbody Research
Longjack coffee is very popular in Southeast Asia, so we ordered some of it for ourselves to try out. Now, in the U.S., instant coffee isn’t well-regarded, at least not since the Starbucks revolution of the 1990s and the Keurig revolution of the late 2000s. But our testers have still had their fair share of instant coffee through the years (including some from Starbucks), and we wanted to see how Akarali’s stacked up. We were pleasantly surprised.
Akarali’s tongkat ali-infused coffee is immediately sweet on the tongue despite not containing any natural or artificial sweeteners or flavorings. That sweetness very quickly gives way to an intensely strong, bitter coffee flavor, but one that’s not unwelcome after the initial sweetness and that more closely resembles the bitterness of Campari or a similar liqueur. The whole thing is pretty well-balanced.
Who is tongkat ali for?
Owing to all of its potential applications, tongkat ali may be suitable for a wide variety of consumers. Perhaps most notably, it makes sense as a supplemental approach to treating various sexual disorders in men, including low testosterone and libido, fertility issues, and poor erectile performance.
It may also be a helpful component of a larger anti-anxiety effort, combined with either other botanicals and supplements or things like talk therapy or meditation.
Akarali pricing and returns
Akarali doesn’t sell single bottles of Physta. A 60-dose two-pack of bottles is the smallest possible order. There are some bundles that can save you a little money, though.
Here’s how the pricing works out for the company’s most recommendable products:
Shipping from Akarali costs $8, and the company doesn't accept returns unless a product arrives damaged or defective. That’s not as generous as some of the other return policies in the space, like Innerbody’s 30-day money-back guarantee.
Ingredients per 600mg Capsule
Who might want to look elsewhere?
The 1-3 months it could take to see results from a potent tongkat ali supplement would likely be too long of a wait for certain individuals. Men with clinically significant hypogonadism who are experiencing immediate symptoms would do better to seek prescription interventions like TRT (after appropriate testing, of course).11
The same thing can be said for those experiencing more significant mental health issues, as tongkat ali may be able to help treat certain kinds of mild stress and irritation, but not more significant issues with anxiety and depression that may require more direct professional interventions.
Research into certain potential tongkat ali benefits is also far too immature to suggest it as a daily supplement for those purposes. For example, individuals predisposed to certain cancers from things like genetics or environment shouldn’t look to tongkat ali as a preventive or a cure. A recent overview of tongkat ali’s potential in common cancers reinforces this perspective.12
Is tongkat ali the same as ginseng?
Is tongkat ali the same as ginseng?
Tongkat ali is sometimes called Malaysian ginseng, but it’s not actually a part of the ginseng family. The respective effects of tongkat ali and ginseng, while purportedly similar in traditional medicine’s anecdotal reporting, are very different within the scientific literature.
How we evaluated tongkat ali supplements
To evaluate tongkat ali supplements, we considered four key criteria that could pit one offering against another and reveal which would perform the best. We chose these criteria based on our understanding of tongkat ali’s pharmacological potential and what we would anticipate to be the needs of the average consumer.
Let’s take a close look at each criterion to see what companies fared the best.
Winner: Nootropics Depot Tongkat Ali Extract 10% Eurycomanone
Tongkat ali (scientific name: Eurycoma longifolia) houses an abundance of bioactive compounds, from quassinoids and alkaloids to terpenes and steroids.1 Among these, quassinoids make up the majority, and one quassinoid in particular — eurycomanone — has been highlighted as a likely driver of tongkat ali’s positive effects.2
A standardized tongkat ali extract will typically contain between 0.8% and 1.5% eurycomanone. This is true of Physta, one of the more well-regarded and widely tested tongkat ali extracts on the market. But Nootropics Depot manipulates its standardization process further, concentrating the eurycomanone content all the way up to 10%.
The result is a product with a smaller overall dose (100mg compared to the typical 200mg Physta dose) that still delivers more eurycomanone.
Winner: Akarali Physta
From a safety perspective, standardization was a must-have in our eyes, as it ensures you’re getting the same amount of tongkat ali’s active components with each dose. We also didn’t want to put too large a dose in the winner’s circle here, as there’s evidence of potential short-term toxicity at high doses.
Specifically, the European Food Safety Authority identified the potential for tongkat ali to induce DNA damage in the gastrointestinal (GI) system.3 The possible severity of that damage and its consequences were undetermined in the report, but it’s worth noting that the damage was only seen in rats consuming a human equivalent of more than 22g of tongkat ali extract. To put it in perspective, you’d have to consume nearly four bottles of 200mg Physta capsules to reach that dose.
Physta also has the advantage of being subjected to multiple human studies in the past 20 years.4 The studies we’ve reviewed showed one incidence of adverse effects that differed from those seen in a placebo group. We still consider the alternative from Nootropics Depot to be safe, especially since its higher concentration is delivered in an overall smaller tongkat ali dose, but the abundance of data on Physta and its well-known risk profile makes it the obvious choice for safety.
Winner: Bulk Supplements Longjack Root Capsules
When we consider a supplement's potential cost, we consider more than just sticker price, with things like shipping costs, money-back guarantees, and more weighing in our decision. Bulk Supplements, whose tongkat ali already boasted the best sticker price, turned out to be the best pick for cost in general.
Here’s a quick cost comparison among our top tongkat ali supplements:
As you can see, you can get your hands on Bulk Supplements’ tongkat ali for less money up front than any other option, and its cost per gram of tongkat ali is lower — by far — than its competitors. The big caveat is that it’s not a standardized extract, so the exact amount of eurycomanone, saponins, and other constituent parts is both unknowable and likely to vary from one dose to the next. Your next-best budget-conscious option, if you want standardization, is Nootropics Depot’s less potent offering, standardized to 2% eurycomanone
One particularly amazing thing to note is that Innerbody’s Testosterone Support actually provides the same amount of tongkat ali per month as Akarali, but it does so both at a lower price and alongside ten other ingredients designed to boost testosterone levels and impart similar effects as tongkat ali. However, Innerbody’s tongkat ali is not a standardized extract.
Winner: Akarali Physta
Several variables can influence our convenience criterion, from the quality of a company’s site design to its customer service. The sites in question here are all similar enough, as is the customer service. And Bulk Supplements and Innerbody are the only companies that will accept returns on opened products, each for 30 days.
So, instead of focusing on these parameters, we looked at the convenience behind actually taking the tongkat ali in these supplements. Innerbody only offers its supplement as a capsule, Nootropics Depot offers a choice between capsules and tablets for its 10% eurycomanone extract, and Bulk Supplements offers tongkat ali as a capsule or a loose powder.
But Akarali delivers its Physta in several unusual ways, all of which make it the most convenient option for anyone interested in consuming their tongkat ali in a novel form. As with Bulk Supplements, you can choose between capsules and powder, but you can also get Akarali Physta as part of a fizzy energy drink or as part of an instant coffee. Our testers tried the coffee for themselves, and they were pleasantly surprised by the sweetness that the tongkat ali seemed to impart on an otherwise bitter (but not unpleasantly bitter) instant coffee.
Tongkat ali — also known as longjack or Malaysian ginseng — is a Southeast Asian plant traditionally used for its antimalarial and aphrodisiac properties.1 It’s a tall plant, resembling a palm tree but with shorter, more abundant leaves along longer branches.
When we talk about tongkat ali here, we’re discussing it as a supplement, not as the plant Eurycoma longifolia. And as a supplement, tongkat ali may offer many of the benefits for which it has been used in traditional medicine for centuries.
You’ll most often see tongkat ali sold in capsule form, with each capsule containing a powdered extract made from the plant’s roots, leaves, or both (roots are most common). Occasionally, you’ll find powdered extract available on its own (no capsules) or pressed into tablets. Some companies even make it into energy drinks or instant coffees.
Photo by Innerbody Research
Whether you’re searching for a natural remedy to enhance sexual performance, raise testosterone levels, or reduce stress, you may have heard about tongkat ali, also known as longjack. There’s certainly some clinical evidence to support the idea that this botanical ingredient could make a difference.1
But you can get tongkat ali/longjack from an endless parade of manufacturers out there, some of whom claim to use special patented extracts that are more potent or consistent than others. We wanted to cut through all the noise, look at the science, try these supplements ourselves, and let you know which ones might be worth your time and effort.
If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick look at what we found — what’s best for you really depends on your budget and goals:
