185 product categories studied · 7 AI assistants tracked · 1,366,316 brand recommendations analyzed
Which supplement brands do AI assistants actually recommend? We put the same supplement shelves to 7 AI assistants, hundreds of times each, and rank the brands they name.
is all the five giants of the drugstore aisle win across all AI recommendations. Natural-channel and practitioner brands lead the AI shelf instead. The AI shelf is not the store shelf.
the five most recommended brands, NOW Foods, Thorne, Pure Encapsulations, Life Extension and Nutricost, take 22% between them · Nature Made, at #6, is the only giant in the top ten · 1,366,316 AI recommendations this edition
A shelf is one product category (like magnesium glycinate or prenatal multivitamin). This edition measures 185 shelves.
product categories where all 7 AI assistants agree on the same #1 brand. On the other 177, the leader depends on which assistant you ask.
On average only 2.5 brands per category make the top ten on all 7 assistants at once. On 20 of the 185 categories, none does.Of the 9,857 brand names the assistants recommended, 7 in 10 never pass 1% visibility on a single shelf. Being named now and then is not being recommended.
1,333 brand names reach a top ten somewhere; 8,524 never doShare of all brand recommendations that went to just 25 brands. For now, the AI shelf is winner-take-most.
a typical AI answer names 4 to 5 brands, where Google's first page shows ten linksshelves where all 7 assistants name the same brand in at least 4 of 5 answers. On those shelves the choice is already made.
Nordic Naturals on Omega-3 · Culturelle on Probiotics · Optimum Nutrition on Protein Powdershelves for a goal (sleep, weight loss, libido, detox) where all 7 assistants name the same #1, against 8 of 145 single-ingredient shelves. Finished formulas are still fighting; single ingredients are settled.
most contested: Appetite Suppressants, Detox & Cleanse, Libido (47 to 48 different brands in their top tens)shelves are led by a specialist, a brand sold in five categories or fewer. The other way in is a broad catalog: 24 brands are named on more than 100 shelves.
Viviscal on Hair Growth, 99% of answers · Lmnt on Electrolyte, 93% of answers · Ddrops on Infant Vitamin D Drops, 93% of answersanswers open with Thorne. NOW Foods is named in more answers than any other brand, 48%, but when an assistant leads with one name it is Thorne twice as often.
named first: Thorne 15% · NOW Foods 7% · Nature Made 4%answers mention third-party testing. NSF is named in 28% of answers and USP in 19%. A talk-to-your-doctor line appears in 1 in 5 answers, and on Claude, 7 in 10.
read in 175,671 answers; price or value language appears in 70%of the brands in Copilot's top tens appear in no other assistant's top ten for the same shelf. Every assistant keeps some picks of its own: Perplexity 25%, Claude 18%, ChatGPT 14%, AI Overviews 14%, Gemini 13%, AI Mode 13%.
same #1 brand: AI Overviews and AI Mode on 57% of shelves, Copilot and Perplexity on 17%The brand each assistant names most often, and the brand it puts first on the most shelves.
| Assistant | Named in most answers | #1 on most shelves |
|---|---|---|
 ChatGPT | NOW Foods 63% of answers | Thorne #1 on 39 shelves |
 Gemini | NOW Foods 48% of answers | Thorne #1 on 26 shelves |
 AI Overviews | NOW Foods 43% of answers | Thorne #1 on 22 shelves |
| AI Mode | Thorne 46% of answers | Thorne #1 on 24 shelves |
 Copilot | NOW Foods 44% of answers | NOW Foods #1 on 26 shelves |
 Perplexity | NOW Foods 44% of answers | Thorne #1 on 24 shelves |
 Claude | NOW Foods 49% of answers | Thorne #1 on 30 shelves |
Editorial sites carry 27% of the assistants' citations, retailers 21%, affiliate review sites 19%, brands' own sites 18%. Each assistant reads its own mix.
| Assistant | Where its citations come from |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | mostly brands' own sites, 27% of its citations |
| Gemini | mostly editorial, 33% of its citations |
| AI Overviews | mostly editorial, 30% of its citations |
| AI Mode | mostly retailers, 32% of its citations |
| Copilot | mostly retailers, 53% of its citations |
| Perplexity | mostly editorial, 42% of its citations |
| Claude | mostly affiliate review sites, 37% of its citations |
Computed from this edition's full dataset · quoting these numbers? how to cite ↓
Ranked by share of all 1,366,316 brand recommendations this edition, across every shelf and every AI assistant. Breadth and depth both count.
NOW Foods5.8% of all recommendations176/185Spirulina
Thorne5.0% of all recommendations176/185Zinc
Pure Encapsulations4.1% of all recommendations169/185Magnesium Glycinate
Life Extension3.6% of all recommendations167/185Magnesium L-Threonate
Nutricost3.3% of all recommendations175/185L-Glutamine
Nature Made2.4% of all recommendations129/185Postnatal Multivitamin
Garden of Life2.0% of all recommendations154/185Whole Food Multivitamin
Jarrow Formulas1.8% of all recommendations146/185Red Yeast Rice
Doctor's Best1.7% of all recommendations132/185MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane)
Solgar1.6% of all recommendations149/185Copper
Transparent Labs1.5% of all recommendations96/185Pre-Workout
Swanson1.4% of all recommendations156/185Boron
Double Wood Supplements1.4% of all recommendations107/185Spermidine
Sports Research1.3% of all recommendations128/185Vitamin D3 + K2
Nature's Way1.2% of all recommendations137/185St. John's Wort
Ritual1.2% of all recommendations74/185Postnatal Multivitamin
Gaia Herbs1.2% of all recommendations70/185St. John's Wort
Bulksupplements1.2% of all recommendations128/185Glycine
Nordic Naturals1.1% of all recommendations93/185DHA
Nature's Bounty0.9% of all recommendations118/185Hair, Skin & Nails
Solaray0.9% of all recommendations140/185Ginger
Nootropics Depot0.8% of all recommendations75/185Tongkat Ali (Longjack)
Megafood0.8% of all recommendations112/185Whole Food Multivitamin
Momentous0.8% of all recommendations76/185Tongkat Ali (Longjack)
GNC0.7% of all recommendations143/185CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid)these 25 brands hold 47.7% of all recommendations · 9,832 more brand names measured below them · Autumn 2026 edition
Where does your brand land? Every brand on this page, and the thousands that are not, gets the same free check.
Check your brandPick a shelf. See the top five most recommended brands by every AI assistant.
Visibility: of the answers on this shelf that recommended any brand, the share that recommended this brand. The combined view averages the 7 assistants, counting 0 where a brand is absent. Copilot's shares are shown in 20-point bands: its percentages move more than 15 points between identical runs, its ranks are stable. AI Overviews: an answer where Google showed no AI Overview counts as recommending no brand. The podium shows each brand's own product for this shelf where we hold the brand's photo, its logo or initials where we do not; photos and logos belong to their brands and identify the product ranked. Source: The Supplement AI Visibility Index, Autumn 2026 edition, AI Shelf Space.
Don't see your brand?
The free check searches all 9,857 brand names on every shelf, including the ones that did not make it into the Index.
Product categories grouped by aisle, showing the brand that AI assistants most often recommend for each.
Logos are the trademarks of their owners and identify the brand ranked first; a tile with initials stands where no logo is held. Source: The Supplement AI Visibility Index, Autumn 2026 edition, AI Shelf Space.
Not on the leaderboard?
Most brands are not. The free check finds yours among all 9,857 supplement brands the AI assistants recommended in our latest sweep.
The AI assistants, sampled as shoppers use them: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Claude. We sample the shelf with a battery of prompts, hundreds of repetitions per shelf. Every answer is read into the brands it names and their order, then mapped to canonical brand names.
Visibility is the share of the answers recommending any brand that recommend this one, and every figure shows the number of answers behind it. A new edition every quarter. This edition is built on answers collected 3 to 7 September 2026.
Free to quote and link. The address in the citation is this edition's permanent link, so readers find the same numbers after the next edition is published.
Figures and tables may be reproduced with attribution to AI Shelf Space and a link to this page. Journalists: methodology detail and full tables on request, write to us.
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