Skip to main content
PlainVitamins

Top 10 Supplement Ingredients by Product Frequency

PlainVitamins ranks supplement ingredients by the number of distinct branded products containing each ingredient in the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database. Updated automatically as new data is processed.

Research period:

Compiled by Plainvitamins Editorial on 2026-07-15

Research question

Among the supplement ingredients catalogued in the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database, which ingredients appear in the largest number of branded supplement products, and what does ingredient ubiquity tell us about formulation conventions, excipient prevalence, and active-ingredient popularity?

Methodology

This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.

Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.

Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.

Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.

Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.

Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.

See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.

Top 10 Supplement Ingredients by Product Frequency

Live data: reflects the current dataset

products
Source NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD) As of 2026

The ranked top 10

Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.

# Ingredient Products containing ingredient Category
1 Cellulose 38,530 fiber
2 Silicon 35,609 mineral
3 Magnesium 27,703 non-nutrient/non-botanical
4 Calories 26,475 other
5 Calcium 25,916 mineral
6 Gelatin 24,357 protein
7 Water 23,872 other
8 Glycerol 19,909 other
9 Vitamin C 19,523 vitamin
10 Carbohydrate 18,301 sugar

Source: National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements, Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), Ingredient Catalogue. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements, Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), Ingredient Catalogue. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is Cellulose, with a value of 38,530 on the Products containing ingredient column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record (38,530) and the 10th-ranked record (18,301) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements, specifically the Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), Ingredient Catalogue. PlainVitamins ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

Ingredient frequency reflects how often a named ingredient appears across distinct supplement products in the DSLD, not how much of the ingredient any product contains. The top of the list is dominated by excipients, cellulose, silicon dioxide, magnesium stearate, that serve as fillers, anti-caking agents, or flow agents rather than nutritional actives. Excipient ubiquity is a feature of tablet and capsule manufacturing rather than a reflection of supplement formulation intent; a multivitamin and a specialty botanical product can both list cellulose without sharing any active-ingredient overlap. Synonymic ingredient names are consolidated into normalized groups (different chemical forms of the same active are grouped under the parent compound), but normalization is not exhaustive, closely-related botanical extracts may appear under distinct group names. Daily-value percentages are not aggregated at the group level, so a high frequency count does not in itself indicate clinical adequacy of intake. The DSLD does not measure third-party purity testing, organic certification, or manufacturing-quality certification (NSF, USP); those quality signals live in separate certification registries.

Secondary cut from the same source

Top 10 mineral ingredients by product frequency, minerals form a discrete category in the DSLD ingredient taxonomy

products
Source NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD) As of 2026

Related data

Sources

Every figure on PlainVitamins is rendered directly from the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on the NIH DSLD, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.