Onnit Alpha Brain packs most of its ingredients into three proprietary blends — Flow Blend (650mg), Focus Blend (240mg) and Fuel Blend (60mg). Four things carry a printed amount: vitamin B6 (10mg) and Cat's Claw extract (350mg) as standalone lines, plus, inside the Focus Blend, Bacopa extract at 100mg and a clubmoss extract standardised to 1% huperzine A, 400mcg. Proco's Cognitive Support puts eight of its ten actives into a single 255mg proprietary blend — GABA, L-tyrosine, caffeine, bacopa monnieri, phosphatidylserine, alpha GPC, L-theanine, huperzine A — none carrying an individual figure, with niacin and vitamin B6 dosed individually outside it. So on the narrow question of how much a reader can work out from the panel, Alpha Brain's label discloses more than ours does.
Evidence reviewed: September 2026.
What Alpha Brain's label actually shows
Alpha Brain ships 2 capsules per serving — 15 servings in the 30-count bottle, 45 in the 90-count, which lists at $79.95. Classic proprietary-blend format, with one important exception: two blend ingredients carry parenthetical amounts.
| Ingredient / blend | Disclosed amount |
|---|---|
| Vitamin B6 | 10 mg (standalone, disclosed) |
| Cat's Claw Extract (AC-11®) | 350 mg (standalone, disclosed) |
| Onnit Flow Blend — L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, Oat Straw extract, Phosphatidylserine | 650 mg total (no individual splits) |
| Onnit Focus Blend — Alpha GPC; Bacopa extract (100 mg); Toothed Clubmoss extract [1% Huperzine A, 400 mcg] | 240 mg total, two of three amounts printed |
| Onnit Fuel Blend — L-Leucine, Pterostilbene | 60 mg total (no individual splits) |
Why three small blends beat one big one
There is a technical reason Alpha Brain's structure gives a reader more to work with, and it applies to any blend label. Under 21 CFR 101.36 a proprietary blend must show its total weight and list its ingredients in descending order of predominance by weight. So the total is a hard ceiling for every ingredient inside it, and the ordering gives you the ranking. The narrower the blend, the tighter the ceiling: a four-ingredient 650mg blend leaves less room to hide than an eight-ingredient one, and a three-ingredient blend with two amounts printed hides almost nothing.
Run the arithmetic on the Focus Blend. Total 240mg. Bacopa printed at 100mg. The clubmoss extract is standardised to 1% huperzine A delivering 400mcg, putting that extract at roughly 40mg. By subtraction, the Alpha GPC is at most about 100mg. Onnit did not print that number, but the panel lets you derive it — which is more than ours allows for anything.
Where Cognitive Support stands today, honestly
Cognitive Support ships 1 capsule a day, 30 per bottle, at $29.90 — one 255mg blend covering 8 of its 10 actives, plus niacin and vitamin B6 dosed individually outside it:
Cognitive Support — 10 active ingredients (8 in a 255mg proprietary blend, 2 dosed individually):
Niacin (as niacinamide) · Vitamin B6 (as pyridoxine HCl) · GABA · L-Tyrosine · Caffeine · Bacopa monnieri Extract (whole herb) · Phosphatidylserine 20% (sunflower) · Alpha GPC Powder · L-Theanine · Huperzine A 1% (whole herb)
None of the eight blended actives carries a stated amount, and the ceiling arithmetic is unkind. Eight ingredients share 255mg — an average of roughly 32mg each, with 255mg the maximum for any single one. Bacopa's cognitive trials have overwhelmingly used around 300mg a day over twelve weeks or more, as we set out in our bacopa write-up. Alpha Brain's printed 100mg is itself below that. Our entire blend is below it. We asked our manufacturer for the breakdown in September 2026; it is not available to publish, and there is no timeline we can honestly offer.
A blend total sets a ceiling, and a narrow blend sets a tight one. Alpha Brain's three blends — with two amounts printed inside one of them — leave a reader better informed than our single 255mg line does.
The seven shared ingredients
Seven ingredients appear on both labels. Here is exactly where each one sits:
| Shared ingredient | Alpha Brain | Cognitive Support |
|---|---|---|
| L-Tyrosine | Inside Flow Blend (650mg), undisclosed | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| L-Theanine | Inside Flow Blend, undisclosed | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| Phosphatidylserine | Inside Flow Blend, undisclosed | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| Alpha GPC | Inside Focus Blend; derivable at roughly 100mg or less | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| Bacopa monnieri | 100 mg printed inside Focus Blend | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| Huperzine A | 400 mcg printed inside Focus Blend | Inside the 255mg blend, undisclosed |
| Vitamin B6 | Standalone, 10 mg | Standalone, 5 mg |
Dose versus trial dose, where a dose exists
Disclosure is only half the exercise. A printed number lets you ask the second question: is it enough? Alpha Brain's bacopa at 100mg is roughly a third of the usual trial regimen. Its huperzine A at 400mcg sits at or above the 50–200mcg twice-daily range typical of the literature — worth knowing in both directions, and the mechanism is in our huperzine A piece. Its derivable ~100mg of alpha GPC is below the several-hundred-milligram doses the cognitive literature uses. Phosphatidylserine trials have generally run 100–300mg a day, which the 650mg Flow Blend can accommodate but does not confirm — see what that evidence shows. For Cognitive Support we cannot run this exercise at all, which is the real cost of the blend.
Where Alpha Brain has something we don't
One more point in Onnit's favour, and it is not a labelling one. Alpha Brain has a randomised controlled trial on the finished product: Solomon and colleagues, in Human Psychopharmacology, 2016, randomised 63 healthy adults to Alpha Brain or placebo for six weeks after a two-week placebo run-in.1 Delayed verbal recall and one executive-function measure improved significantly versus placebo (p<0.05). The limitations belong in the same breath: 63 participants is small, Onnit funded it, both groups improved between time points — consistent with practice effects — and the other cognitive domains did not separate. One modest industry-funded trial is not a body of evidence. But it exists, and Cognitive Support has no equivalent. On finished-product trial evidence, we have none and they have one.
Cost, capsules and where the formulas diverge
Alpha Brain's 90-count bottle at $79.95 gives 45 two-capsule servings — about $1.78 a day, against $1.00 for Cognitive Support. We are cheaper and lighter on capsule count, which is a genuine advantage and the least important one here, because price per day tells you nothing about milligrams of anything studied. Alpha Brain also uses a vegetarian hydroxypropyl methylcellulose capsule where ours is gelatin, so theirs suits a vegetarian or vegan reader and ours does not — a point we had to correct in our vegan and gluten-free breakdown.
On formulation: Alpha Brain includes three things we don't — Cat's Claw (AC-11, 350mg), oat straw extract, and the L-leucine/pterostilbene pairing. We include three they don't: niacin, GABA and caffeine. Alpha Brain markets itself as caffeine-free, so that is a formulation difference rather than a labelling one, and how much caffeine is in Cognitive Support is the honest version of that question.
Recap: what's disclosed, side by side
| Onnit Alpha Brain | Proco Cognitive Support | |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients named | 11 | 10 |
| Proprietary blend? | Yes — 3 blends (650mg / 240mg / 60mg) | Yes — 1 blend, 255mg (8 of 10 ingredients) |
| Amounts printed on the panel | 4 (B6, Cat's Claw, bacopa, huperzine A) | 2 (niacin, B6) |
| Trial on the finished product | Yes — one small industry-funded RCT | None |
| Contains caffeine? | No | Yes (undisclosed amount) |
| Capsule material | Vegetarian (HPMC) | Gelatin |
| Cost per day / capsules per serving | ≈$1.78 / 2 | $1.00 / 1 |
The honest read: both labels lean on proprietary blends, and Alpha Brain's are structured so a reader can extract more from them. Onnit prints four amounts to our two, uses three narrow blends instead of one wide one, and has a small trial on the finished product. We are cheaper, simpler to take, and fully disclosed on one other product — Sleep Formula, where all seven doses are printed. On the thing we say we care most about, we lose this comparison. Why blends work this way is in How to Read a Supplement Label; the case for buying separately is in Cognitive Support vs. stacking your own.
References
- Solomon TM, Leech J, Murphy C, DeBros G, Budson A, Solomon PR. "A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel group, efficacy study of alpha BRAIN® administered orally." Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, 2016. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Onnit Alpha BRAIN® Supplement Facts panel, cross-checked against two independent retailer listings in September 2026: Vitacost and The Vitamin Shoppe. vitacost.com
This isn't medical advice — talk to your doctor before starting any new supplement.
This article is for informational purposes only and has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
See Cognitive Support's full ingredient list at procohq.com.
Related reading: Inside Cognitive Support: What's Actually in the Blend and Proco vs. a Generic "Brain Blend".