Take 500 mg of urolithin A once a day. That is the lowest dose human trials reported changing mitochondrial gene expression in skeletal muscle, and it is the dose range that improved muscle strength over four months. Doubling it to 1,000 mg did not buy a better result. In the US, 500 mg a day runs about $6.67.
That answer is short, but the reasoning behind it is where most buying decisions go wrong. Urolithin A is one of the few longevity compounds with three published human trials to read, and those trials tested a ladder of doses. Reading the ladder honestly — including the endpoints the trials missed — is what tells you which bottle to buy.
The Dose Ladder: What 250, 500 and 1,000 mg Actually Did
Three human trials tested urolithin A at defined daily doses. Here is what each rung of the ladder was shown to move, and what it did not.
| Daily dose | Where it was tested | What moved | What did not move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 mg | Andreux 2019, 4 weeks, healthy sedentary older adults | Reached the bloodstream — urolithin A was bioavailable at every dose tested | The paper reports the skeletal-muscle mitochondrial gene signature at 500 mg and 1,000 mg, not at 250 mg |
| 500 mg | Andreux 2019 (4 weeks); Singh 2022, 4 months, middle-aged adults | Plasma acylcarnitines and skeletal-muscle mitochondrial gene expression; about a 12% gain in muscle strength; peak oxygen consumption; 6-minute walk distance | Peak power output — which was Singh 2022's primary endpoint |
| 1,000 mg | Andreux 2019; Singh 2022; Liu 2022, 4 months, 66 adults aged 65–90 | Muscle endurance — contractions to fatigue in a hand and a leg muscle at 2 months; acylcarnitines, ceramides and C-reactive protein down at 4 months | Maximal ATP production in muscle, and 6-minute walk distance against placebo, in Liu 2022 |
The pattern is a ladder that flattens. The step from 250 mg to 500 mg is where the muscle-level biology starts showing up in the published results. The step from 500 mg to 1,000 mg does not repeat that jump.
Why 500 mg Is the Floor, Not a Compromise
500 mg is the smallest dose with published human evidence of a change inside muscle tissue, so it is a floor rather than a budget option.
The first-in-human trial gave healthy, sedentary older adults urolithin A as a single dose or daily for four weeks. Its primary outcome was safety, and it reported a favourable safety profile. The compound reached the bloodstream at every dose tested — including 250 mg. But the secondary finding that matters for dosing is narrower: four weeks at 500 mg and 1,000 mg modulated plasma acylcarnitines and skeletal-muscle mitochondrial gene expression. Getting a compound into your blood and getting it to change something in your muscle are two different bars, and 250 mg is reported clearing only the first.
That is the practical reason a US buyer should treat 500 mg as the entry point rather than a starting dose to work up from.
Why 1,000 mg Is Not the Stronger Option
Doubling the dose to 1,000 mg has not been shown to double, or even reliably improve, the outcome.
Singh 2022 ran both 500 mg and 1,000 mg for four months in middle-aged adults and reported roughly a 12% improvement in muscle strength with urolithin A. The published result credits urolithin A intake rather than crediting the higher dose specifically — the paper does not present 1,000 mg as beating 500 mg on strength.
Liu 2022 is the sharper test. It gave 1,000 mg a day for four months to 66 adults aged 65 to 90, the group with the most mitochondrial decline to reverse and therefore the most room to show a benefit. At the top of the ladder, in the population most likely to respond, maximal ATP production in muscle did not separate from placebo. Muscle endurance did improve, and several blood markers came down. The extra 500 mg bought endurance and biomarker changes, not a step-change in muscle energy production.
Paying twice as much for a dose that has not outperformed the lower one is the most common expensive mistake in this category.
Both Landmark Trials Missed Their Primary Endpoint
This is the part most urolithin A pages leave out, and you should weigh it before spending $199.99.
A trial names its primary endpoint in advance — the one result it is honestly testing. Everything else is secondary and carries less weight, because the more outcomes you measure, the easier it is for one to look good by chance.
Singh 2022 named peak power output as its primary endpoint and did not find a significant improvement in it. The 12% strength gain, the aerobic endurance result and the 6-minute walk improvement are the secondary outcomes. Liu 2022 named 6-minute walk distance and maximal ATP production as its primary endpoints; the walk distance rose more in the urolithin A group (about 61 metres versus about 43 metres) but the ATP measure did not separate from placebo.
So the honest summary is this: urolithin A has consistent, repeated signals on muscle strength, muscle endurance and mitochondrial blood markers across separate research groups, and it has not yet cleared the specific pre-named endpoints those two trials set for themselves. That is a real compound with a real evidence gap, not a miracle and not a dud. If a page tells you only the 12% and never mentions the primary endpoint, it is selling rather than informing.
✅ 500 mg once daily is the dose to buy — the lowest one with published muscle-level effects
✅ 1,000 mg has not outperformed 500 mg on muscle strength in the published results
✅ Both four-month trials missed their pre-named primary endpoint — read the secondary results with that in mind
Pomegranate Juice Is Not a Dose
You cannot set a urolithin A dose through food, because your gut bacteria decide whether you make any at all.
Pomegranates, walnuts and berries contain ellagitannins, not urolithin A. Gut microbes convert one into the other, and Tomás-Barberán 2014 found people sort into three consistent urolithin production patterns across separate intervention trials, independent of which food the ellagitannins came from. Your conversion pattern is a property of your microbiome, not of your grocery list — which is why our companion article on why most Americans cannot make urolithin A from food treats the converter question as the starting point for the whole category.
A glass of juice therefore delivers an unknown dose somewhere between "a useful amount" and "none." A capsule of the finished metabolite delivers 500 mg whatever your microbiome does. That is the entire argument for supplementing it directly, and it is a dosing argument rather than a marketing one.
When and How to Take 500 mg
One capsule daily, with or without food. Timing has not been shown to matter the way the dose does.
The trials dosed daily for four weeks to four months rather than around workouts or meals, so there is no evidence-based case for splitting the dose or timing it to training. AgeAura Pure Urolithin A delivers the full 500 mg in a single vegan HPMC capsule, so there is no 250 mg version of this SKU to step up from. For a US buyer that makes the ladder a two-option choice: take the researched dose, or don't.
Expect to judge it on a trial-length timeline. Singh 2022 and Liu 2022 both ran four months, and Liu 2022 measured its muscle-endurance improvement at the two-month check. A four-week verdict is too early to mean anything.
Consistency Beats Dose Escalation
A missed week costs you more than the difference between 500 mg and 1,000 mg.
Every result described above came from uninterrupted daily dosing across months. Nothing in the published record suggests that taking 1,000 mg some days and none on others gets you to the same place as 500 mg every day. If you find yourself considering the higher dose because you keep forgetting the lower one, the fix is a pill organiser, not a bigger capsule.
See the full 500 mg label panel →
What a 500 mg Daily Dose Costs in the US
At $199.99 for 30 capsules, a 500 mg daily dose costs $6.67 a day. The multi-bottle tiers change that number more than anything else on the page.
| What you buy | US price | Days covered at 500 mg/day | Cost per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bottle (30 capsules) | $199.99 | 30 | $6.67 |
| Buy 2, get 1 free (3 bottles) | $399.99 | 90 | $4.44 |
| Buy 3, get 2 free (5 bottles) | $599.99 | 150 | $4.00 |
| Buy 6, get 6 free (12 bottles) | $1,199.99 | 360 | $3.33 |
Two things follow from that table. First, urolithin A is a genuinely expensive daily habit at any tier — worth saying plainly, because the honest comparison is against other things you could do with $100 to $200 a month, not against a cheaper capsule. Second, the trials that support the dose ran four months, and a single bottle covers one month, so a one-bottle purchase cannot tell you what the research measured.
Wellness Nest also lists a 90-day money-back guarantee that does not require returning the bottle. Check the current terms on the product page before ordering, since store policies change.
How to Read a Urolithin A Label in the US
Under FDA rules a supplement carries structure/function claims, not disease claims, so the label will never tell you what a product treats. Read the panel instead of the front of the bottle.
- Milligrams of urolithin A per capsule, stated on its own. If the number appears only inside a proprietary blend, you cannot tell whether you are getting 500 mg or 50 mg.
- Capsules per bottle against the price. That is the only way to reach a real cost-per-day figure. AgeAura publishes 30 capsules at 500 mg each, which is where the $6.67 above comes from.
- Whether one capsule is one dose. A "500 mg serving" spread across three capsules is a different daily habit from one capsule.
- The other ingredients. This bottle lists an HPMC vegetable capsule, microcrystalline cellulose, vegetable magnesium stearate and silicon dioxide.
Browse the rest of the longevity line in the AgeAura collection or see what is moving in best sellers — both are browse suggestions rather than a claim that this SKU sits in either one. If you are also weighing an NAD+ product, how much NMN per day walks the same trial-dose ladder for AgeAura Pure NMN + TMG.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many mg of urolithin A should I take per day?
500 mg once daily. That is the lowest dose reported to change skeletal-muscle mitochondrial gene expression in the first-in-human trial, and it sits inside the range that improved muscle strength over four months in middle-aged adults. Lower doses reached the bloodstream but were not reported moving the muscle-level markers.
Is 1,000 mg of urolithin A better than 500 mg?
The published evidence does not show that it is. Singh 2022 tested both doses for four months and credited the roughly 12% strength improvement to urolithin A rather than to the higher dose. Liu 2022 gave 1,000 mg to adults aged 65 to 90 and found no separation from placebo on maximal muscle ATP production. You are paying double for a result that has not been shown to be better.
Should I take urolithin A with food?
It can be taken with or without food. The human trials dosed once daily over weeks and months without specifying a meal or a training window, so there is no evidence base for timing it to anything in particular. Pick a moment you will repeat every day — that consistency is what the trials actually tested.
How long does 500 mg a day take to work?
Plan on months, not weeks. Liu 2022 recorded its muscle-endurance improvement at the two-month assessment, and both four-month trials used that full window for their main measures. A four-week trial of your own is shorter than any study that produced these results.
Is 500 mg of urolithin A a day safe?
The first-in-human trial named safety as its primary outcome and reported a favourable safety profile over four weeks, and the later trials recorded adverse events across four months of daily dosing. That is a reassuring but limited record — these are trials of a few dozen to a few hundred people, not decades of population data. If you are pregnant or nursing, under 18, taking prescription medication or managing a health condition, talk to your clinician before starting.
How much does urolithin A cost per day in the US?
At $199.99 for a 30-capsule bottle, 500 mg a day costs $6.67. Multi-bottle tiers bring that down: $399.99 for three bottles is $4.44 a day, $599.99 for five bottles is $4.00 a day, and $1,199.99 for twelve bottles is $3.33 a day. Ordering ships nationwide within the United States from wellnessnest.co; check the product page for current pricing and delivery terms.
AgeAura Pure Urolithin A
500 mg of urolithin A in one daily vegan capsule — the researched dose, stated on the panel rather than hidden in a blend.
Shop AgeAura Pure Urolithin A →About the Author
Dr. Marcus Hale — Dr. Marcus Hale is the resident health researcher behind Wellness Nest's editorial team, translating peer-reviewed sports-nutrition and longevity research into practical daily guidance for US readers.
