BlueChew vs. Hims

Erectile dysfunction (ED) treatments have come a long way since the arrival of the “little blue pill.” And when Pfizer’s patent on Viagra ran out in 2020, the available versions of generic sildenafil (Viagra’s active ingredient) exploded.1 The same thing happened with Cialis and its active ingredient, tadalafil.

Today, you can get pills to help with your ED from a seemingly endless number of online providers. But two such providers — BlueChew and Hims — are the only reputable companies to offer chewable versions of the drugs. The companies have some stark differences aside from this overt similarity. So, which should you choose?

Our testing team has spent years covering Hims and BlueChew and following developments in their products, services, and pricing. We’ll tell you everything you need to know right here.

BlueChew offers the most comprehensive and effective combination treatment — or multitherapy — on the market, called BlueChew Gold. It’s a chewable tablet that can also dissolve under your tongue for an even faster onset of action. But the company has consolidated what was once a more expansive catalog into this single offering. By comparison, Hims deals in both traditional ED tablets (like you’d get if you went through a urologist or your PCP) and chewable PDE5 inhibitor combinations, as well as some interesting novel therapies designed to treat ED alongside other issues, like premature ejaculation, high blood pressure, and hair loss.

Hims’ chewables come in a regular prescription bottle with a small tin for carrying them, for added convenience, whereas BlueChew provides individually wrapped doses. But Hims’ catalog, especially its traditional tablets, offers a much wider range of treatments and doses overall; that’s better for titration as men calibrate the dose that works for them.

Between the two, Hims is also a better budget pick, with some of the best prices on traditional monotherapies anywhere online, not just compared to BlueChew. However, Hims doesn’t have anything in its catalog that can tackle ED from three different mechanistic angles the way BlueChew Gold can.

For those in a hurry, here is a quick summary of our suggestions — read on for all of the details behind them.

Bottom-line recommendations

• For the strongest multitherapy: BlueChew
• For daily ED medication: Hims
• For traditional monotherapies (sildenafil, tadalafil, etc.): Hims
• For branded or authorized generic Viagra or Cialis: Hims
• For the deepest new customer discount: BlueChew

If your goal is to conquer ED immediately, with less regard for price or experimentation with traditional monotherapies, BlueChew Gold is where you’ll want to start. Its combination of PDE5 inhibitors alongside a dopamine agonist and a mood-regulating hormone allows it to address the three most common contributing factors of ED. Monotherapies, like traditional PDE5 inhibitors, only address blood flow problems, not brain chemistry, libido, or mood. That said, if you want to start with simpler medications that could yield results with less of an investment, or if you want to work your way up to a multitherapy over time, Hims is the better place to start. It has one of the most expansive ED medication catalogs on the market, in terms of both available medications and available doses, most of which start at market-best prices.

At Innerbody Research, we extensively test every product or service we review, including those by Hims and BlueChew. We’re dedicated to performing hands-on testing whenever possible, allowing us to convey aspects of the customer experience such as ordering, shipping logistics, product quality, efficacy, taste, and more.

In addition to our hands-on experience, our testing team has been studying the men’s sexual wellness space for nearly two decades, having read through more than 1,000 scholarly articles related to erectile health and various treatments for erectile issues. We also worked with Dr. Ilija Kelepurovski, urologist and member of our Medical Review Board, to verify the medical accuracy of this content.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

The core evaluation criteria we used to compare BlueChew and Hims are the same that we’d use when evaluating either company on its own or any other company in the ED medication space: available medications, cost, convenience, and, of course, safety.

Dr. Kelepurovski says: "In selecting between platforms like Hims and BlueChew, patients should think beyond cost and convenience. Patients may also want to consider dose flexibility and personal safety concerns. Starting with lower doses may be beneficial to decrease the chance of side effects when starting treatment."

Available medications

Both BlueChew and Hims offer chewable forms of the popular PDE5 inhibitors sildenafil and tadalafil, with BlueChew combining the two in BlueChew Gold alongside two other ingredients to fight ED.2 Hims also offers chewable vardenafil and tablet forms of sildenafil, tadalafil, and Stendra (branded avanafil).

Let’s compare BlueChew Gold’s medication combination and dosing to Hims’ chewable lineup in a pair of handy charts:

As you can see, Hims offers a few more individual and combination options you can use to tailor to your treatment. Quantity options from Hims vary, but you can get BlueChew Gold in packs of 6, 12, 18, or 24 tablets.

If you want the lowest possible starting doses to limit side effect risk, you’ll need to opt for tablets over chews, and Hims is the only one of these two companies to offer them.3 What’s more, Hims’ tablet prices for tadalafil are excellent, making it a safe and economical choice for men new to treatment.

Cost

What you pay for your ED medication will largely come down to whether you want to take a daily medication to be ready for sex at the drop of a hat (tadalafil) or an as-needed medication that might take up to an hour to start working (sildenafil, vardenafil, or a multitherapy).

That said, if you acquire a prescription for daily tadalafil from Hims and only use it as needed, you’ll get the best possible price from either company. This is true of tadalafil in both tablet and chewable form from Hims, though it can be less expensive in tablet form. That’s because Hims offers an annual billing and shipping period for its tadalafil tablets, but not for its tadalafil chews, where semiannual is as extended a period as you can get. For monthly, quarterly, and semiannual billing, Hims tadalafil daily chews and tablets cost the same, at as low as $1.30/dose.

BlueChew Gold isn’t less expensive than Hims at any turn, but there’s an interesting value comparison to make when you consider what’s in Gold compared to certain Hims monotherapies.

Take a look at this chart, for example:

At the highest shipping volume per quarter, you pay only an extra $1.29 per dose to nearly double your sildenafil dose; add tadalafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin; and have the added convenience of a dissolving tablet that can kick in faster.

We include this comparison in a section that normally hews closely to a pure cost consideration to illustrate that the cost-only approach here isn’t apples-to-apples. Whether that increased up-front investment is worth it for you to get a much stronger product is up to you.

Convenience

When we look at convenience, we consider both the convenience of attaining the medications in question and the convenience of taking them. Both Hims and BlueChew have very similar intake procedures, with online questionnaires followed by messaging with a doctor to finalize a prescription. All of it can be done entirely from home.

Both BlueChew and Hims have easy-to-take chews that taste just fine, but the fact that Hims offers both chewable medications and traditional tablets might be a convenience factor for some men if they prefer to take pills, especially since those tablets open up a wider range of available doses than chews from either company.

It’s worth noting that Hims’ chews come in little tins, with all of the chews together, whereas BlueChew provides its medications in individually wrapped packets. This is a small difference on the surface, but if you’re taking your chews out into the world, when traveling or in other circumstances where discretion is important, one or two slim packets will be easier to carry around than a slightly thicker tin.

Here’s a quick comparison of the packet and the tin for thickness:

Those BlueChew packets are no thicker than a single chewable dose, and they’re about the size of a sugar packet. Hims’ tin is about 0.75in thick, more than 3in long, and just over 2in wide. It’s not unfeasible that you could slip the Hims tin into your pocket, but it’s definitely less convenient than the BlueChew alternative.

Safety

The PDE5 inhibitors that either company offers in chewable form are well-researched and regarded as relatively safe.4 Their side effects have been thoroughly documented and exclude a few types of men from taking them, including those with cardiovascular conditions. That’s because PDE5 inhibitors effectively relax the muscles that control the diameter of blood vessels, resulting in wider pathways through which blood can flow. This can lower blood pressure, which may be dangerous for some patients.5 Men with low blood pressure or those on medications that already lower their blood pressure can be at risk for various complications when taking PDE5 inhibitors, especially at higher doses.

Hims has some of these medications in tablet form that come in relatively low doses. And the fact that it offers monotherapies at all, distinct from BlueChew’s multitherapy-focused approach, makes it a theoretically safer option for men new to ED treatment.

As an additional safety note, we were concerned about the Hims tin being too easily accessed by a child or even an unsuspecting adult. But we were pleased to find a kind of built-in child lock that requires you to squeeze one section of it to slide it open. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a big step in a safer direction.

Dr. Kelepurovski’s advice

Here’s a brief summary of the comparison from urologist Dr. Kelepurovski: “If you’re looking for a comprehensive telehealth platform, especially one that goes beyond ED to address skin, hair, or mental health concerns, Hims may be a useful starting point.”

He adds, “As usual, it is always advisable to visit a doctor who will assess your entire medical history before making any treatment decision.”

BlueChew and Hims are male-oriented telehealth companies offering prescription medications to help fight erectile dysfunction (ED). Both allow you to get a prescription online and have medication shipped directly to your home.

Previously, BlueChew was the only one of the two companies to offer its ED medications as chewables, increasing their portability and convenience since you wouldn’t need a glass of water to take them. Hims has caught up in that effort and now offers its own line of chewable ED meds, though there are important differences between it and BlueChew’s.

Hims also offers traditional pill-form ED medications, while BlueChew does not. Hims also has a much wider range of monotherapies and other telehealth offerings, including mental health care, premature ejaculation treatment, and more, which we’ll briefly address after our main comparison of ED medication offerings.

BlueChew and Hims company reputations

Between the two companies, Hims has slightly better ratings than BlueChew on Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website. However, BlueChew’s ratings come from a somewhat smaller number of reviews (under 2,000 across both sites compared to more than 15,000 for Hims). Much of this quantitative difference stems from the wide array of offerings Hims has and the fact that its BBB page is a combined page shared between Hims and its sister site, Hers.

Currently, Hims holds a rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars on BBB and 3 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot. BlueChew’s ratings are currently 1.14 and 3.9 on those sites, respectively. It’s worth noting that BlueChew has only 36 customer reviews on BBB and a little over 2,000 on Trustpilot.

For Hims, most complaints revolve around confusing billing practices, unclear subscription parameters, and some treatments proving unsuccessful for users. For BlueChew, complaints seem to focus on occasional issues with efficacy and subscription cancellation.

Our testing experiences with these companies have been very similar. We’ve had quick, easy consultations with Hims- and BlueChew-affiliated physicians, and our subscriptions were always easy to manage and cancel.

BlueChew and Hims are both outstanding choices for men seeking prescription treatment for ED, especially those who don’t want to risk the potential embarrassment of seeking such medications in person. Both companies offer legitimate prescriptions provided with discretion.

Hims is also a good choice for men seeking treatment for other health concerns, ranging from premature ejaculation and hair loss to skin care and herpes management.

Because BlueChew and Hims both offer chewable versions of prominent PDE5 inhibitors, they also make sense as options for men who’ve tried traditional Viagra or Cialis in the past with mixed results. For men who’ve had issues with the effectiveness of either medication in tablet form, chewable formulations may offer improved absorption, though data on oral mucosal absorption of PDE5 inhibitors is limited. Of course, many people have trouble swallowing pills, which also makes chewable medication an appealing option.

Who might want to look elsewhere?

Because BlueChew and Hims offer prescription medications for ED, men looking to address their ED without medications won’t find much help from either company. And men who’ve tried sildenafil, tadalafil, vardenafil, and avanafil at high doses with no effect may need alternative treatment.

PDE5 inhibitors have some specific risks and contraindications, as well. Certain cardiovascular issues and medications to control blood pressure are generally contraindicated and may compel prescribing physicians to decline the treatment due to safety.5

BlueChew and Hims both treat ED with prescription medications known as PDE5 inhibitors. Before diving into how these medications work, let's briefly review the physiology of an erection.

Your body typically creates both cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) and phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) in regular balance.6 When you get aroused, your body produces extra cGMP, which results in a relaxation of the muscles that control blood vessel constriction, especially in the penis. That increases blood flow to the penis, causing an erection.7

After climax, your body increases its production of PDE5, which returns your cGMP levels to normal. Blood flow decreases, and your erection goes away. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a good thing.

PDE5 inhibitors allow cGMP to accumulate and relax those blood vessels.2 This should work whether you have too much PDE5 or too little cGMP.

However, not all PDE5 inhibitors act exactly the same way. Here’s a quick look at the characteristics of sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil, as an example:8 9 10

Which medication you ultimately choose will come down to a conversation with your doctor, including a consideration for whether you want to take a daily pill and be ready for sex at any time or only consume the medication as needed shortly before anticipated intercourse.

In addition to containing two PDE5 inhibitors (sildenafil and tadalafil), BlueChew Gold contains apomorphine and oxytocin. Apomorphine is a dopamine receptor agonist that can treat ED rooted not in blood flow and physiology but in brain chemistry.19 And oxytocin is a hormone studied for its effects on libido, anxiety, and depression that can potentially treat psychogenic ED related to mental health issues.20

For most men, the ED medications offered by BlueChew and Hims should be safe. That said, there are known side effects and contraindications associated with PDE5 inhibitors. These are generally mild for most users but can be clinically significant in certain populations. Common side effects of PDE5 inhibitors include:4

• Headache
• Back ache
• Muscle pains
• Facial flushing
• Vision disturbances
• Nasal congestion
• Flu-like symptoms
• Dyspepsia

Among these, vision disturbances may be the most concerning at first glance. But while the vision disturbances associated with PDE5 inhibitors include blurred vision, ocular pain, and alterations in light perception, one of the most common disturbances is an added bluish or greenish tinge to vision, which fades as the medicine leaves the body.11

The most significant health risk associated with PDE5 inhibitors comes from the role they play in regulating blood flow. Because these medications cause your blood vessels to relax, they typically lower your blood pressure. There’s some evidence that daily tadalafil may have a small effect in lowering blood pressure, which could benefit men with untreated hypertension.12 But if you don’t have high blood pressure, or you’re already on medication for it, adding a PDE5 inhibitor to the mix can result in a pressure drop that could be dangerous.5 Hence, they are prescription-only, and healthcare providers are responsible for determining suitability.

For better or worse, BlueChew is a multitherapy company. Its flagship product, BlueChew Gold, is the strongest ED medication combination on the market, with high but flexible doses of four ingredients capable of fighting ED from three different angles: physiological, neurochemical, and psychological. Hims has several multitherapies to choose from, too, but none of them offer the strength or variety of treatments that BlueChew packs into Gold.

Of course, many physicians would likely start men off on a monotherapy, but combination therapies have become increasingly popular, especially among men who’ve tried monotherapies with mixed results. And there’s some good evidence that the combination of sildenafil and tadalafil is effective.13 But BlueChew and Hims have taken very different approaches to developing new combination treatments. Here’s a look at the available prescription medications combined in multitherapies from either company:

As you can see, tadalafil forms the bedrock of every combination therapy from either company, as it’s the ED medication with the most research supporting its daily use. Exactly which medicines you combine — and at what doses — is something you should arrive at with your consulting physician, though BlueChew gives you a little more dose flexibility than Hims in this regard.

Hims offers tadalafil alongside either sildenafil or vardenafil at the following doses:

• Tadalafil 11.2mg + sildenafil 45mg
• Tadalafil 8.5mg + vardenafil 8.5mg
• Tadalafil 11.2mg + vardenafil 11.2mg

Meanwhile, BlueChew Gold offers three dosing levels that combine sildenafil and tadalafil alongside apomorphine and oxytocin.

Specifically, here are the available doses for BlueChew Gold:

That added dose flexibility from BlueChew, especially in a more complex formula like BlueChew Gold, is critical.

Dr. Kelepurovski notes, “It is frequently preferable to provide personalized treatment to prevent adverse effects and maximize efficacy.”

In many cases, the further you go out into novel combinations like the ones in which Hims pairs tadalafil alongside completely different drugs to treat completely different issues (like PE or blood pressure), the less research you have to support your journey. That said, Hims is a company with extensive experience in things like hair loss and premature ejaculation treatment, so its physicians are better suited to combine therapies with disparate albeit sometimes related goals.

Between BlueChew and Hims, only Hims offers a suite of traditional monotherapies — standalone products like sildenafil and tadalafil — which boast the lion’s share of dedicated clinical research and are often available at lower prices than multitherapies. Below, we’ll break down the three core PDE5 inhibitors in Hims’ catalog that you can get as individual monotherapies, so you can determine if any sound like a good starting point for you.

Hims tadalafil

Tadalafil is the active ingredient in Cialis. As with Viagra, the Cialis patent expired several years ago, allowing far less expensive generic options to hit the market. Unlike Viagra’s sildenafil, however, it’s harder to make tidy comparisons in price and dose with tadalafil because it’s available as either an as-needed medication like sildenafil or a daily medication.

You can take tadalafil within about 30 minutes of intercourse and expect to be able to achieve an erection with sufficient arousal for 18-36 hours post-dose. But some men prefer to take a smaller dose every day. The longer duration of action that tadalafil offers means that a smaller daily dose can keep you in a ready state for an erection throughout the day.9 Depending on the nature of your sex life, this can be a significant bonus.

Hims offers tadalafil in both tablet and chewable form — as a daily or as-needed medication, depending on your preference. For men who need only a small dose of tadalafil on an as-needed basis, getting a prescription from Hims for daily tadalafil creates one of the best savings opportunities around, where doses can cost as little as $1.07.

Pricing for chewable daily tadalafil at 8.5mg per dose is identical to the chart above, but Hims stops at semiannual billing, without the option for a yearly subscription, limiting your cost per dose to $1.30, rather than $1.07. That’s still lower than just about any competitor, especially considering the significance of the 8.5mg dose and the added convenience of the chewable format.

Hims sildenafil

Sildenafil is the main active ingredient in Viagra. Generic sildenafil is therapeutically equivalent to Viagra, meaning it provides the same efficacy and side effect profile as the branded drug. But generics bring an important advantage when it comes to cost; now that Pfizer’s patent on Viagra has expired, generic versions are available for significantly less money.

As with tadalafil, Hims is the only provider between Hims and BlueChew to offer sildenafil as a monotherapy. That said, its sildenafil prices start much higher than its tadalafil prices, and men comparing a sildenafil monotherapy with BlueChew Gold, which contains sildenafil alongside three other effective ED medications, might prefer to spend a hair more per dose to acquire a much stronger medicine.

What’s more, if you hold up the 80mg Hims sildenafil tablets against BlueChew Gold’s base dose containing 70mg sildenafil, 18mg tadalafil, and effective doses of apomorphine and oxytocin, you can actually save money per dose compared to Hims with a lower up-front investment.

Here’s how that works out:

Hims vardenafil and avanafil

With its active ingredient of sildenafil, Viagra is the oldest PDE5 inhibitor prescribed for ED. Unlike tadalafil, sildenafil is always intended to be used on an as-needed basis. Meanwhile, newer PDE5 medications have emerged in the decades since Viagra was introduced, and these may be a superior option for some men looking for as-needed medication.

When you take a PDE5 inhibitor, it may have collateral effects on other phosphodiesterase enzymes, including PDEs 6 and 11.14 Impacts on the activity of these enzymes are responsible for certain side effects associated with PDE5 inhibitor use, including muscle pains and vision disturbances.

Newer PDE5 inhibitors, like vardenafil and avanafil, are more selective for PDE5 than sildenafil, which may limit side effects such as visual disturbances (due to the inhibition of PDE6) and myalgia (due to the inhibition of PDE11). Nonetheless, side effects can still occur and should be discussed with a physician.15 The reason many men will prefer to opt for sildenafil or tadalafil is that the newer medications aren’t meaningfully more effective but are typically more expensive.

BlueChew Gold does not contain vardenafil, and Hims offers it as an 11.2mg chewable mint for as-needed use.

We should also briefly mention that Hims offers Stendra, the branded form of avanafil, but this is even more expensive thanks to the fact that it’s not yet available as a generic.21 Branded Stendra from Hims costs more than $50 per dose. For that, Stendra offers some advantages over sildenafil that extend beyond more precise PDE5 targeting, including a faster onset of action seen in studies.18

Stendra isn’t the only brand-name ED drug in Hims’ catalog. The company also offers original Viagra and Cialis for men who prefer the brand name. These pills are significantly more expensive than generic alternatives.

Hims also offers a middle ground here with a version of sildenafil called an authorized generic. Essentially, when a drug’s patent runs out, anybody can make it. But the companies that owned the patent can still create the generic versions themselves or contract out to other pharmaceutical companies to create those generics using the original company’s recipe.

To be clear, brand-name, generic, and authorized generic drugs are therapeutically identical, as mandated by the FDA. Sometimes, inactive ingredients will differ, which won’t create a difference in efficacy but may create a difference in side effects in men who have an allergy or other sensitivity to a certain inactive ingredient. These men might prefer to stick with a brand-name drug, especially if they’ve had unexpected reactions to generics after having success with brand-name equivalents.

We recommend sticking with regular generics for anyone starting out on their ED journey. They’re cost-effective and virtually identical to the original medication. That said, sildenafil is also sold as a blood pressure medication (brand name: Revatio), and its generic form is either less expensive or more readily available than the generic form of Viagra, as we tend to see it more often on telehealth platforms.

You can tell the difference between the two generics by looking at the doses. Generic sildenafil based on Viagra uses dose increments of 25mg, whereas generics based on Revatio use 20mg intervals.

BlueChew uses neither increment, as its medications are custom-compounded at specialized compounding pharmacies, as are the chewable medications from Hims.

Here’s how costs and doses for brand-name and authorized generic Viagra compare from Hims. Each is available in quantities of 6, 10, or 16 pills per month:

As you can see, brand-name Viagra is much pricier than generic alternatives, and authorized generics are around the same cost. There are some differences between the lowest and highest dose costs we’ve listed, but those are mainly due to differences in strength. Your intake physician will help you determine which is appropriate based on your medical history.

One of the biggest differences between BlueChew and Hims is that BlueChew focuses solely on providing ED medications, whereas Hims offers a slew of telehealth services. On the one hand, Hims’ diverse offering may provide convenience for men seeking to address more than just ED. On the other hand, BlueChew’s singular focus on ED may make them a better choice for men with that one goal in mind.

Here’s a quick summary to give you a sense of what Hims offers in addition to ED treatment:

We alluded earlier to some of Hims’ chief competitors, and one of those — Roman — also offers ED medications. That makes it a viable alternative to both BlueChew and Hims, at least until you start comparing prices. At every turn, Roman has higher prices. It also has just one multitherapy formula in its catalog, which contains 55mg of sildenafil and 22mg of tadalafil. This is an even more rigid approach than the multitherapies from BlueChew or Hims, making it a less suitable place to start for most men.

The strongest competitor against BlueChew and Hims is Rocket Rx, which offers better sildenafil prices and tadalafil prices that rival the best deals you can get from Hims. And it does this without requiring the long billing periods and high up-front costs you see with Hims’ best deals.

In addition to Rocket Rx and Roman, there are a few other noteworthy alternatives:

• Rugiet: This company combines sildenafil, tadalafil, and apomorphine into sublingual lozenges (you let them dissolve under your tongue rather than chew them). Its products are significantly more expensive than BlueChew or Hims at this time.
• Promescent: The original purveyor of an oil-aqueous lidocaine spray for premature ejaculation has recently joined the ranks of ED medication providers with reasonable prices on tablets, but no chewable medications. Sildenafil tablets start at $6/dose, which isn’t great, but 5mg tadalafil tablets start at just $2/dose.
• Keeps: Hims’ chief competitor in the hair loss space, Keeps recently launched several new ED medications, including a dissolvable combination of tadalafil, vardenafil, and apomorphine. However, its dosing is on the low side, and it’s inflexible, with only one dosage to choose from.

While some of these companies may offer viable medications at competitive rates, none of them compare to Hims or BlueChew in terms of price or diversity of chewable offerings.

In our final analysis, it’s clear to us that BlueChew offers the strongest possible ED treatment on the market. It’s also clear that Hims may be a superior choice for men who are wholly new to ED medications. It has a greater variety of offerings, including both monotherapies and multitherapies, the former of which are available at significantly low prices. If those monotherapies falter, or you just want to start out by throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, BlueChew may be the better resource.

Either way, both companies offer convenient, effective options for managing ED.