BlueChew vs Roman: Where should you get ED meds?

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is incredibly common — probably even more so than you think. Up to one-third of all men will experience it at some point in their lives,1 including more than 25% of men under 40.2 But ED is no longer the death sentence for your sex life that it might have been in the 20th century. Today, there are several well-regarded medications that are known to be effective at helping men with ED to get an erection.

Access to those medications has also gotten easier, with online companies offering a private and convenient way to get a prescription medication shipped to your door. BlueChew and Roman are two such companies that deliver low-cost generic versions of drugs like Viagra and Cialis.

But what are the important differences between these two companies? Our team has been covering their activities for years, and we’ve put together this guide to help you choose between the two.

For those in a hurry, right now we feel the majority of men torn between the two will do better with BlueChew. However, other companies exist that we sometimes rate more highly than either BlueChew or Roman, and we’ll touch on them throughout this guide to help you take the smartest next steps.

Whichever ED drug you choose, you'll pay less for it through BlueChew. Many of Roman's non-ED offerings, such as some of its hair-loss drugs, are among the best-priced in its sector, but the company needs to compete more on the cost of ED treatments. The same can be said for variety: BlueChew once again outperforms Roman, with a wider variety of monotherapies and combination treatments. If Roman has any variety edge, it’s that it provides ED medications in traditional pill forms, which BlueChew does not.

All that said, competitors Hims and Rocket Rx undercut the prices and variety offerings of both BlueChew and Roman at almost every turn.

Here’s a quick comparison:

As you can see, BlueChew’s doses are consistently less expensive than Roman’s, and this is true even at similar strengths. Prices get even more competitive from top competitors, with Hims and Rocket Rx both offering similar treatments, often for less.

We pitted BlueChew and Roman against one another head-to-head in several key categories we’ve found are most important among men seeking ED medications. Specifically, we looked at cost, available medications, convenience, and safety. Roman offers treatments and services for many other health concerns, while BlueChew focuses specifically on ED treatments. This analysis focuses on comparing the two companies on how they help you treat ED.

Let’s see how the two companies stood up in each criterion.

Cost

Winner: BlueChew

Sometimes, when we’re calculating potential costs for a consumer, we have to go pretty deep into our comparisons before a winner emerges. This was not one of those times. BlueChew’s medications are less expensive per dose than those offered by Roman — and this is true of every medication at every dosage in any quantity the companies offer. That doesn’t mean BlueChew has the best prices on the market, but they’re consistently lower than Roman’s.

Frankly, we can’t find a justification for this cost difference. Even compared to other telehealth companies that also offer these meds in tablet form (not chewables like BlueChew), Roman is more expensive.

It’s also worth noting that neither of these companies accepts insurance for their ED medications, so you won’t be able to use any pharmacy benefits to offset higher costs where they occur.

Available meds

Winner: BlueChew

Roman is a little more competitive when you start comparing medication lists, including available doses, but it loses that edge a bit for lack of variety, even with a relatively original compounded option.

Here’s a simplified breakdown:

Roman has a few things going for it here, like branded Cialis and Viagra, which BlueChew lacks. But those branded meds are obscenely expensive compared to their generic counterparts, and they’re therapeutically equivalent, so there’s next to no reason to opt for them.

It’s also true that Roman offers a compounded sublingual tablet, which BlueChew previously did not. But BlueChew has caught up in that arena, surpassing Roman’s offering by roughly matching it dose-wise with a lower price and then adding two additional variants to round out its multi-therapy catalog.

Specifically between BlueChew Max to Ro Sparks, the former is likely a better fit for more men, simply because its doses are a little more tolerable. Sparks delivers a sublingual tablet with a combination of 55mg of sildenafil and 22mg of tadalafil. That’s an average sildenafil dose but a rather large tadalafil dose. Combined, it’s likely more than many men would need, and side effect risks could become more pronounced at higher doses (it’s also one of Roman’s most expensive ED medications).3 BlueChew’s alternative delivers 45mg of sildenafil and 18mg of tadalafil. That’s still on the high side for tadalafil, but the smaller doses of both meds should make the combination less risky and, thus, suitable for more men.

Convenience

Winner: BlueChew

In terms of acquiring a prescription and having the medication shipped to you, both BlueChew and Roman deliver about the same experience. Where the companies ultimately differ is in how you take the medicines themselves.

With BlueChew, its medications are chewable and individually wrapped, so you can take them without water and carry one or two in your pocket with ease. Its combination therapies also give you the option to let the tablet dissolve under your tongue for a faster onset of action. Roman mostly offers more traditional tablets, which come in typical prescription bottles. If you wanted to bring one or two out with you to a bar or a club, you’d have to find something to carry them in.

Roman has one ED product delivered in individually wrapped doses, but the product itself is less convenient than BlueChew's. Roman's Spark combines sildenafil and tadalafil compounded into a sublingual tablet. To take it, you put it under your tongue and let it dissolve. Theoretically, this can get the medication into your bloodstream more quickly by passing through oral membranes rather than being digested.16 The issue is that it takes about ten minutes for the tablets to dissolve fully, which means you have to hold the tablet somewhat uncomfortably under your tongue for that long, presumably during foreplay. That would prevent you from being able to kiss or even really speak until the tablet dissolved. BlueChew’s few dissolvable tablets dissolve much faster and taste better.

Safety

Winner: Roman

While there are certain risks associated with PDE5 inhibitors like sildenafil and tadalafil, there isn't much to distinguish one company’s safety profile from the other.4 Their catalogs are essentially too similar. Some Roman ED medications are available at lower doses than the same meds from BlueChew, and since the best dose of any medication is the lowest effective dose, you may encounter fewer side effects if you find success at a dose below what BlueChew offers. That’s ultimately what won this category for Roman.

But it was a close call. Roman’s Sparks tablet only comes in one dosage right now, and it seems likely to be higher than what many men would need. BlueChew’s comparable Max tablets are nearly identical, but they have slightly lower doses, marginally increasing the safety profile of a product in the same riskier category.

Among competitors, Rocket Rx has a much more flexible combination treatment that offers three doses for a combination of sildenafil and tadalafil, including one that’s a much safer starting point for more men.

Both companies have medical support available if you encounter any side effects that are mild enough not to require urgent care or an emergency room visit.

Both BlueChew and Roman offer medications called PDE5 inhibitors.5 This is the class of medications that includes Viagra and Cialis. To understand how they work, it helps to know a bit about the mechanics of an erection and the common physiological symptoms of ED.6

When you get aroused, your body releases cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), which relaxes the smooth muscle tissue in the penis and allows it to engorge with blood. That added blood expands the penis, resulting in an erection.

But what if your erection didn’t go away after climax? That would certainly have posed a problem for our ancestors trying to outrun bears. So, humans developed an off-switch called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5).

PDE5 is an enzyme that causes the breakdown of cGMP, and as your body runs low on cGMP, those muscles in the penis constrict, blood flow reduces, and your erection goes away. With many ED cases, there’s either too little cGMP produced upon arousal or PDE5 is too abundant or being released too early (before climax). PDE5 inhibitors prevent the enzymatic activity of PDE5, allowing cGMP to continue building up and doing its job: maintaining relaxed smooth muscles and the blood flow needed for a healthy erection.7

This is why the common misconceptions that Viagra will actively cause an erection or result in hours-long erections are incorrect.8 Viagra and other PDE5 inhibitors allow you to respond to arousal with an erection and to keep that erection long enough to enjoy penetrative sex to climax. They don’t magically make you hard out of nowhere. After climax, your body’s PDE5 production picks up dramatically, typically with more intensity than PDE5 inhibitors are designed to counteract. That way, you won’t have an erection for hours after intercourse (if you do, this is a reason to call your doctor).

Winner: BlueChew

Sildenafil is the active ingredient in Viagra, and it’s therapeutically identical to Viagra in its generic form. Either one will take around an hour to kick in and should last for 4-6 hours.9 Both have the same side effect profile, with some cardiovascular risks and the potential for visual disturbances and muscle pain. But generic sildenafil is a lot less expensive than branded Viagra

That being said, the costs of sildenafil from BlueChew and Roman are not identical.

The lowest you’ll pay per dose from Roman is $4 for tablets that each contain 25mg. BlueChew’s sildenafil comes in 30mg or 40mg doses. For the 30mg dose, you can pay as little as $2.94. You’d have to opt for BlueChew’s monthly 34-pack to get that low of a price, which is a considerable amount of sexual activity, but you can also pay as little as $3.23 per dose when opting for just 17 chews per month. And even if you’re not as active as that, you can always pause your subscription and resume when you need more.

Here’s how the two companies’ sildenafil offerings compare:

Ultimately, this paints a picture in which you’re bound to pay less and get more from BlueChew than you will from Roman. You do have one higher dose option with Roman, but we wouldn’t suggest anyone start a sildenafil regimen with a dose that high. If you find that 45mg of sildenafil from BlueChew isn’t enough, you can seek out a higher dose from Roman, but you’ll save money and have a more convenient experience by starting with a lower dose from BlueChew.

Winner: BlueChew

You can take tadalafil either as needed or as a daily medication. When taken as needed, it will last in the body for anywhere from 12 36 hours, depending on things like dosage, your metabolism, and whether you took it on an empty stomach.10 Like sildenafil, it can take up to an hour to start working.

When taken daily, tadalafil builds up in your system and is always there if you happen to need it.11 But if you aren’t especially sexually active, taking a daily medication might not be your best course of action.

As with sildenafil, the tadalafil comparison between these two companies undeniably favors BlueChew, which offers chewable tablets that are well-priced for as-needed or daily use. Roman offers tadalafil as an as-needed tablet or as a daily tablet or gummy. The prices for the tablets are among the highest in their class, while the gummy prices are more favorable but still higher than BlueChew or Hims.

Daily tadalafil typically comes in 2.5mg and 5mg doses, but BlueChew’s lowest tadalafil dose is 6mg. If you’ve taken 5mg daily in the past and your doctor thinks 6mg daily would be just as safe and effective, you can get up to 28 as-needed tadalafil tablets per month, but these aren’t meant to be taken daily. Instead, BlueChew’s daily tadalafil, which comes in a tin of 30 monthly chews, is only available at 9mg.

Roman’s daily tadalafil gummy is both more expensive and less strong, limited to a 7mg dose. The cost is only about $0.08 more per dose than BlueChew’s dailies, however. If you’re worried about taking that slightly higher 9mg daily dose from BlueChew, and you don’t mind spending a little extra, Roman could be the better fit here.

Here's a comparison of BlueChew and Roman on the tadalafil front:

Once again, BlueChew has Roman beaten on price. However, men new to tadalafil may prefer to start at a lower dose (2.5mg or 5mg). But you should note that Roman’s 2.5mg doses are only available for daily use, so they don’t come in quantities of fewer than 30. That comes out to $240/month, when you could instead get 28 of the 6mg chews from BlueChew for just $100/month.

Winner: BlueChew

This category might be somewhat unfair to Roman; though the company does offer brand-name Cialis and Viagra alongside sildenafil and tadalafil, the medication in the brand-name offerings is the same as in the generics. (It's all either sildenafil or tadalafil.) Meanwhile, BlueChew does offer a third, unique medication: vardenafil, the active ingredient in Levitra.

Tadalafil lasts in the body for up to 36 hours, but Viagra and sildenafil have a much more focused window of action, lasting around 4-6 hours. Vardenafil does the same.12

Like sildenafil and tadalafil, vardenafil is a PDE5 inhibitor. But as a newer drug than sildenafil, its activity on PDE5 enzymes is more precise. Sildenafil has been known to inhibit other PDE enzymes, including PDEs 6 and 11.13 Inhibiting those enzymes is what leads to certain side effects, like vision disturbances or muscle pain. By better targeting PDE5, vardenafil serves as an alternative for men who’ve tried sildenafil and experienced unwanted side effects.

Vardenafil from BlueChew is available only in an 8mg dose. We’ve seen studies citing success at doses ranging from 5mg to 20mg with only mild, transient adverse effects, so it would seem the 8mg dose would be effective for most men.14 Vardenafil also costs about the same as sildenafil, with the lowest cost per dose being just over $4 and the highest being a little over $6.

Winner: BlueChew

Combination therapies appear to be growing in popularity. The first major player we saw do this was Rugiet, with its custom-compounded lozenges combining sildenafil, tadalafil, and a less-used ED treatment called apomorphine. Then Hims and Roman both launched combination treatments, with Roman’s Sparks combining a middle dose of sildenafil with a high dose of tadalafil in a similar lozenge format.

BlueChew wasn’t far behind, soon launching its own combination treatments, Max and Gold. Max is a direct competitor to Sparks, combining sildenafil and tadalafil in slightly lower doses for a much better price. At this point, there’s no reason to reach for Sparks over Max unless you try Max and find it’s just a little too weak. Only then would the upgrade to Sparks make sense.

One study looking at this sildenafil-tadalafil combination found no increase in adverse effects compared to monotherapy controls, but the combinations included 50mg of sildenafil with only 5mg of tadalafil, far less than the 22mg of the latter found in Roman’s combination or the 18mg in BlueChew Max.15 Given that many studies cap tadalafil at 20mg, putting more tadalafil together with a relatively high dose of sildenafil seems at least a little dangerous.

BlueChew Gold takes things a couple of steps further, starting with a base of sildenafil and tadalafil, then adding the apomorphine seen in Rugiet Ready and a fourth ingredient: oxytocin. At this time, oxytocin’s ED research is mostly limited to animal studies, but it has been shown to help in cases of anxiety and depression.17 Considering that around 40% of ED cases are psychogenic in origin — based in mental rather than physical health — that addition could make a serious difference for many men.18

One really nice thing about BlueChew’s combination offerings is that they’re delivered as a chewable tablet that can also quickly dissolve under your tongue and can theoretically start working faster than drugs absorbed in the gut. Sparks is merely a sublingual tablet — no real option to chew it — and it takes much longer to dissolve than BlueChew.

In nearly every category we’ve covered, BlueChew is clearly the superior pick to Roman for most men. But what about options other than these two providers?

There are a handful of trustworthy telehealth companies that can provide prescriptions for ED medications, and we’ve spent considerable time evaluating each of them. Here’s a quick snapshot, including some options better than either BlueChew or Roman:

In addition to other companies offering PDE5 inhibitors, there are several approaches to treating or working around ED that are worth considering. They include:

• Nutritional supplements
• Penis pumps
• Penis sleeves
• Shockwave therapy

Some of these can be used in conjunction with PDE5 medications, but be sure to speak with your doctor first.

Laid out next to one another, nearly every parameter of these two companies reveals that BlueChew is the superior choice, even if it’s not the best option on the entire market for most men. Between the two, those interested in low-dose daily tadalafil will want to look to Roman, but men in nearly every other situation would do better to start their treatment with BlueChew. And if you’re not committed to one company or the other, there are better options for various medications in terms of both dose flexibility and price, namely Hims and Rocket Rx.