Hims vs Roman

The modern telehealth industry offers consumers a fast, discreet way to access healthcare services online.1 You can see primary care doctors for minor concerns, get prescriptions for a wide range of medications, seek mental health treatment, and more.

Among telehealth providers, Hims and Roman are two of the most popular out there. They offer many of the same products and services, though there are some critical areas where they don’t overlap. Prices can vary wildly between the companies and in ways that aren’t immediately clear.

That’s why we made this guide. We've broken down the various offerings from each company, comparing them extensively based on quality, cost, and customer service, among other things. Your best choice in 2024 depends on what health goals you’re trying to address. If you don't have time for our in-depth analysis, here's a quick summary of our recommendations.

At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each and every product or service we review, including the various offerings from Hims and Roman. In fact, these two companies are among those we’ve spent the most time with, following their development through the years and trying new products and services as they’ve come out. We’ve ordered everything from delay spray and ED medications to hair loss treatments and testosterone tests from these companies, spending well over 500 hours navigating their sites and speaking to customer service reps.

On top of that bevy of experience, our team has read through more than 200 scholarly articles published in reputable scientific journals pertaining to the health and wellness concerns Hims and Roman aim to treat. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.

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.

Hims and Roman are telehealth companies, each offering a wide array of products and services aimed at treating various conditions. Both are geared toward men’s health, but they've each also expanded to include goods and services that cater to both sexes and a much broader stretch of the gender spectrum. In Hims’ case, that’s a sister site called Hers. For Roman, it’s the parent company Ro and some of its subsidiaries.

Hims and Roman offer many of the same treatments, including over-the-counter products and prescription medications. However, there are also some key offerings from each that the other doesn’t have. We’ll break these down a bit more extensively below, and we’ll also get into the differences among the products and services both companies offer, but here’s a quick chart for comparison:

Comparing company reputations

Hims shares its Better Business Bureau profile with Hers, where the combined companies are accredited and have an A+ rating. Their combined customer rating sits at 3.93 out of 5 stars after over 2,500 reviews. Most of the complaints regard issues with shipment timing for subscriptions or treatments not quite working for customers.

Hims has its own page on Trustpilot, where the company has a 3.5-star rating after over 3,000 reviews. Negative reviews mirror what we see on the BBB site.

Roman is likewise accredited on the Better Business Bureau website with an A+ rating, but the company has far fewer reviews. Those reviews result in a rating of 1.31 out of 5 stars, though that's from just over 30 reviews, so the sample size is small. Issues are similar to those seen with Hims, with customers' subscriptions renewing at unanticipated intervals. There are also some complaints about pharmacy connections, which we don't see on the Hims pages.

On Trustpilot, Roman fares much better, with a 4-star rating out of 5 after over 650 reviews. Pharmacy issues and medication availability crop up in these negative reviews, as well, especially around weight loss medications.

Who are Hims and Roman for?

Hims and Roman are viable resources for men and women seeking relief from a wide range of health problems, many of which are mentioned in the chart above. If you’re concerned about any of those issues, these sites would be a great place to start getting information on the issues themselves and their possible treatments.

Who might want to look elsewhere?

Anyone assigned female at birth might prefer Hers to Hims for certain treatments. But those two should cover most bases for many people. Roman has effectively been rolled into the Ro.co website, so almost anyone can seek appropriate treatments there.

However, these companies have both done away with their primary care offerings, so if you need that basic level of care that isn’t specific to certain specialties like urology or dermatology, you’ll need to look elsewhere. You also may want to consider an alternative if you have good insurance and want to use it wherever you can for comparable treatments.

Hims has a couple of noteworthy offerings that Roman does not, the most important of which is likely the company’s mental health services. Roman used to offer mental health care, as well, but the company has since phased it out. Currently, Hims has treatment for:

• Anxiety (including performance anxiety)
• Depression
• Sleep problems

Psychiatric services consist of little more than a lengthy questionnaire, after which a doctor will contact you with a suggestion for one of the medications Hims offers or a recommendation that you seek outside assistance.

Hims’ other exclusive offering is less of a treatment and more of an added bonus: sex toys and accessories. In some cases, Hims has teamed up with other manufacturers to sell specialty sex products. In others, it’s invested in the development of its own products.

Hims’ sex toys and accessories include:

• Thrill Ride Prostate Massager
• Standing O Penis Rings
• OMG Ring Vibrator
• Roller Coaster Bullet Vibrator
• Glide Water-Based Lube
• Climax Delay Condoms
• LELO Hex Ultra Thin Condoms

The list of products and services Roman has that Hims doesn’t is a bit longer. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Winner: Roman

We've spent an inordinate amount of time on these two companies' websites. Between product research, price comparisons, deep FAQ and blog dives, and countless hours spent interacting with customer service, we feel our perspective on the quality of these two sites is well-grounded.

There are two experiences worth considering when evaluating these websites. First, there’s the front-end experience, where you see product listings, make purchases, etc. Then, there’s the back-end experience, where you interact with your consulting physicians, manage subscriptions, and even look into new products.

Front-end experience

The Hims’ site is the more polished of the two, but beneath that sheen, Hims has a deficit of information compared to Roman. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the two companies’ pricing disclosures.

Whenever we write about Hims, we end up spending a couple of hours on the phone or chatting with company representatives, trying to pry loose what are sometimes unnecessarily obscure prices. You’ll see price information for certain products and services, but others — especially prescriptions — often say things like “starting at $X,” when that rate is only available with annual billing of a bulk purchase. The true costs of Hims prescription offerings often don’t appear until you go through all of the hassle of a consultation and back-and-forth messaging and land on a checkout page.

Conversely, Roman is dedicated to transparent pricing and has a specific page on its website where those prices are listed. There is still some info missing here, like available quantities for certain products, and the page is occasionally a tad out-of-date compared to Roman's catalog. Still, it remains a massive difference between the two companies' approaches and a definite win for Roman.

Back-end experience

On the back end, things are a little more comparable. Both companies utilize messaging platforms to talk with consulting doctors. Both also have easy-to-understand layouts for subscriptions and order history. We’ve found that canceling subscriptions from either has been relatively easy.

But the experience of being logged into your account is a bit different for either company. With Roman, you can still access information on all of the company’s products and services from a dedicated part of your account page. It makes continuing to shop a bit more of a seamless experience.

When you’re logged into Hims, you have to use the company’s normal site pages to look into new products. That normally wouldn’t be too big of a hassle, but if you’ve ever had a subscription to a Hims product and canceled or paused it, Hims will classify the potential renewal of that product as an “action item.” Then, whenever you navigate to any new page while logged in, a pop-up screen will appear urging you to tend to your various action items before you can do anything on the page. It’s easy enough to close this pop-up, but it gets extremely annoying, as well.

Winner: Hims

In almost every case where products and services overlap between these two companies, Hims offers better prices. Here’s just a quick sampling of average prices:

As you can see, Roman has a slight edge in oral finasteride, but that’s more of an exception than the rule. In most cases, you’ll find better prices on products and services through Hims. However, Hims charges a $5 processing fee on all orders, so if you’re comparing products you might only buy once or twice a year (like delay wipes when you’re not very active sexually), those prices may even out when you consider Hims’ fee. For the most part, though, Hims still wins out, even with that added charge.

Hims and Roman have more products in kind than not. Both companies focus on hair loss and men’s sexual health, along with popular treatments for other common issues, like hair loss.

Here’s a quick list of what you can get from both companies:

• Erectile dysfunction treatments
• Hair loss treatments
• Premature ejaculation treatments
• Weight loss drugs
• Custom skincare products
• Herpes management
• Eyelash elongation serum

Below, we’ll take a closer look at each of these products and services, declaring winners that we recommend you use when seeking treatment.

Winner: Hims

Erectile dysfunction is an incredibly common problem among men, with some studies suggesting up to 50% of all men will experience some form of it in their lifetime.7 The good news is that such a large market in need of a treatment results in more choice and lower prices.

Hims and Roman both offer several treatments for erectile dysfunction, but Hims has a catalog that is more extensive and less expensive than Roman’s. Both have branded and generic versions of the PDE-5 inhibitors Viagra and Cialis, but Hims also carries an “authorized generic” of Viagra.8

Authorized generics are a fractional step closer to branded drugs because they’re made either by the original company itself (in this case, Pfizer) or by a company given specific rights to produce the generics by the original manufacturer. All three drugs — branded, authorized generic, and generic — are therapeutically equivalent, but sometimes they’re available in different doses.

Hims also has two additional drug options: Branded Stendra and generic vardenafil. Both are functionally the same as Viagra in that they have similar onsets and efficacy periods. But Stendra and vardenafil are slightly newer drugs than sildenafil (the active ingredient in Viagra), and they’re both better at accurately targeting PDE-5 for inhibition without as much collateral influence on other phosphodiesterase enzymes like PDE-6 or PDE-11.9 Impacts on those other enzymes are responsible for some of Viagra’s side effects.

Across the board, Hims has better prices for its ED medications wherever both companies offer the same generic drug at the same dose. However, if you are determined to go with a brand-name drug, Roman’s prices are slightly lower. Here’s a comparison of popular drugs in average doses.

Compounded ED medications from Hims and Roman

Both Hims and Roman have set out to provide oral ED medications that you don’t swallow like tablets. Instead, you can chew on them or hold them under your tongue and let them dissolve. These medications are designed to compete with similar offerings from BlueChew, a company that’s been making such ED drugs for several years.

Hims and Roman offer slightly different drug and dose combinations in their compounded meds. From Hims, you can get sildenafil, tadalafil, or vardenafil alone or in any combination with one another, though dose options are limited. The drugs are flavored chewables.

Roman only offers one combined ED medication at this time: a combination of 55mg sildenafil and 22mg tadalafil that’s delivered in a sublingual tablet. While 55mg is a normal dose for sildenafil, 22mg is somewhat high for tadalafil; 5mg and 10mg are typically where people start with tadalafil.10 And sublingual delivery (under the tongue) tends to increase plasma concentrations of a given drug faster than a traditional oral route, so the effects of these doses may be even more pronounced.

Ultimately, Hims has the better system for combined ED meds. The doses are more flexible, and the prices are lower. However, both companies’ offerings are relatively new, and their compounded medications may evolve with time.

Winner: Hims

While there isn't a hard and fast clinical definition of premature ejaculation, some studies and groups of urologists have loosely defined it as sexual intercourse lasting less than one minute or being sufficiently short to impact the man emotionally or psychologically or to put a strain on the relationship.11 That definition starts out specific and gets vague very quickly.

But even among men who last longer than that, there is a desire to last even longer still. That’s largely because of the orgasm gap, a noteworthy difference in the climax rate between men and women in heterosexual relationships.12 That gap results from the fact that more than 85% of men surveyed reported having an orgasm in a recent sexual encounter compared to just 62% of women.

So, even if you last long enough to provide a pleasurable experience, you may still want to try a PE intervention.

For many years, the only real option for treating premature ejaculation was with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).13 These are essentially antidepressants that have performed well in studies looking at them as PE treatments. But if you don't have clinically diagnosable PE, you may not want to add a prescription medication to your life.

For that reason, you can get desensitizing products from either Hims or Roman. These climax delay products apply a small amount of topical anesthetic (either lidocaine or benzocaine) to the penis.14 The solutions are just strong enough to mildly desensitize the penis enough to stave off orgasm while still allowing you to enjoy the sensations of penetrative sex.

Roman only has one non-prescription delay product: Roman Swipes. These are available on a monthly or quarterly plan. Hims offers two non-prescription delay products: Clockstopper Wipes and Climax Delay Spray.

Roman’s lowest possible cost per wipe is $2.75, whereas Hims’ is $2.71. That’s ultimately a small difference, but both companies’ wipes use benzocaine, which has a slightly higher incidence of allergic reaction than lidocaine. Hims Climax Delay Spray uses lidocaine, and our testers have found lidocaine to be more effective at desensitizing the penis than benzocaine.

Prescription treatments for PE

Hims and Roman also both carry prescription treatments for PE, including SSRIs and the same ED medications (PDE-5 inhibitors) we discussed in the section above this one. Recent studies have shown that some ED meds can also help with premature ejaculation.15

However, both SSRIs and PDE-5 inhibitors have certain side effect risks that make non-prescription treatment a better place to start. If you still want to go the prescription route, the prices for each company’s ED meds are the same as above, and both companies offer SSRI prescriptions starting at $24/month. Roman only has one SSRI in its catalog, though, and Hims has several, making Hims a better choice if you experience side effects with one and want to try another.

Winner: Hims

Like ED and PE, hair loss is an incredibly common concern.16 Unlike those two sexual problems, hair loss can affect men and women alike. And while delivery mechanisms have evolved over the years, two drugs remain your best bet at fighting it: minoxidil (generic for Rogaine) and finasteride (generic for Propecia).

Traditional, oral finasteride and topical minoxidil were the tried-and-true combination for most men seeking hair loss treatment.17 But oral finasteride is not suitable for use by women due to its hormonal activity.18 It’s also associated with some unpleasant sexual side effects in about 2-3% of users.19 More recently, oral minoxidil has gained traction as a viable alternative, and some studies show equal if not superior efficacy to finasteride.20

Topical finasteride has also come onto the scene, but it still suffers from topical minoxidil’s downfall: an annoying regimen.21 Having to find just the right time of day to apply these sprays (not too close to showering or bedtime) can be a pain.

Hims edges out Roman in this category despite Roman having better prices for a few products. That’s because Hims’ prices aren’t wildly different from Roman’s, but Hims’ catalog of available products is much wider.

Here’s how product availability and pricing work out.

As you can see, Hims often has favorable prices compared to Roman, and it definitely has a wider variety of treatments. Roman remains the best place to get a low price for oral minoxidil, though Hims oral minoxidil comes in a higher dose, it’s delivered as a chewable rather than a tablet, and it contains additional biotin and vitamins to support hair health.

While Hims is our overall winner here, it might be useful for us to break down some treatment-specific recommendations depending on your situation and needs.

• For a traditional, reliable approach: Oral finasteride and topical minoxidil from Roman
• For avoiding oral finasteride: Chewable minoxidil from Hims
• For an effective non-Rx approach: Topical minoxidil and biotin gummies from Hims
• For topical finasteride: Hims

Roman has slightly better prices on the most traditional modality, but the wider variety of options and still comparable prices make Hims our pick above Roman for hair loss.

Winner: Roman

Hims and Roman both offer prescription skincare treatments that are tailored to individual customers’ needs. Hims has several additional non-prescription skincare products you can buy regardless of whether you have a prescription for or subscription to the company’s custom Rx creams.

Roman only has one non-prescription product in addition to its custom cream, but it also offers treatments for things like eczema and excessive sweating. Roman also has a larger pool of ingredients to pull from in making its prescription cream, and it has better prices than Hims on comparable skincare products.

Here’s a quick side-by-side of the companies’ custom prescription skincare offerings.

There is definitely a little overlap of these available ingredients, but the ingredients Roman uses that Hims does not are more useful than the ingredients Hims uses that Roman does not. For example, ceramides significantly increase skin hydration while working to enhance your skin’s barrier function.22 And hyaluronic acid can help increase hydration and aid in the skin's absorption and use of other cosmetic ingredients.23

Hims’ larger variety of non-prescription products gives you access to some of the ingredients missing from its prescription formulas, like hyaluronic acid in Hims Goodnight Wrinkle Cream. But adding extra Hims products to your order to make up for gaps in its custom skincare gets expensive fast.

What’s more, the Hims pricing issue is a bit misleading. It’s true that the Hims site advertises custom creams “from $29,” but it would be foolish to think that price would stay there once the formula was concocted. In our testing experience, the average Hims prescription cream cost $58.

Roman’s eczema and hyperhidrosis products

In addition to cosmetic products like anti-aging and anti-acne creams, Roman offers two creams designed to deal with a pair of persistent skin issues: eczema and hyperhidrosis. Hims does not offer products for either need.

Eczema is fundamentally an immune disorder. Treating it topically can be a perfectly acceptable symptom cure, but treatment at a systemic level — through diet, medication, or both — may be necessary to find more relief.24 That said, Roman’s 0.1% triamcinolone cream acts as an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive corticosteroid.25 It costs $15/month for a single bottle, which is on par with the prices we’ve seen from other providers.

Roman also sells prescription Drysol, an antiperspirant designed to help people dealing with hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating). Like the triamcinolone cream, Roman’s Drysol costs about what you’d pay elsewhere for it, though we have seen a handful of providers offering it for less.

When you combine these additional skincare products with superior prices and ingredients, it’s clear why Roman emerges as the winner in skincare.

Winner: Roman

Roman wins out over Hims in the weight loss category for one simple reason. At this time, Roman offers GLP-1 receptor agonists, and Hims does not. These are the injectable drugs that were developed as a diabetes treatment but have had resounding success for people dealing with overweight and obesity, as well.26 27 They’re popular, effective, and relatively safe — especially against the landscape of prescription and non-prescription alternatives.28

Hims has weight loss drugs that we’ll discuss below, but they work a bit differently than GLP-1 medications and may not be as effective for some people (though they are likely less expensive, depending on dosing).

How GLP-1 receptor agonists work

When you eat something, your body produces various glucagon-like peptides (GLPs), which perform various digestive functions. GLP-1’s presence starts a chain reaction involving adenosine triphosphate that results in an increase in insulin production from the pancreas.29 That’s what makes these such effective diabetes medications. They get your body to make more insulin, as opposed to introducing exogenous insulin into your body.

That increase in insulin breaks more of your food down to glycogen, which gets stored in the liver, instead of fat, which gets stored, well, everywhere.30 GLP-1 receptor agonists also cause digestion to slow down, which teaches you to eat less with each meal.31 This puts many GLP-1 medication users in a caloric deficit, allowing them to lose weight.

GLP-1 receptor agonists vs other weight loss drugs

Since Hims doesn’t offer GLP-1 medications, it’s worth understanding a little bit about its alternatives. Hims’ weight loss drugs have been popularly used for weight loss for longer than GLP-1 receptor agonists. They’ve had a fair degree of success in trials and real-world scenarios, but it seems as though they aren’t quite as potent as these newer drugs.

While GLP-1 medications directly influence insulin production, these other weight loss drugs, like metformin or topiramate, work on different targets, resulting in somewhat similar appetite-suppressing effects.36 37

Hims also offers naltrexone and bupropion. The former is a drug designed to help curb addictive behavior, and it may positively influence people who tend to binge eat.32 The latter is an antidepressant with at least one major study showing weight loss as a direct effect.33 However, the most pronounced weight loss in that study came at the 400mg level, which increases the risk of seizure associated with the medicine compared to more common 150mg and 300mg doses used in cases of mild depression.34

What’s different about Hims here is that you might end up with a prescription for more than one of these medications, depending on your unique situation and needs. Hims points out that you may receive a compounded medication that may combine these drugs into a single tablet. Compounded medications aren’t approved by the FDA, but — at least in this case — the individual components in any compounded formula are approved.

Given their popularity and apparent success rate, many people prefer to start a medical weight loss journey with GLP-1 medications. That’s completely understandable and, ultimately, a choice to be made between you and your doctor. The big benefit of these other medications is cost. There are generic forms of each one, which is not yet the case for GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Winner: Roman

Both Hims and Roman offer oral valacyclovir (the generic form of Valtrex) as a treatment for herpes. It’s an effective and widely prescribed medication, but the two companies differ in the doses and treatment plans they offer.35

As you can see, Hims offers a higher episodic dose at 2,000mg, which the company delivers as 12 500mg tablets (one dose is four tablets). That’s enough to cover three outbreaks for a cost of $60.

Roman has two similar plans, with a 6-outbreak 1,000mg plan that also costs $60. If you’re doing the math at home, you’ll see that these prices work out to be identical in terms of total grams of valacyclovir per dollar.

However, anyone who has outbreaks enough to justify a small stockpile of the medicine would do far better to enroll in a quarterly or semiannual subscription from Roman and cancel after the medication arrives. That’s because Roman offers a 1,000mg daily suppressive treatment for as little as $0.80 per 500mg tablet. (Some pharmacies may provide 1,000mg tablets, which you would have to break in half if you only needed a 500mg dose.)

By comparison, Hims’ lowest price per 500mg tablet is $1.10 when you subscribe to the company’s semiannual billing for a 500mg daily suppressive dose.

So, with the costs of per-outbreak subscriptions essentially being equal, and the price per dose being lower from Roman for daily suppressive prescriptions, it’s obvious that Roman is the better place to start for herpes treatment.

With so many different products and services, there aren’t many comparable companies in the telehealth landscape. That said, you can find specific treatments for the things that Roman and Hims aim to treat, some of which offer superior products, better prices, or both.

Let’s take a brief look at some of your other options for specific concerns.