Find your daily collagen target based on what you’re trying to support — skin, joints, or muscle. Doses below come from human RCTs, not marketing copy. Math, not medical advice.
What are you supplementing for?
Daily target
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Why no body-weight scaling?
Most collagen RCTs use flat doses (e.g., 2.5 g, 10 g, 15 g per day) regardless of subject body weight. That’s because the relevant variable is the absolute amount of bioactive di- and tri-peptides absorbed — not a per-kg pharmacokinetic profile like a drug. So a 60 kg person and a 90 kg person typically take the same amount.
If you’d like to lean above the RCT mean (especially for muscle work), the upper bound is generally well tolerated up to about 30 g/day in the published literature, but there’s no proven extra benefit beyond the trial-tested doses.
Hydrolyzed collagen vs type II vs Verisol
- Hydrolyzed (collagen peptides): low-molecular-weight peptides (3-10 kDa) for general absorption. Used in most skin, joint, and muscle RCTs. Brands: Vital Proteins, Sports Research, Thorne, Pure Encapsulations.
- Verisol: a specific bioactive collagen peptide blend (Gelita) studied at 2.5 g/day for skin elasticity (Proksch et al., 2014, PMID 24401291). Most “skin collagen” products with clinical claims use Verisol.
- Type II (undenatured / UC-II): a smaller-dose 40 mg/day standardized type II collagen (Lonza) used for joint trials. Different mechanism (oral tolerance / immune modulation), much smaller dose.
