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The comparison

Supar® compared to every major biological age test, with citations.

We respect the science behind the methylation field. Some of those tests are remarkable research tools. But the consumer market has blurred the line between research-grade and clinical-grade, between statistical scores and clinically validated measurements. This is the honest comparison, with the citations to back it up.

Section 01 - What we are comparing

The five categories of biological age test.

Most products marketed as "biological age" or "longevity" tests fall into one of five categories. Each measures something different, uses different underlying biology, and has different strengths and weaknesses. Understanding the category is the first step in evaluating any specific test.
Category 01

First-generation methylation clocks

Horvath, Hannum

The original epigenetic clocks. Trained on DNA methylation at hundreds of CpG sites against chronological age. Established the field. Highly useful as research tools for understanding cellular aging.

What it measures
DNA methylation patterns across hundreds of genomic sites, used to estimate chronological age.
Strengths
Foundational research base. Strong biological grounding. Useful for studying mechanisms of aging.
Limitations
Trained on chronological age, not health outcomes - so by design they predict age, not risk. Modest predictive power for long-term morbidity and mortality. Substantial technical noise at the individual level. Limited responsiveness to lifestyle intervention.
Representative products
Several DTC and clinical providers offer Horvath/Hannum outputs as part of broader panels.
Key references
Horvath, Genome Biology, 2013. Hannum et al., Molecular Cell, 2013.
Category 02

Second-generation methylation clocks

PhenoAge, GrimAge, DunedinPACE

Methylation-based, but trained against clinically meaningful endpoints - biomarker composites, long-term outcomes, or pace of aging - rather than chronological age. Stronger health-outcome prediction than first-generation clocks.

What it measures
DNA methylation patterns, translated into a score that estimates either biological age or pace of aging.
Strengths
Improved predictive power for long-term health outcomes versus first-generation clocks. DunedinPACE in particular has demonstrated responsiveness to caloric restriction interventions.
Limitations
Still methylation-based, so test-retest reliability at the individual level remains an area of active research. Long turnaround. Wellness regulatory status. Not used in clinical medicine. The underlying methylation array technology has measurement noise that can complicate individual longitudinal interpretation.
Representative products
TruDiagnostic (TruAge, OMICmAge), various clinical-channel offerings using DunedinPACE.
Key references
Levine et al., Aging, 2018 (PhenoAge). Lu et al., Aging, 2019 (GrimAge). Belsky et al., eLife, 2022 (DunedinPACE).
Category 03

Glycan-based aging

GlycanAge

Measures the IgG N-glycosylation profile in blood. Translates patterns of glycan attachment to immunoglobulins into an age estimate.

What it measures
The pattern of sugar molecules attached to immune system antibodies in your blood.
Strengths
Strong responsiveness to lifestyle change, particularly in women around perimenopause. Reasonable test-retest reliability. Good positioning for female health applications.
Limitations
Niche biomarker. Substantially smaller clinical evidence base than suPAR. Limited use outside research. Slow turnaround. Wellness regulatory status only.
Key references
Krištić et al., Journals of Gerontology, 2014. Krištić et al., Aging Cell, various.
Category 04

Multi-biomarker panels

Function Health, InsideTracker, etc.

Not single biological age tests, but panels of dozens or hundreds of blood biomarkers that may or may not include a derived "biological age" composite.

What they measure
A broad panel of blood biomarkers covering metabolic, hormonal, inflammatory, and nutritional status.
Strengths
Comprehensive coverage. Useful for identifying specific deficiencies or risk factors that require targeted intervention.
Limitations
Most individual biomarkers in such panels have weak independent prognostic value. The breadth can overwhelm. Recommendations often generic. No single integrated measure of long-term risk.
Category 05

suPAR

The clinical category. Our category.

A single, clinically validated blood biomarker measuring soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor. Released into circulation by activated immune cells, reflecting stable systemic inflammatory load.

What it measures
A single circulating protein, measured with a clinically validated immunoassay.
Strengths
CE-IVD certified clinical assay. Over 1,250 published clinical studies. Over one million tests performed as of January 2024. Used in hospitals for over twenty years. Independent of CRP, age, sex, smoking, lipids. High test-retest reliability. Responsive to lifestyle intervention in weeks to months. Fast turnaround.
Limitations
Single biomarker (by design - but means it does not replace targeted panels for specific deficiency-finding). Like all biological age outputs, the consumer "age" translation is a statistical model, not a direct measurement of cellular age. Healthcare-professional interpretation is essential.
Key references
See Section 05.
Section 02 - Direct comparison

The honest comparison, in one table.

Where direct head-to-head studies exist, we cite them. Where we are summarizing across the broader literature, we say so.
-suPAR®
Supar Health		Horvath / Hannum
First-generation methylation		GrimAge / DunedinPACE
Second-generation methylation		GlycanAge
Glycan age
Regulatory statusCE-IVD certified clinical assay; IVDR submission in progress for reporting layerWellness onlyWellness onlyWellness only
Used in hospital clinical practiceYes, over twenty years; established in emergency department triageNoNoNo
Published clinical studiesOver 1,250 (PubMed, September 2026)Foundational research baseModerate to highApproximately 100
Independent predictor of long-term health outcomes
after adjusting for conventional risk factors		YesModestYes (notably GrimAge)Yes
Morbidity hazard ratio across major outcomes
T2D, CVD, CKD, cognitive decline, frailty		Highest of any biological age test studiedModestModerateModerate
Test-retest reliability at the individual levelHighModerateModerate to high (DunedinPACE)Moderate
Demonstrated response to lifestyle intervention
in published studies		Yes - smoking cessation, weight loss, exercise, dietary improvementLimitedModest (DunedinPACE in CALERIE)Yes
Turnaround timeDaysWeeksWeeksWeeks
Underlying measurement typeSingle protein, immunoassayMethylation array (over 800,000 CpG sites)Methylation arrayGlycan mass spectrometry
Single integrated numberYesOutput requires interpretationOutput requires interpretationYes
Typical consumer cost€165$250 – $500$400 – $800£300+

Placeholder ranges and characterizations of competitor products are based on publicly available information and the published literature as of May 2026. We update this page as new comparative data becomes available, and we welcome correction from competitors if any characterization is inaccurate.

Section 03 - Test-retest reliability: the quiet problem

Why a "twenty-month younger" result might be meaningless.

A test's predictive power tells you how well it stratifies populations. Its test-retest reliability tells you how much you can trust an individual result.

Most methylation-based biological age tests have known measurement noise at the individual level. If a methylation clock tells you your biological age dropped by two years after six months of intervention, the question to ask is: how much of that change is real, and how much is measurement noise?

The literature has been increasingly explicit about this. Higgins-Chen et al. (Nature Aging, 2022) demonstrated that first-generation epigenetic clocks have measurement reliability that is meaningful at the population level but limited at the individual level - and developed principal-component-based corrections to address it. The DunedinPACE measure was specifically designed with improved reliability in mind, and is currently the most reliable of the methylation pace measures.

Single-analyte immunoassays like suPAR have a different reliability profile. The measurement is direct, the assay is clinically validated to defined performance specifications, and the longitudinal behavior is well-characterized in the published literature.

We are not arguing methylation is unreliable. We are arguing that for individual-level longitudinal tracking - which is what most consumers and clinicians actually want - single clinical biomarkers like suPAR have intrinsic reliability advantages worth understanding.

Section 04 - Responsiveness

A biological age test is only useful if it can register that you changed.

This is the question almost no biological age product wants to answer in public.

If you spend a year improving sleep, cutting alcohol, exercising consistently, and losing visceral fat, does the test register it? The answer for methylation clocks is mixed. First-generation clocks (Horvath, Hannum) have shown limited responsiveness to lifestyle interventions in controlled trials. Second-generation clocks have shown modest responsiveness - most notably DunedinPACE in the CALERIE caloric restriction trial (Waziry et al., Nature Aging, 2023), where pace-of-aging slowed in the intervention arm.

For suPAR, responsiveness is well-established in the published literature.

  • -Smoking cessation reduces suPAR within months.
  • -Weight loss reduces suPAR in proportion to fat mass lost.
  • -Exercise interventions reduce suPAR.
  • -Dietary improvement reduces suPAR.
  • -Alcohol cessation reduces suPAR.

The mechanistic reason is that suPAR is a marker of chronic immune activation, and the major lifestyle drivers of accelerated aging are also drivers of chronic immune activation. When you remove the driver, the marker responds. This is the operational difference between a test you can use to track your own progress, and one that primarily stratifies populations for research.

Section 05 - The clinical heritage of suPAR

What "over 1,250 clinical studies" actually means.

A test's evidence base is not just a credentialing exercise. It is a measure of how well the medical community has been able to interrogate, validate, and refine the biomarker over time. Most novel "biological age" tests have evidence bases in the dozens to low hundreds of publications. suPAR has over 1,250 (PubMed, September 2026).

The clinical use cases that have been studied include:

01Emergency department triage and risk stratification
02Sepsis and infectious disease prognosis
03Cardiovascular disease risk prediction
04Type 2 diabetes incidence prediction
05Chronic kidney disease progression
06Cancer outcomes across multiple cancer types
07Cognitive decline and frailty in older adults
08Long-term outcomes in population cohorts
09Response to lifestyle and pharmacologic interventions

This is not a wellness product wearing a clinical badge. It is a clinical instrument now being made available for healthspan tracking.

Section 06 - Where methylation clocks are stronger

Where methylation tests are the right choice.

We are committed to making this comparison honestly, which means saying where competing approaches are stronger.

Methylation-based tests have advantages worth understanding:

Mechanistic biology

Methylation is a fundamental epigenetic process that changes with age in patterned ways. For research into the cellular mechanisms of aging, methylation arrays remain the most powerful tool available.

Breadth of biological signal

Methylation arrays measure over 800,000 CpG sites simultaneously. That breadth captures many dimensions of biological state that no single biomarker can.

Multi-clock dashboards

Tests like TruDiagnostic's offer multiple methylation-derived outputs in one report. For users who want a research-style dashboard, this is valuable.

Pace-of-aging measurement

DunedinPACE in particular offers a conceptually distinct readout - not a snapshot age, but a rate of aging.

If your goal is research-style exploration of your epigenetic state, methylation testing is a reasonable choice. If your goal is to track and prove your healthspan trajectory using the most clinically grounded measurement available, suPAR is.

Section 07 - Methodology notes

How we maintain this comparison.

This page is maintained by the Supar Health scientific team. We update it under the following principles.
01
All competitor claims are based on publicly available information and the peer-reviewed literature.
02
Where a competitor publishes new comparative data, we incorporate it.
03
Where we make a quantitative claim about suPAR, it is cited.
04
Where the literature is genuinely mixed or contested, we say so.
05
Where we are presenting our own characterization or interpretation, we mark it as such.

If you are a competitor and believe any characterization on this page is inaccurate, please contact us at [email protected] and we will review.

Section 08 - Regulatory disclosure

What this page is, and what it isn't.

This page is a scientific comparison of biological age tests, written for clinicians, scientifically literate consumers, and healthcare partners considering Supar Health for their practice or for themselves. It is not promotional copy in the regulatory sense. We do not claim that suPAR diagnoses, predicts, or prevents any specific disease. The Supar® Health Trajectory Report is a wellness assessment intended for use by qualified healthcare professionals as part of a broader clinical picture.

The Supar® test is based on a CE-IVD certified assay, Suparnostic® by Virogates A/S. Clinical performance evaluation under IVDR for the reporting layer is ongoing.