What we learned scoring 5 US peptide vendors in April 2026

The five US peptide vendors people email us about most are Pure Rawz, Limitless Life Nootropics (now Limitless Biotech), Amino Asylum, Empower Pharmacy, and Strive Pharmacy. Two are research-chemical sellers, one ran research-chem until federal agents shut it, and two are compounding pharmacies routing GLP-1 medications through telehealth platforms.

We scored each one on the same 11-signal rubric we use everywhere else in the catalog. The signals are public, the math is published, and a vendor cannot pay to move a number. None of these five have an affiliate relationship with Panya. The scorecards exist as info-only listings until our editorial-liability and ToS review clears that flip.

A few things stood out that are worth saying out loud before the per-vendor breakdown.

What changed our thinking

The research-chem channel has a structural ceiling. Pure Rawz and Limitless Life publish per-batch HPLC and LC-MS reports through Janoshik and adjacent labs. The community has done the spot-checks. The identity testing, broadly, holds up. What does not exist is a prescription layer, a validated cold chain, or accountable refund and recall infrastructure. Our `rx-legality` signal scores those vendors near zero by definition. That is not a judgment of the lab work. It is the data point that the channel cannot offer what an Rx channel offers.

FDA enforcement is one signal, not the whole signal. Empower Pharmacy received a warning letter in April 2025 citing sterile-drug production deficiencies at two Houston facilities. Eli Lilly refiled a federal action against them in July 2025 alleging unlawful tirzepatide compounding at scale. Strive Pharmacy was found by the Arizona Board of Pharmacy in September 2025 to have continued single-ingredient semaglutide and tirzepatide compounding past the federal-shortage exemption period. Both are large, accredited operations. Both have real regulatory overhang. Both still ship product daily. Our scoring weights the active enforcement without erasing the underlying capability. The verdict for both is `conditional`, not `routable`.

Amino Asylum is offline. This was the standout case. Federal agents raided the Amino Asylum warehouse in June 2025. The website went dark, payment processing ended, pending orders froze. Some of the older third-party reviews still circulate. We mention this in the per-vendor section because the most useful thing we can do for a user searching "amino asylum review 2026" is render a page that says clearly what happened.

Per-vendor scoring summary

Vendor	Score	Verdict	One-line read

| Pure Rawz | 58 | conditional | Janoshik plus MZ Biolabs HPLC and LC-MS, no Rx layer | | Limitless Life Nootropics | 60 | conditional | per-batch HPLC plus LC-MS, lab-name disclosure inconsistent | | Amino Asylum | 25 | hold | FDA enforcement action June 2025, operations halted | | Empower Pharmacy | 62 | conditional | 503B plus 503A Houston, April 2025 FDA warning, Lilly suit | | Strive Pharmacy | 60 | conditional | 50-state 503A, September 2025 AZ inspection, Lilly suit |

A score in the high 50s to low 60s with a `conditional` verdict means the vendor exists, the documentation exists in some form, and our position is that you should read the full breakdown rather than treat the headline number as a yes or a no. The full per-signal breakdown for each is on the vendor scorecard pages.

Pure Rawz · 58 · conditional

Pure Rawz has been operating since 2017 and is one of the more transparent research-chemical vendors on the channel-clarity axis. Every product page carries a research-only disclaimer. Per-mg pricing is published and consistent. The third-party COAs use Janoshik and MZ Biolabs, both reputable, with HPLC and mass-spec results per batch.

Where the score loses ground:

• `rx-legality` floors out at 15. There is no Rx layer and no DEA-registered pharmacy infrastructure. This is not a defect of Pure Rawz; it is the channel.
• `cold-chain` is 40. USPS ground is the shipping default. There is no validated cold-chain documentation we have been able to find.
• `endotoxin` is 35. Endotoxin testing does not appear consistently in the public COAs.
• `coa` itself sits at 65 because the community has flagged a portion of the COAs as out-of-date relative to the lots being sold. Not a fatal issue but a documented one.

Full Pure Rawz scorecard

Limitless Life Nootropics (Limitless Biotech) · 60 · conditional

Limitless Life Nootropics rebranded to Limitless Biotech in 2025. The substantive read is similar to Pure Rawz with a slightly higher per-batch testing depth and a premium-tier pricing posture. Each batch carries HPLC plus LC-MS results. Where it loses two points relative to a higher band: the testing-lab name is not always disclosed in the public COA, and heavy-metal plus endotoxin screening is not consistently surfaced.

Same structural ceiling on `rx-legality` and same cold-chain situation as Pure Rawz. The brand has been around for several years; the rebrand alone is the main retention asterisk.

Full Limitless Life scorecard

Amino Asylum · 25 · hold

The site is offline as of June 2025. Federal agents raided the warehouse, payment processing ended, pending orders froze, and operations have not resumed. Independent reviewers had previously flagged Amino Asylum's COAs as missing verification codes and client-information fields that legitimate independent lab reports typically include. The combination of those documentation gaps and the federal action is what the score reflects.

If you are searching "amino asylum review 2026" or "what happened to amino asylum," the answer is: shuttered. The scorecard exists so the question lands somewhere honest.

Full Amino Asylum scorecard

Empower Pharmacy · 62 · conditional

Empower runs both 503A and 503B operations from Houston, Texas. During the 2023 to 2025 GLP-1 shortage they became one of the most widely used backend pharmacies for telehealth weight-loss platforms, supplying compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide at scale.

The two regulatory items that anchor the verdict at `conditional`:

1. The FDA delivered a warning letter in April 2025 citing sterile-drug production deficiencies at two Houston facilities, inadequate investigation of microbial excursions, and labeling omissions that disqualified some 503B exemptions. 2. Eli Lilly's federal lawsuit alleging unlawful tirzepatide compounding was refiled in Texas federal court in July 2025 and remains active.

The `rx-legality` signal still scores 75 because Empower is a multi-state-licensed pharmacy with an Rx-only channel and active compliance work. The signals that took the hit are the sterile-production and microbial-excursion lines, plus the Lilly-suit overhang on retention.

Full Empower Pharmacy scorecard

Strive Pharmacy · 60 · conditional

Strive is the largest and most nationally distributed 503A operation in the US. Licensed in all 50 states, accredited by NABP plus PCAB plus LegitScript, with nine locations and a 50,000-square-foot facility added in late 2024.

Two specific data points pull the verdict to `conditional`:

1. Eli Lilly sued Strive in Delaware and New Jersey in April 2025, alleging the company was marketing standardized tirzepatide as personalized to skirt the FDA's post-shortage compounding ban. 2. The Arizona Board of Pharmacy inspected Strive's Gilbert, Arizona facility in September 2025 and found that Strive continued to compound and dispense single-ingredient semaglutide and tirzepatide after the federal-shortage exemption period had ended.

503A patient-specific compounding has a lower process bar than 503B outsourcing, which is why endotoxin testing scores 55 rather than the 70 we give 503B. Channel clarity is high. The active enforcement environment is the line we cannot ignore.

Full Strive Pharmacy scorecard

What this means for a US buyer

We are not telling anyone what to take. A few observations from the data:

• If you are using one of these vendors today, the public scorecard is what we have. Read the per-signal notes; the headline number is a summary, not the answer.
• If you are choosing between a 503A or 503B compounder and a research-chem source, those are different channels with different failure modes. The 503 channels carry FDA scrutiny and prescription accountability. The research-chem channel carries documentation depth without those structural protections.
• If you find a vendor with a similar profile to one of these five and it is not in our catalog, we would rather hear about it and add the scorecard than see another affiliate funnel pretend to be a review.

The Amino Asylum case is the proof that this matters. A user who searches for that vendor in May 2026 lands on a scorecard that explains the federal action and shows a verdict of `hold`. Without the scorecard the same user finds a half-dead site or a stale review. We would rather be the page that tells them what happened.

The full scorecards live at /vendor. The rubric definitions, with each signal's 0-to-3 anchors, are at /methodology and in the 11-signal rubric explainer.