MEDVi QUAD vs Hims Hard Mints: What You're Actually Comparing

Almost every comparison of these two starts from a mistake. "Hard Mints" is not one product — it is four different compounded formulations, and Hims publishes no strength for any of them. Here is what each product actually contains, where each company is transparent, where neither is, and which one costs less. (Spoiler on that last one: it isn't QUAD.)

"Hard Mints" Is Four Products, Not One

This is the part that trips up nearly every article on the subject, and it changes the whole comparison. Hims does not sell a product called Hard Mints. It sells a family of compounded chewable formulations under the Hard Mints name, and as of July 2026 that family has four members:

Read that column on the right again, because it is the single most important fact on this page. Four products, four blanks. Hims describes the strengths as personalized and set through its medical intake, and no milligram figure for any Hard Mints variant appears on its site.

The practical consequence is that "Hims Hard Mints vs MEDVi QUAD" is not one comparison. It is four, and they are not equivalent to each other. A single-drug tadalafil mint is a fundamentally different thing from a two-PDE5-inhibitor mint. If you are reading a page that compares "Hard Mints" to something else as though it were a fixed formula, the author did not check.

We should be fair about why Hims does this. Compounded products are made to a prescriber's order, and a company that personalizes doses can reasonably argue that publishing a fixed strength would be misleading. MEDVi makes essentially the same argument for QUAD. The argument is defensible. It is also, from the buyer's side, deeply unsatisfying — you are being asked to compare products on ingredients alone, with the amounts withheld until after a clinician has seen you.

What Each One Actually Contains

MEDVi reformulated QUAD on July 16, 2026. The current formula is sildenafil, tadalafil, L-citrulline, and PT-141 (bremelanotide). Vardenafil and apomorphine were removed. Set against the Hard Mints line-up, the composition difference is straightforward:

The one genuine pharmacological difference is the third row. Every Hard Mints variant works by the same mechanism — PDE5 inhibition, which improves blood flow in response to arousal that is already happening. QUAD includes PT-141, which does something categorically different: it is a melanocortin (MC4R) receptor agonist that acts centrally on desire and arousal rather than on blood flow.

That is worth understanding properly rather than taking on trust, because PT-141's status is more complicated than most marketing suggests. It is FDA-approved — as Vyleesi (2019), a 1.75 mg subcutaneous injection, for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women. It is not approved for ED and not approved in men. In men, early-phase trials of intranasal bremelanotide did show erectogenic effects, including in some sildenafil non-responders, but development for ED was halted, partly over blood-pressure concerns. Its presence in QUAD is compounded, off-label, and prescriber-supervised. We cover the full evidence base, the nausea data, and the dosing reality in our PT-141 (bremelanotide) explainer.

So the honest framing is: QUAD offers a mechanism Hard Mints does not have, and that mechanism has real human data behind it but no ED approval. If you want more than blood flow, QUAD is the one that attempts it. If you want a well-understood PDE5 inhibitor and nothing else, Hard Mints is a simpler proposition — and there is nothing wrong with a simpler proposition.

The Dose Disclosure Gap — On Both Sides

Here is where we have to be careful not to grade on a curve. Hims does not publish strengths for any Hard Mints variant. Neither does MEDVi for QUAD. The transparency scorecard is:

You will find milligram figures for Hard Mints circulating online. They come from third-party affiliate pages, they contradict each other, and none of them cite Hims. We are not going to reprint them here, and you should discount any page that does. If a number does not trace back to the company selling the product or to a regulatory filing, it is a guess wearing a lab coat.

What you can do about it is concrete: when the prescriber contacts you, ask for the exact strength of each active ingredient in writing, before your card is charged. Both companies route you through a clinician, and a clinician can answer the question that the website will not. If you get a non-answer, that tells you something too.

It is worth noting that this is not an industry-wide norm. At least one competitor in this space publishes exact milligram figures for every tier it sells — we go through those numbers in our QUAD vs Super Strut comparison. So "compounded means we can't publish doses" is a choice, not a constraint.

Format: Mint Tin vs Sublingual Liquid

Hard Mints are exactly what the name says: mint or wintergreen flavoured chewable tablets that come in a pocket tin, taken without water. It is a genuinely good piece of product design. A tin of mints in a jacket pocket does not announce itself, does not require a glass of water, and does not need explaining if someone sees it.

QUAD is a sublingual liquid, measured with a dropper and held under the tongue for 60–90 seconds before swallowing. Sublingual absorption routes the active ingredients into the bloodstream through the tissue under the tongue rather than through the digestive tract, which is the mechanistic basis for MEDVi's faster-onset claim and for the absence of a food interaction. The trade-off is that a bottle and a dropper travel less gracefully than a tin, and holding a measured liquid under your tongue for a minute and a half is a more deliberate act than eating a mint.

If discretion and portability are what you are optimising for, Hims has built the better object. That is not a small point — an ED treatment you are reluctant to carry is an ED treatment you will not take.

Onset: Two Company Claims, Zero Head-to-Head Data

Both numbers below come from the companies themselves. Neither comes from a trial, and nobody has run a study comparing the two products against each other. Read them as marketing statements that happen to be checkable, not as findings.

Hims: the company says tadalafil can work in as little as 30 minutes, and lasts up to 36 hours. Notably, Hims makes no sub-30-minute claim for Hard Mints anywhere on its site — despite the chewable format, which is the sort of thing a company would normally advertise if it could. We think that restraint is to their credit and worth reporting accurately.

MEDVi: states an onset of roughly 10–15 minutes for QUAD's sublingual liquid.

So MEDVi claims to be faster and Hims does not contest it. Whether the real-world gap is as large as the claims imply is unknown, and will stay unknown until somebody funds a comparison. What is not in dispute is the mechanism: sublingual delivery bypasses first-pass digestion, and chewables are swallowed. That gives MEDVi's claim a plausible basis without making it proven.

Price — Where Hims Wins Outright

There is no way to spin this in QUAD's favour, so we won't try. Hims is dramatically cheaper.

Every Hims figure carries the company's own caveat that actual price depends on product and plan, so treat the "from" prices as floors rather than guarantees. Even so, the gap is not close. On the monthly plans you are looking at roughly three to four times the cost for QUAD.

And it gets harder for QUAD, because Hims also sells FDA-approved generics that undercut its own compounded mints: sildenafil from $22/month, tadalafil from $24/month, tadalafil daily from $40/month. Brand-name Viagra is listed from $135 per use, which is mostly useful as a reminder of what the generics saved everybody.

Where does that leave QUAD's $119? It buys a formula with two PDE5 inhibitors, a nitric-oxide precursor, and a central desire agonist, delivered sublingually, with a clinician setting the dose. Whether that is worth roughly a hundred dollars a month more than a mint tin depends entirely on whether a PDE5 inhibitor alone has already failed you. If it hasn't, you are paying for mechanisms you may not need.

The "3-in-1" Counting Trap (It's Vitamin B12)

If you have been comparing these products by ingredient count — three versus four — there is something you should know. The third ingredient in Hims' 3-in-1 Pill is vitamin B12. The formula is sildenafil, tadalafil, and B12. The third component is not a third ED drug.

We want to be precise about what this does and does not mean. It does not mean Hims is doing anything improper; B12 is disclosed, and vitamins turn up in combination products routinely. What it means is that "3-in-1 versus 4-in-1" is not a like-for-like count. Hims' 3-in-1 contains two pharmacologically active ED drugs plus a vitamin. QUAD contains two PDE5 inhibitors, an amino acid (L-citrulline), and PT-141.

Which is to say: QUAD's count holds up better under scrutiny, but not perfectly, because L-citrulline is also a supporting ingredient rather than an ED drug. Its evidence base is a single-blind study of 24 men with mild ED (Cormio et al., Urology, 2011), in which erection hardness improved in 50% of men versus 8% on placebo. That is a real result from a very small trial in a supplement-grade ingredient. Modest, not headline.

Strip both products back to ingredients with FDA-approved ED indications and you get the same answer for each: two. The difference is what sits alongside them — a vitamin on one side, an amino acid and a melanocortin agonist on the other. Ingredient counts are the weakest way to choose between these products, whichever direction they point.

Both Are Compounded. Here's What That Means.

Hard Mints and QUAD are both compounded drug products, and neither is FDA-approved. Hims states this on its own site in plain terms — that compounded drug products are "not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA." The same statement is true of MEDVi QUAD, and any page that applies this standard to one company but not the other is selling you something.

The framing that actually helps: compounding is a legitimate, regulated practice. A 503A compounder is a licensed pharmacy or physician, state-regulated, dispensing against a patient-specific prescription, and exempt from CGMP manufacturing rules. A 503B outsourcing facility registers with the FDA and is subject to CGMP. The FDA itself recognises that compounding serves genuine needs — allergies to inactive ingredients, dosage forms that don't exist commercially, combinations no manufacturer makes.

So this is a disclosure point, not a condemnation. What it means practically is that the specific combination you are buying has not been evaluated by the FDA for safety, effectiveness, or quality — even where the individual actives inside it are approved drugs with decades of data. You are relying on the compounding pharmacy's standards and the prescriber's judgement. That applies to Hims and MEDVi equally.

Who Each One Is Actually For

Choose Hims Hard Mints if: cost is a real constraint, you want a discreet chewable you can carry anywhere, and PDE5 inhibition is the mechanism you need. The price advantage is large enough that it should be the default starting point for most people — and if you have never tried a plain generic, try that first, because Hims sells those cheaper still.

Choose MEDVi QUAD if: PDE5 inhibitors alone have not worked for you, and the missing piece appears to be desire or central arousal rather than blood flow. PT-141 addresses something no Hard Mints variant touches. You should go in knowing that the mechanism is off-label for ED, that its ED development was halted partly over blood-pressure concerns, and that it carries a meaningful nausea burden in the form where it has been best studied. It is also the more expensive option by a factor of three or four.

One more honest note: neither company is being compared here on outcomes, because neither has published head-to-head data, and no one else has either. Everything above is composition, format, disclosed pricing, and each company's own claims. Anyone telling you which of these two works better is guessing.

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