If you compete in a drug-tested sport — NCAA, NFL, MLB, NBA, USA Track & Field, MLS, USA Swimming, anything under the WADA Code — and you take a supplement, the only certification that matters for protecting your eligibility is NSF Certified for Sport.
What it tests for
Every NSF Certified for Sport product is tested batch-by-batch for:
- Identity + potency — the label claim matches what is in the bottle
- Heavy metals — lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium below safe thresholds
- Banned substances — ~280 substances on the WADA Prohibited List, plus the NFL and MLB lists
- Facility audit — the manufacturing site is inspected at least annually
Who requires it
- NFL — only NSF Certified for Sport supplements may appear in team facilities
- MLB — same requirement for all 30 clubhouses
- NCAA — listed as the gold-standard recommendation; most programs treat it as required
- USA Triathlon, USA Swimming, USA Track & Field — actively recommended
- PGA Tour — required for clubhouse availability
What "NSF Certified" alone is not
NSF Certified (no "for Sport") tests the product against the same identity/potency/contaminant standards but does not include the banned-substance screen. For an athlete, NSF Certified alone is not enough — only NSF Certified for Sport carries the banned-substance guarantee.
Brands that carry it
As of this writing, 287 brands and over 2,300 individual products carry the NSF Certified for Sport seal. Recognizable names include:
- Athletic Greens / AG1
- Thorne
- Momentous
- Gatorade
- Klean Athlete
- Vega
- Transparent Labs
- 1st Phorm
- Bare Performance Nutrition
- Designs for Sport
- BioSteel
- CELSIUS
See the full list at /brands/ — every NSF Sport-certified brand we index gets its own page with the cert count and latest test date.
How to verify a specific bottle
The seal on the bottle is the first signal. The certificate published by NSF is the second. ScanCheck pulls the published cert directly: open the app, point the camera at the label, and see in three seconds whether the bottle in your hand has a real cert behind it.