Shilajit dosage: how much per day is usual?

How much Shilajit per day? The short answer: for resin, a pea-sized amount, roughly 300 to 500 mg, once a day. The longer answer is still worth reading, because "pea-sized" is a vague unit, capsules and powder follow different rules, and most mistakes come not from too little but from too much, too soon. This article explains where the usual amounts come from, how to hit them without a scale, and why a small start is almost always the better choice.

Where the usual daily amount comes from

There is no officially set daily dose for Shilajit in Germany or the EU, unlike the reference values that exist for vitamins and minerals. The usual amount draws on three sources: traditional use, in which resin has long been taken in small, pea-sized portions; the few human studies, which worked with daily amounts of a few hundred milligrams of a standardised extract; and the intake recommendations of manufacturers, which lean on both.

Only the last of these is legally binding for you. Under the German food supplement regulation (NemV), every food supplement must state a recommended daily intake and carry a note that this amount must not be exceeded. That label figure is your upper limit, whatever forums or videos recommend.

Source	What it provides	How binding it is
Traditional use	Small, pea-sized portions of resin dissolved in warm liquid	Experience, no measurement
Human studies	A few hundred milligrams of standardised extract per day over weeks to months	Few studies, small groups
Product label	Recommended daily intake, a mandatory statement	Legally binding, do not exceed

Dosage for resin: 300 to 500 mg

For purified resin, a daily amount of 300 to 500 mg has become established, on average about 400 mg. That is the figure we use on our label and in our worked examples. It is taken once a day, dissolved in a cup of warm, not hot, water, tea or milk. How dissolving works in detail and what to watch for with temperature and drink choice is covered in our guide on how to use Shilajit.

Resin is dosed by eye, and that is both its advantage and its drawback. The advantage: you can start with a very small amount and work up to the usual portion in any steps you like. The drawback: without a reference, it is easy to take too much at the start. A pea-sized piece of resin is smaller than most people expect.

Pea-sized: how to hit the amount without a scale

A pea is about 7 to 8 mm across. A ball of resin that size weighs roughly 300 to 500 mg, depending on how firm the resin is, how hard you press it together and how much residual moisture it holds. For everyday use that range is perfectly adequate, because the usual daily amount is itself a range and not a single value.

If you want to know exactly, calibrate your eye once:

1. Get hold of a precision scale with 0.01 g resolution. Kitchen scales in 1 g steps are useless at these quantities.
2. Put an empty dish or a piece of baking paper on the scale and tare it.
3. Take resin with the spoon until the display reads between 0.30 g and 0.50 g.
4. Look at that amount on the spoon and memorise the picture. From then on, your eye is enough.

Another reference point is how long the jar lasts. If a 20 g jar runs out noticeably sooner than about 50 days, you are dosing above the usual amount. If it lasts much longer, you are below it. Both are easy to track from the date you first opened it.

Amount on the spoon	Approximate weight	Where it sits
Grain of rice	Well under 300 mg	Sensible starting amount for the first days
Half a pea	About 150 to 250 mg	Intermediate step, below the usual amount
Pea-sized	About 300 to 500 mg	Usual daily amount
Cherry stone and above	Over 500 mg	Above the usual amount, not intended

Dosage for capsules and powder

With capsules and powder there is no estimating, because the manufacturer sets the serving. That sounds simpler, but it is only half the story: the number of capsules says nothing about how much Shilajit they contain. A capsule can consist mostly of Shilajit extract or largely of carriers and fillers, and the two look identical from the outside.

The only way to compare is the actual Shilajit content per serving. That has to be on the label, together with the recommended daily intake. So count in milligrams of Shilajit, not in capsules or scoops. A worked example: if a capsule contains 200 mg of Shilajit extract according to the label and the recommendation is two capsules, you arrive at 400 mg per day, the same order of magnitude as a pea-sized amount of resin. If it contains only 100 mg, two capsules are half of that.

Form	Who sets the serving	What to check
Resin	You, by eye	Pea-sized is about 300 to 500 mg
Capsules	The manufacturer	Shilajit content per capsule times capsules per day
Powder	The manufacturer, by scoop	Shilajit share of the powder, fillers deducted

Extracts add a second blind spot: "extract" is not a protected term and says nothing about concentration. Two products with the same milligram figure can contain very different amounts of starting material. How the three forms compare on verifiability, price per daily portion and everyday practicality is covered in our comparison of resin versus capsules.

Why less is often the better call

The most common beginner's mistake is not the wrong time of day or the wrong drink but too large an amount too early. There are three sober reasons for starting low, none of which has anything to do with effect. They are about tolerance, exposure and money.

Observing tolerance. A natural product with an intense taste and a broad spectrum of constituents can be tolerated differently by different people. If you begin with a rice-grain amount and hold it for a few days before moving to half a pea and then a whole one, you can notice an intolerance early and tie it to a specific amount. If you start at the full portion straight away, all you can do when something feels off is guess. More on this in our article on side effects.

Keeping exposure small. Every portion of resin contains everything the resin contains: fulvic acid and minerals as much as the traces of heavy metals that are present below the maximum levels even in tested material. The EU maximum levels for food supplements are set with usual intake amounts in mind. Double the amount and you double, arithmetically, the intake of every single constituent. What was measured in our current batch is on our lab values page and in the batch datasheet.

Jar life and cost. At 400 mg a day a 20 g jar lasts about 50 days, which at a jar price of €24.99 is exactly €0.50 per day. Double the amount and the jar lasts 25 days at double the daily cost, with no recognisable benefit to show for it.

Daily amount	How long a 20 g jar lasts	Cost per day relative to 400 mg
300 mg	about 66 days	a quarter less
400 mg	about 50 days	€0.50
500 mg	about 40 days	a quarter more
800 mg	25 days	double

A start that has proven itself

This is what a cautious start with resin looks like. It is not a schedule with a fixed effect but a sequence that gives you time to observe:

1. Days 1 to 3: a rice-grain amount, once a day, dissolved in warm water. Pay attention to taste, stomach and how you feel in general.
2. Days 4 to 7: half a pea, if the first days were uneventful.
3. From day 8: the usual pea-sized amount of about 300 to 500 mg, and no more.
4. Ongoing: once a day, never above the intake on the label. If you experience complaints, stop, observe, and seek medical advice where needed.

Whether you take the portion in the morning or the evening is a question of routine, not of amount; the daily quantity stays the same. What matters is that you do not spread several peas across the day and lose track of the total.

Who should ask a doctor before dosing at all

The usual daily amount is a figure for healthy adults. For pregnant and breastfeeding women, children and adolescents, and people with chronic conditions or on regular medication, there is no adequate data. For them the rule is: check with a doctor first, then decide, and when in doubt, leave it. That is not specific to Shilajit; it is the standard for food supplements as a whole.

In brief

1. Resin: 300 to 500 mg per day, on average about 400 mg, once a day, pea-sized.
2. Capsules and powder: count in milligrams of Shilajit, not in capsules or scoops.
3. Calibrate your eye once with a precision scale; after that, a glance is enough.
4. Start small and work up to the usual amount over about a week.
5. Never exceed the recommended daily intake on the label.
6. Use the jar's lifespan as a check: about 50 days at 400 mg.

Our resin ships with a spoon for taking it out, and the daily intake is printed on the jar. The 20 g jar is available in the shop; the batch datasheet lets you look up the lab values of your own batch.