RYZE Mushroom Coffee Review: Ingredients, Caffeine, Side Effects, Is It Legit, and RYZE vs Alphacino

Short answer: RYZE Mushroom Coffee is a legitimate product from a real company, sold at $45 for 30 servings on the day we read the store, with a 40% sale running that brought a bag to $27, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a subscription you can pause or cancel from your account¹. The cup is mild by design: organic instant arabica with a six-mushroom blend, coconut milk and MCT oil, no sugar, and 48 mg of caffeine a serving, which the brand describes as less than half a regular coffee¹. What the label does not do is print a dose for any of the six mushrooms. They are listed as one blend, and the human trials on lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi and shiitake used one to ten grams a day of a single mushroom, which a tablespoon of instant coffee cannot carry³⁶¹³. So the honest reading is that RYZE is a pleasant, low-caffeine coffee with mushrooms in it, not a mushroom supplement in a mug. Everything below is read from RYZE's own listings and pages on 26 September 2026, checked against the trials, and then set beside Alphacino, which is built the opposite way: full caffeine, one mushroom, and every dose on the jar.

What is RYZE mushroom coffee?

RYZE Superfoods is a Boston company founded by Andrée and Rashad, whose story page describes a search for "something without caffeine" that ended in a coffee with less of it¹. Its core product is an instant coffee powder: you add a tablespoon to six to eight ounces of hot or cold water and stir, which is the brand's own preparation instruction¹. The formula, in the brand's words, is a blend "enhanced with functional mushrooms and MCT" that "supports calm energy that promotes focus, productivity, adrenal health, and ... yes, happiness", with "less than half the caffeine of regular coffee"¹.

The range has grown around that bag. On 26 September 2026 the store's public product feed listed a hundred items: the medium roast and a dark roast at 30 servings each, a 90-serving pack, a 60-serving starter kit, "ritual sets" that pair two bags of coffee with a creamer, three-month and six-month plans, a mushroom matcha, a mushroom hot cocoa, and a long shelf of vegan coconut creamers in vanilla, hazelnut, mocha, caramel and pumpkin spice, all sold on "absolutely no sugar" and "added probiotics"¹. Prices on the day: the 30-serving bag at $45, the 90-serving pack at $115, the starter kit at $49.50, the 70-serving ritual set at $57.60, and a "Fall Reset Sale" that showed the 30-serving coffee at $27, the matcha at $36 and the cocoa at $27¹. A subscription refill was shown at $36 for 30 servings, shipping every 30 days, with "adjust shipments or cancel anytime" and free US shipping¹.

At list price that is $1.50 a cup; at the sale price it is 90 cents; on subscription it is $1.20. The product page carries a review widget reading "Rated 5 out of 5 stars, 218,776 reviews" and a banner of "200K+ Five Star Reviews"¹. We have no way to audit those, and we say so; what we can audit is the label, the price and the science, which is what the rest of this page does.

RYZE ingredients: what the label lists, and what it does not

The brand's story page names the six mushrooms: lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, shiitake, turkey tail and king trumpet¹. The listing we read on 6 September 2026 gave the full deck as organic instant arabica coffee, the organic six-mushroom blend, coconut milk and MCT oil, with no sugar¹. Two dietitians quoted on the brand's own site put the caffeine at 48 mg a serving and note the MCT and coconut oil¹. That is a clean, short deck. There is nothing hidden in it and nothing to object to as an ingredient.

The missing column is the one that matters. A tablespoon of an instant coffee blend weighs a few grams in total, and the coffee, the coconut milk and the MCT take most of that weight. Whatever share is left for six mushrooms, split six ways, is a fraction of a gram each. RYZE does not print the number, so nobody outside the company can say whether a scoop holds 50 mg of lion's mane or 500 mg. Our caffeine-by-brand guide found the same pattern across most of the category: brands that name their mushrooms and skip their doses.

Does RYZE have ashwagandha?

No. We searched every one of the hundred listings in RYZE's product feed on 26 September 2026 for ashwagandha, adaptogens, collagen and peptides, and none appears in any product title or description¹. RYZE's coffee is mushrooms, coffee, coconut and MCT. The question comes up because the two ideas travel together in men's-health searches, and because some rivals do add it; Alphacino carries 600 mg of KSM-66 ashwagandha, which is the dose used in the stress trial that made the extract famous²². If ashwagandha is the reason you are shopping, RYZE is not the product. The same search found no collagen and no "peptides" product either, so "RYZE coffee peptides" is a search for something the brand does not sell.

How much caffeine is in RYZE? Is it caffeine free?

48 mg a serving in the medium roast, by the figure the brand's own site quotes, against about 95 mg in an 8 oz cup of brewed coffee in the USDA database¹². That is the "less than half" claim, and it checks out. It is not caffeine free, and it is not decaf: even decaffeinated coffee carries a few milligrams a cup, and RYZE is a caffeinated instant with the caffeine reduced by using less coffee per scoop, not by removing it²⁰. The dark roast is the stronger cup. Today's dark roast listing prints no separate number; the listing we read on 6 September put it at 80 to 90 mg, which is close to a regular coffee¹. If you want RYZE and you want a real coffee's lift, the dark roast is the one.

What 48 mg does: caffeine improves alertness, vigilance and reaction time across a large trial literature, with effects measurable from around 40 mg and clearer at 75 to 150 mg¹⁷. So one RYZE is at the bottom of the effective range, which is exactly what a person switching down from three coffees wants and exactly what a person who drinks coffee for the kick will find thin. The European safety opinion puts 200 mg in one sitting and 400 mg a day as the ceilings for healthy adults, so two or three RYZE cups a day is well inside them¹⁸. On timing, a 400 mg dose taken six hours before bed still cut measured sleep by about an hour in the timing trial; at 48 mg the arithmetic is kinder, but a dark roast at 3 pm is still coffee at 3 pm¹⁹. Our guide on when to drink mushroom coffee works through the night-time question that RYZE drinkers ask more than any other.

Does RYZE work? Each mushroom against the trials

The fair test of any mushroom coffee is not whether its mushrooms have trials. It is whether the trials used an amount a scoop can hold. Here is each of RYZE's six against the human evidence, with the trial doses printed.

Read that table plainly. The lion's mane evidence is the best in the category, and it is real: three separate trials, including a 2023 one in young adults, found measurable effects³⁴⁵. Every one of them used between 1.8 and 3.2 g a day of the mushroom. Cordyceps has two positive trials and one negative one, all at 1 to 4 g a day⁶⁷⁸. Reishi's one positive trial is in cancer fatigue at 3 g a day, and the Cochrane reviewers were blunt about the rest of its literature⁹¹⁰. Shiitake's immune trial fed people whole mushrooms by the handful¹³. Turkey tail and king trumpet have nothing in healthy adults at any dose.

A scoop of RYZE cannot carry even the smallest of those doses for one mushroom, let alone six. That does not make RYZE a fraud. It makes it a coffee whose mushroom line is a flavour and a story rather than a dose, which is true of most of the category and is why the ranking in our best mushroom coffee for men guide is built on printed labels and not on ingredient lists.

What the MCT does

The MCT is the most honest line on the label, because its effects are small, real and well measured. Medium-chain fats are oxidised faster than long-chain fats and raise energy expenditure slightly after a meal¹⁵. Across randomised trials, swapping long-chain fat for MCT produced a modest extra loss of body weight, about half a kilogram, and a little body fat, over weeks to months¹⁴. Those trials used tens of grams a day, and RYZE does not print its MCT gram count, so treat the "supports calm energy" line as a description of a creamy cup rather than a metabolic claim. The MCT also explains the single most common complaint about RYZE, which is the next section.

RYZE side effects

For most healthy adults, none beyond the caffeine, and at 48 mg there is not much of that. Four questions come up often enough to answer one by one.

Does RYZE make you poop?

It can, and the reason is the MCT oil, not the mushrooms. A 2026 review of MCT trials found that gastrointestinal complaints, loose stools among them, were the side effect reported most often, and that they are dose-related and ease as people get used to it¹⁶. Coffee itself also stimulates the gut, which is why plain coffee sends a lot of people to the bathroom. Starting with a smaller scoop for the first week is the practical fix. Our page on whether mushroom coffee makes you poop covers the constipation question too, which is the opposite complaint and rarer.

Does RYZE lower testosterone?

There is no trial in men showing that RYZE, or any mushroom coffee, lowers testosterone. The worry traces to reishi: in laboratory work, reishi extract inhibited the enzyme that converts testosterone to DHT¹¹. That was a test-tube finding at extract concentrations, not a human trial, and RYZE's reishi is an unprinted fraction of a gram. Caffeine, for what it is worth, does not lower testosterone in men either. Our testosterone and mushroom coffee guide goes through the evidence line by line.

Blood pressure, kidneys and drug tests

48 mg of caffeine produces a smaller and shorter blood-pressure bump than a regular coffee, and habitual drinkers adapt to it¹⁷. RYZE contains no chaga, which is the one common mushroom-coffee ingredient with a kidney case-report record because of its oxalate; that concern applies to some rivals, not to this product¹. Nothing in RYZE is screened for on a workplace drug test: coffee, culinary mushrooms, coconut and MCT are food. The "does RYZE show up on a drug test" search is common, and the answer is no. Anyone pregnant, breastfeeding, on blood thinners or immunosuppressants, or with a mushroom allergy, should ask a doctor before any mushroom product; that is standard advice, not a RYZE-specific warning. The full list for the category is in our mushroom coffee side effects guide.

How to make RYZE, what it tastes like, and how many cups a day

The brand's own instruction is one tablespoon into six to eight ounces of hot or cold water, stirred¹. Because it is an instant with coconut milk powder in it, it dissolves into a light, creamy, slightly sweet cup without added sweetener, and it does not taste of mushrooms; the six are a small share of the scoop and the coffee and coconut cover them. People who want a black coffee will find it soft and thin. People who normally add milk will find it already done. It works cold, which is how a lot of RYZE drinkers take it in summer, stirred into cold water and poured over ice.

How many a day: the brand sells its ritual sets on "two cups a day"¹. On caffeine alone, two medium-roast cups is 96 mg, one regular coffee's worth, and four cups stays under the 200 mg single-dose ceiling and far under the 400 mg daily one¹⁸. The practical limit is the MCT and coconut fat rather than the caffeine, since each cup adds fat and the loose-stool effect is dose-related¹⁶. Our guide on how much mushroom coffee you can drink a day runs the arithmetic for RYZE specifically, because "how many cups of RYZE" is one of the most common questions people bring to it.

Does RYZE break a fast: yes, strictly. Coconut milk and MCT oil are calories, and a serving of an instant with both in it is not a black coffee. If you fast for the metabolic effect rather than the calorie count, a small serving is a grey area that our fasting and mushroom coffee guide works through.

RYZE for weight loss: which RYZE is best?

People search "which RYZE coffee is best for weight loss" as if there were a weight-loss version. There is not. The medium and dark roasts differ in caffeine, and the matcha and cocoa are different drinks; none is formulated for fat loss and the brand does not claim one is¹. The honest chain of reasoning is this: the MCT in RYZE has a small, real effect on fat oxidation and, in trials that used far more of it, a modest effect on body weight¹⁴¹⁵; caffeine raises energy expenditure a little, and more at higher doses¹⁷; and replacing a sugared coffee-shop latte with a no-sugar RYZE removes calories that were there before. If RYZE helps someone lose weight, it is almost always that third mechanism. The dark roast, with more caffeine, is the marginally better pick, and a scoop in water rather than a ritual-set creamer keeps the calories lowest.

Is RYZE legit?

Yes. It is a real company with named founders, a complete ingredient list, organic blends, a published preparation method, a 30-day money-back guarantee, free US shipping and a subscription with pause and cancel controls in the account¹. The product does what an instant coffee with coconut milk does, and 48 mg of caffeine is a real, if small, stimulant dose¹⁷.

Three fair criticisms. First, the mushroom line is not dosed, and the brand's benefit language ("brain function, immune health, and balanced, sustained energy") is borrowed from trials that used grams of a single mushroom a day, which a scoop of RYZE cannot hold³⁶¹³. Second, the storefront is built for subscription: the sale price is prominent, the refill price is different, and the bundles change often, so read the checkout page before you click. Third, the review count is the brand's own widget, which no outside reader can check. None of those makes RYZE a scam. They make it a well-marketed mild coffee, and the way to buy it is with that in mind: for the taste and the low caffeine, not for the mushroom claims.

RYZE vs Alphacino, label to label

These are two different kinds of cup, and the table makes the difference obvious. RYZE is half a coffee with six undosed mushrooms and a creamy base. Alphacino is a full coffee with one mushroom at a printed dose and a men's-health stack around it. Alphacino's figures are read from its own Supplement Facts panel²³.

On the one line where they overlap, lion's mane, the honest comparison is that Alphacino's 500 mg is a sixth of the lowest trial dose and prints it, and RYZE's amount is unknown. On caffeine, RYZE gives you half a coffee and Alphacino gives you one, with 100 mg of L-theanine beside it; in the trial that tested that pairing, theanine with caffeine improved attention and took the edge off the caffeine alone²¹. On ashwagandha, only one of them has any. On price they are within 17 cents a cup at list, and RYZE is far cheaper on the sale days.

RYZE vs Everyday Dose and Four Sigmatic

RYZE's closest rival is Everyday Dose: both are half-caffeine instant lattes at 45 to 48 mg, both sell on subscription, and neither prints per-mushroom doses. Everyday Dose prints a combined mushroom weight and adds collagen and theanine; RYZE is organic and cheaper. The full head-to-head is in our Everyday Dose review. Four Sigmatic is the other name people compare, and it goes the other way: closer to a regular coffee's caffeine, with lion's mane and chaga, in a ground-coffee and instant range; see the Four Sigmatic comparison. Against BodyBrain, which is a dosed nootropic coffee, RYZE is the softer, cheaper cup; that comparison is in the BodyBrain review.

Who should pick which

Pick RYZE if you are trying to drink less caffeine and want a creamy, no-sugar instant that tastes fine cold, at a dollar or so a cup, and you are buying it for that rather than for the mushrooms. It does that job well. Pick the dark roast if you want RYZE but find the medium roast too soft.

Skip RYZE if you drink coffee for the lift; you will drink two to reach one coffee's caffeine and pay for both. Skip it if you want a specific dose of a specific mushroom; buy a lion's mane or cordyceps supplement that prints its grams and drink whatever coffee you like. Skip it if ashwagandha or maca is the point; it has neither.

Pick Alphacino if you want one real coffee's caffeine, paired with theanine, and the men's-health stack at printed doses: 600 mg of KSM-66, 224 mg of black maca, 500 mg of lion's mane and the vitamin D. It costs 17 cents a cup more than RYZE at list and carries a 60-day guarantee instead of 30.

Where Alphacino fits

We do not sell six mushrooms, and we say so. Alphacino carries one, lion's mane, at a printed 500 mg of fruiting-body extract, and spends the rest of the scoop on ingredients with human trials at doses a coffee can reach: 600 mg of KSM-66 ashwagandha, the dose in the stress trial²²; 100 mg of L-theanine with 100 mg of caffeine, the pairing in the attention trial²¹; plus 224 mg of black maca, 50 mg of S7 and 83.3 mcg of vitamin D, every figure on the jar²³. It is $49.97 for 30 servings with a 60-day money-back guarantee. See the product page for the full Supplement Facts panel.

Frequently asked questions

Is RYZE mushroom coffee legit?

Yes. It is a real Boston company with a complete ingredient list, organic blends, a 30-day money-back guarantee, free US shipping and a subscription you can pause or cancel. The fair criticism is that it does not print per-mushroom doses and its benefit claims lean on trials that used grams of a single mushroom a day.

How much caffeine is in RYZE mushroom coffee?

48 mg a serving in the medium roast, by the figure quoted on the brand's own site, about half an 8 oz brewed coffee. It is not caffeine free. The dark roast is stronger; the current listing prints no number, and the listing read on 6 September 2026 gave 80 to 90 mg.

What are the ingredients in RYZE coffee?

Organic instant arabica coffee, an organic blend of six mushrooms (lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, shiitake, turkey tail and king trumpet), coconut milk and MCT oil, with no sugar. The amount of each mushroom is not printed.

Does RYZE have ashwagandha?

No. None of the hundred products in RYZE's feed on 26 September 2026 lists ashwagandha, collagen or peptides. RYZE is coffee, mushrooms, coconut and MCT.

What are the side effects of RYZE?

For most people, none beyond mild caffeine effects. The common complaint is loose stools in the first week, which comes from the MCT oil and is dose-related. There is no chaga in it, so the kidney concern attached to some rivals does not apply, and nothing in it shows on a drug test.

Does RYZE break a fast?

Strictly, yes: coconut milk and MCT oil are calories. A black coffee with nothing in it is the only mushroom coffee that holds a fast.

Is RYZE worth it?

At $1.50 a cup at list, or under a dollar on its frequent sales, it is fair value for a mild, creamy, no-sugar coffee. It is poor value if you drink coffee for the caffeine, because you will need two, and it is the wrong product if you want a dosed mushroom or ashwagandha.

Sources

1. RYZE Superfoods. Product listings (Mushroom Coffee 30 Servings, Mushroom Coffee Dark Roast 30 Servings, Mushroom Coffee 90 Servings, Starter Kits, Ritual Sets, creamers, matcha and cocoa) and the Our Story page, as read from the store's public product feed and pages on 26 September 2026; the ingredient deck and the dark roast caffeine figure as read from the coffee listing on 6 September 2026; the 48 mg figure as quoted from two dietitians on the brand's Our Story page. ryzesuperfoods.com
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23. Alphacino. Supplement Facts panel, Alphacino Premium Mushroom Coffee, as printed on the jar and shown on the product page, read 26 September 2026. alphacino.com