Cardarine vs Ostarine
Sold side by side and constantly confused. Cardarine is not a SARM at all — different receptor, different class, and a completely different reason it never became a drug.
Cardarine
GW-501516, endurobol
Not a SARM but a PPARδ agonist — a real mechanism and a real 12-week human lipid signal, ended by two-year rodent carcinogenicity findings, with no human endurance trial ever run to weigh against it.
Full Cardarine evidence reviewOstarine
Enobosarm, MK-2866, GTx-024
Reliably adds lean body mass and just as reliably fails to improve physical function — the two phase 3 POWER trials found both, which is why no regulator has ever approved it.
Full Ostarine evidence reviewSide by side
| Cardarine | Ostarine | |
|---|---|---|
| Marketed for | Endurance and 'exercise in a pill', fat loss, HDL/triglycerides | Muscle growth, recomposition, muscle preservation while cutting or on a GLP-1 |
| Evidence grade | Preclinical / minimal | Clinical data |
| Family | Metabolic / AMPK | Hormonal |
| Key human source | Olson 2012 phase 2, Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol | POWER phase 3 programme, Lancet Oncol 2013 |
marks a row where the two differ. Evidence grades come from our evidence matrix, which grades each molecule on the human data for the use it is marketed for.
Our verdict
The correction is the whole page: cardarine is not a SARM. Ostarine (enobosarm) is an actual selective androgen receptor modulator, taken through two phase 3 trials in 651 lung-cancer patients where it beat placebo on lean body mass in both and on physical function in neither; cardarine is a PPARδ agonist with no androgen-receptor activity at all, which means it neither suppresses the testosterone axis nor builds muscle through it. Its development ended for a reason that has no SARM analogue — GlaxoSmithKline discontinued the programme after two-year rodent carcinogenicity studies linked the drug to widespread tumour development — and no human trial has ever measured endurance, VO₂ max or time-trial performance on cardarine at any dose; its only real human result is a lipid one, up to 16.9% higher HDL cholesterol and 16.9% lower triglycerides over twelve weeks in 268 patients, which is also the longest human exposure on record. Neither is approved anywhere, they sit in different sections of the WADA Prohibited List, and the famous mouse that ran 44% further without training was on AICAR, a different drug in the same paper.
Cardarine fits if
Cardarine is the one to read if you want to see how a compound gets shelved alongside drugs it shares no mechanism with, and why the reason it is not a medicine is a carcinogenicity finding rather than a failed efficacy trial.
Ostarine fits if
Ostarine is the one to read if the androgen-receptor question is what you actually meant, since it is the SARM taken furthest into phase 3 and the clearest demonstration that lean mass and physical function come apart.