Your goal
Building muscle
Here's the honest truth up front: no injectable peptide is a clean, proven muscle-builder in healthy people, and none comes close to what hard training and enough protein do. The real human science sits with the growth-hormone drugs and one myostatin blocker, and even those mostly shift your body toward more lean mass and less fat rather than pack on size. Almost everything else sold for 'gains' has only ever been tested in animals.
What actually works
2The strongest real evidence for this goal.
HGH (Somatropin)
ModerateThe one growth-hormone drug with real human proof it shifts your body toward more lean mass and less fat, though in healthy people the gains are partly water and its use here is off-label and risky.
ACE-031
ModerateIn human trials it blocked the body's natural brake on muscle and directly added lean muscle mass, but its maker halted development over side effects like nosebleeds and bleeding gums.
Promising, still unproven
3Interesting early signals — not proven yet.
Tesamorelin
ModerateAn approved growth-hormone booster that keeps muscle quality up, but it's really a belly-fat drug and not a proven way to add size.
Ipamorelin
EmergingReliably triggers a clean pulse of your own growth hormone in people, but there's no real proof that turns into extra muscle.
CJC-1295
EmergingKeeps growth hormone and IGF-1 raised for days after a single shot, yet the muscle payoff so far is just user reports, not trials.
Mostly hype — be skeptical
6Lots of buzz, little human proof. Tread carefully.
Follistatin
EarlyBlocks the same muscle-limiting signal as ACE-031, but has only ever grown muscle in animals.
MGF
EarlyA muscle-repair fragment people inject for recovery that, like PEG-MGF and IGF-1 DES, has never been tested in a human trial.
IGF-1 LR3
EarlyA longer-lasting lab copy of IGF-1 studied only in animals and lab dishes, with no approved human use.
Sermorelin
EarlyA real growth-hormone booster with decades of medical history, but no solid proof it builds muscle, same as GHRP-2 and hexarelin.
BPC-157
EarlyPopular for healing tendons and muscle tears alongside TB-500, but it's about recovery, not adding muscle, and the proof is mostly from animals.
MOTS-c
EarlyMarketed as 'exercise in a shot' for metabolism, but like SLU-PP-332, BAM15 and 5-Amino-1MQ it's only been tested in animals and cell dishes.
The honest bottom line
The basics still beat every peptide on this page: hard training, enough protein, and sleep. The few options with real human data carry real risks and aren't magic, and everything else is hype until human trials say otherwise.
How to read the strength meter