What to Know Before Your First Modafinil Order

Most of what is written online about modafinil is written for people who have already decided to take it. This page is for the step before that. It covers:

Contents

• what these products are;
• what is actually in our catalogue;
• what prescription-only status means for you as a buyer;
• what arrives in the box and how to check it;
• how payment and delivery work;
• what happens when something goes wrong.

It is deliberately not a guide to taking anything — the reason for that is point 2, and it is the most important point on the page.

1. These Are Prescription Medicines in Most EU Countries

Modafinil and armodafinil are prescription-only medicines (POM) in most EU member states and in the UK. That is the single most important fact about them, and it has practical consequences for anyone ordering online.

What prescription-only status actually means:

• The intended route runs through a doctor. The classification exists because someone qualified is meant to assess whether the medicine is appropriate for a specific person, taking their history, their other medicines and the documented contraindications into account. That assessment is the substance of the rule, not an obstacle in front of it — and it is exactly the step an online order cannot contain.
• It is not the same as a narcotics classification. In most EU member states modafinil is not scheduled as a narcotic, and the restriction attaches to supply and dispensing rather than to possession. “Prescription-only” and “illegal” are two different categories, and reading across from one to the other produces both false alarm and false comfort. Several countries do go further, placing these substances in a controlled or habit-forming category with additional rules; in the United States both are Schedule IV controlled substances.
• The rules are national, not EU-wide. Medicines classification is set country by country, personal-import rules are set country by country, and both are amended over time. See the section before the close.
• Import is a separate question from possession. Whether a consignment may lawfully arrive at your address is decided by your country’s medicines and customs rules, not by our willingness to dispatch it.

The Two Unapproved Compounds in the Catalogue

The two unapproved compounds in the catalogue sit in a different category again, and it is worth being precise about what that difference is. Adrafinil and flmodafinil hold no marketing authorisation anywhere in the European Union.

No regulator has assessed flmodafinil at all, and the one authorisation adrafinil ever held — the French one, under which it was marketed as Olmifon — was withdrawn in 2011 after a re-assessment of the balance of benefit and risk in which reported liver-related adverse reactions were among the concerns recorded.

So neither compound comes with any of the following:

• an approved patient information leaflet;
• a summary of product characteristics;
• an official side-effect list;
• an official contraindication list.

No pharmacovigilance system collects reports about either of them. Neither one shares modafinil’s authorisation, modafinil’s leaflet or modafinil’s assessment by any regulator: an authorisation is granted to a specific product made to a specific specification, and it does not reach across to a chemically related compound.

The absence of a prescription requirement in some countries is therefore not the removal of an obstacle — it is the removal of the assessment and the documentation along with it, and an empty regulatory file is a reason for caution rather than evidence that there is nothing to be cautious about.

2. Quantity, Timing and Suitability Are a Doctor’s Decision

Modafinil is a prescription medicine in most EU countries. The quantity, the timing and whether it is suitable at all are decided by a doctor on the basis of an individual assessment, and the leaflet supplied with the product should be read before use. We do not publish dosing instructions.

Why We Publish No Dosing Instructions

That is a deliberate position rather than an omission. You will not find an amount, a schedule, an administration instruction or a stacking, cycling or switching protocol anywhere on this site, and it is worth being sceptical of shops that offer them.

A vendor has no way of knowing your medical history, what else you take, or whether one of the documented contraindications applies to you. The leaflet in the box does, and a doctor who has actually assessed you does.

NeuroPeak is a shop, not a pharmacy: we hold nobody’s medical history, we assess nobody and we issue no prescriptions, which leaves us with no basis for saying what quantity suits any individual — which is precisely why we do not say it.

Everything below is information about the products and about the order: what they contain, what is printed on them, what can be verified about them, and how they reach you. None of it is instruction.

3. What the Catalogue Actually Contains

Four categories, plus a sample kit. Knowing which is which prevents most of the confusion new customers arrive with.

Modafinil — 200 mg tablets

All four brands below declare 200 mg of modafinil per tablet.

Prices currently start at €2,50 per tablet in the smallest pack and fall as pack size rises — Modalert, for example, runs from €29,00 for 10 tablets (€2,90 each) to €259,00 for 200 tablets (€1,30 each).

Armodafinil — 150 mg and 50 mg tablets

Modafinil is a chiral molecule: it exists in two mirror-image forms designated R and S, and modafinil as manufactured contains equal parts of both. Armodafinil is the same molecule with the R form alone.

That is a description of composition and the reason the numbers on the two kinds of carton differ; it is not a statement about what either substance does in a person, and we publish no conversion between the two strengths.

Adrafinil

Supplied by NeuroPeak Labs in capsules declaring 300 mg each, in a vegetarian HPMC shell, with a declared shelf life of 24 months and the batch number and expiry date printed on the container.

Chemically it is a close relative of modafinil — its chemical name is 2-[(diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl]acetohydroxamic acid — and the two came out of the same French research programme at the Lafon laboratories, adrafinil being the older of the pair.

That is a statement about two molecules and about a research history, and it is the whole of what this page will say about the relationship.

What matters to a buyer is the regulatory position: adrafinil was authorised in France and marketed there as Olmifon, that authorisation ended in 2011, and today the compound holds no marketing authorisation of its own anywhere in the EU. It does not share modafinil’s authorisation, modafinil’s leaflet or modafinil’s assessment by any regulator, and it arrives with no leaflet at all — no approved side-effect list, no contraindication list, no pharmacovigilance.

Adrafinil: Legal Status, Manufacturers and What the Label Says sets the position out in full.

Flmodafinil

Supplied by NeuroPeak Labs as a solution in a 30 mL dropper bottle, with a declared concentration of 50 mg per millilitre, carried in propylene glycol and PEG-400. It is a fluorinated analogue of modafinil, also known as CRL-40,940 and bisfluoromodafinil.

Unlike modafinil and armodafinil it is not an approved medicine in any jurisdiction we are aware of, there are no published controlled human trials of it, and the format the manufacturer supplies it in is a description of the article rather than an instruction from us.

The free sample kit

A tablet of each of the modafinil brands we stock — Modalert, Modvigil, Modaheal and Vilafinil — sent for the cost of shipping only. It exists so first-time customers can see what arrives, how it is packed and what the labelling looks like before placing a full order, which, given that most of this page is about checking what you receive, is a genuinely useful first step.

Two things to be clear about: these are the same prescription-only medicines described in point 1, so everything on this page about classification, personal import, customs and taking medical advice applies to a sample exactly as it applies to a full pack; and the tablets in it are the ordinary catalogue stock, not a selection ranked by anything.

4. Brands in the Same Category Declare the Same Substance

This is the question we are asked most often, so here it is plainly: every 200 mg modafinil brand we list declares the same active substance at the same strength. Modalert, Modvigil, Modaheal and Vilafinil differ by manufacturer, excipients, quality systems, pack size and price. The same applies across the armodafinil brands at a given strength.

What a Bioequivalent Generic Does Not Do

A bioequivalent generic does not take effect sooner, continue longer or arrive more strongly than another product with the same substance at the same declared strength. Reports that one generic is “stronger” or “kicks in faster” than another are common, but they are subjective, unblinded and impossible to separate from expectation — and tables ranking brands or substances by onset, strength or smoothness are marketing rather than pharmacology, which is why this site publishes none.

Earlier versions of several articles here did publish exactly that: brand-versus-brand grids, a modafinil-against-armodafinil table with rows for onset and duration, and comparisons against named prescription medicines from other classes. They were removed on purpose.

The row that wins in a grid like that is dependably the one carrying the better margin, and naming what we now refuse to compare is more useful to you than the grid ever was.

What You Can Actually Verify

What is objectively verifiable is:

• the manufacturer;
• the strength printed on the carton;
• the batch;
• the price per tablet.

So the practical consequence for a first order is: choose on manufacturer and price, and read the strength off the box rather than inferring anything from a price column.

Price per tablet compares cleanly between pack sizes of one product, and between brands only where the printed strength is identical — which is also why we publish no price per milligram anywhere, since that arithmetic would quietly imply that different strengths stand in for one another.

5. What Arrives, and How to Check It

Modafinil and armodafinil ship in the manufacturer’s own sealed packaging: foil blister strips inside the printed carton, with batch number and expiry date exactly as applied at the factory. Nothing is decanted into our own containers, nothing is relabelled, and no blister is cut to make up a quantity. Adrafinil and flmodafinil ship in the sealed container they were packed in, with the batch number and expiry date on the label.

What Is Printed on the Carton

The printed particulars worth finding on a tablet carton:

• Brand name, substance name and strength — for example “Modafinil Tablets IP 200 mg”.
• The pharmacopoeial mark. The suffix IP denotes the Indian Pharmacopoeia, the standard the tablet is manufactured to. It is a manufacturing standard describing how a product is made and tested, and it says nothing about what a tablet does in a person.
• Where a product carries no such mark — adrafinil and flmodafinil do not — we do not imply one, and we do not put a medicines regulator’s name next to any product here. A factory’s registration with a foreign authority is an administrative listing of an establishment, not approval of anything sold from it.
• Manufacturer name and address, and the manufacturing licence number.
• The batch number, repeated on the blister foil so a loose strip is still identifiable.
• Manufacturing date and expiry date, also on the foil.

Batch Checks and the Certificate of Analysis

Every batch arriving at our EU warehouse is sampled and sent for independent laboratory analysis before it is listed, and the Certificate of Analysis for that batch is available to download.

The check available to you takes about a minute:

1. confirm the outer seal was intact;
2. find the batch number on the carton;
3. confirm the same number is on the foil;
4. check the expiry date on both;
5. then match the batch number to the certificate.

What the certificate states is the identity of the active substance and that the tablet contains the amount declared on the label.

That is worth having, and it is also the limit of it. A Certificate of Analysis is a document about the contents of a pack. It is not an approval, not a safety assessment for your circumstances, and not evidence about an outcome for any person. A certificate that does not name your batch is not doing the job at all, and any seller who presents one as proof that a product will suit you is stretching it well past what it says.

6. What the Product Information Covers — and What Has No Leaflet at All

Here is a distinction worth more to a first-time buyer than almost anything else on this page. Modafinil and armodafinil are authorised as substances in EU member states. The tablets listed here are not. They are generics manufactured in India to the Indian Pharmacopoeia, they hold no EU marketing authorisation of their own, no agency in the Union has assessed them, and what is packed in the carton is the manufacturer’s own leaflet rather than a regulator-approved one.

A shop that describes its stock as authorised medicines, or the paper in the box as a regulator-approved leaflet, is lending that stock an authority it does not have.

Where the Regulator-Agreed Documents Live

The regulator-agreed documents are published separately, they are free, and they are the ones to read. Every authorised product has a summary of product characteristics written for prescribers and a patient information leaflet written for the person taking it, both agreed with the agency that authorised it.

Look them up by substance name in a national medicines register:

• CBG-MEB in the Netherlands;
• BfArM in Germany;
• ANSM in France;
• AEMPS in Spain;
• AIFA in Italy;
• URPL in Poland;
• SÚKL in Czechia;
• the MHRA in the United Kingdom.

Those documents are what governs. They carry the complete list of reported effects with their frequencies, the contraindications, the interactions and the warnings, and they take precedence over anything summarised here.

We relay some of it below and grade none of it: nothing here is described as mild, nothing is softened with a reassuring adjective, and nothing is confined to “sensitive people” — that phrasing tells everybody else it will not happen to them, and nobody knows that.

Where a manufacturer’s leaflet differs from the published document, a pharmacist is the person to ask which one applies to the pack in your hand.

Reported Effects and the Urgent-Help List

Reported in the published leaflet: headache, nausea, dry mouth, reduced appetite, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, anxiety and nervousness, with the complete list and the frequencies in the published document rather than here.

Stop and seek urgent medical help if any of the following occur:

• a skin rash, blistering, or ulceration of the mouth or eyes;
• swelling of the face or throat;
• difficulty breathing;
• fever;
• chest pain;
• an irregular heartbeat;
• hallucinations, agitation, confusion, depression or thoughts of self-harm.

A rash can be the first sign of a serious reaction and is a reason to stop and get medical attention, not to wait and see. Severe skin reactions are why these medicines carry a specific warning in several jurisdictions, and the rule about a rash is unconditional. If any other reaction persists, stop and contact a doctor — we do not offer workarounds for side effects.

Hormonal contraception. This is the one to raise before you order rather than after. The published product information documents that modafinil reduces the effectiveness of hormonal contraception, and it covers every hormonal form:

• combined pills;
• progestogen-only pills;
• patches;
• implants;
• vaginal rings;
• hormonal intrauterine coils.

Anyone relying on hormonal contraception must agree additional or alternative contraception with a doctor or pharmacist before use, and must raise it with them again when stopping rather than assuming the question ends with the last tablet. It is the most under-communicated fact in this whole category and its consequences cannot be undone.

Contraindications and cautions. These medicines are contraindicated in anyone with a known hypersensitivity to modafinil or armodafinil. Medical advice is essential before use by:

• anyone who is pregnant, may become pregnant or is breastfeeding;
• anyone with a heart condition or high blood pressure;
• anyone with impaired liver or kidney function;
• anyone with a history of psychiatric illness;
• anyone taking other medicines, because interactions are possible.

Do not combine or alternate medicines without professional advice.

Storage. Keep everything in its original packaging at normal room temperature, dry, away from direct light and out of the sight and reach of children — which matters particularly for a dropper bottle of solution, since a clear liquid carries no blister, no tablet and no visual cue that it is anything other than an ordinary liquid. Do not use any product after the expiry date printed on the pack.

Adrafinil and Flmodafinil: No Approved Documents

Adrafinil and flmodafinil have none of the above. There is no regulator-approved leaflet for either, no official side-effect list, no official contraindication list and no approved warnings, because no medicines authority has assessed them. That absence is a reason to take medical advice before use, not a reassurance.

The urgent-help list above applies as a general safety instruction for any reaction of that kind, and anyone taking any other medicine at all, anyone pregnant or breastfeeding, and anyone with a heart condition, high blood pressure, impaired liver or kidney function or a history of psychiatric illness should speak to a doctor or pharmacist before use.

For adrafinil specifically, the liver-related concerns recorded when the Olmifon authorisation was withdrawn belong in that conversation; what should follow from them is a clinical judgement, and this page issues no monitoring, testing or duration guidance of any kind.

Which Documents Exist for What

7. Paying, Shipping and What Happens If a Parcel Does Not Arrive

Payment

The store currently accepts Bitcoin, and paying in Bitcoin applies a 20% discount to the whole order automatically at checkout — there is no coupon code to enter. The euro price is locked at the exchange rate at the time of the order.

No card or online-banking credentials are entered on NeuroPeak, and checkout traffic is protected with TLS encryption. Bitcoin transactions are visible on the public network, which is a property of the payment method rather than a claim on our part.

If you have not used it before, budget a little time for it on a first order: it is the step that most often delays a first purchase. A regulated exchange or a card on-ramp will sell you the amount you need, and card on-ramps generally work without creating a full exchange account.

Shipping

• Dispatch from an EU warehouse within 24 to 48 hours of payment confirmation.
• Tracked delivery end to end, with the tracking number emailed on handover to the carrier. Typically 3 to 7 business days within the EU.
• Shipping cost: €4.95 to the Netherlands, €6.95 to Belgium and Germany, €9.95 to the rest of the EU and to the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. Free on orders over €150.
• Plain outer packaging. A plain box or padded envelope with a neutral sender reference. No product names, no pharmacy wording and no NeuroPeak branding on the outside; sealed opaque inner packaging inside it.
• The free sample kit is available on a first order for the cost of shipping only.

If it does not arrive

Tracking that has not updated for one to three days is ordinary, particularly over a weekend or while a parcel crosses between postal zones. If there has been no movement for five business days from the last scan, contact us with your order number and we will take it up with the carrier.

If a tracked shipment has not arrived within the estimated delivery window plus a five-business-day grace period, you choose a free reshipment or a full refund, after the carrier record has been checked.

If a parcel is returned to us after a carrier’s hold period expired, contact us and we will reship it. Delivery addresses can be corrected before dispatch but not after a tracking number has been issued, so check the address at checkout.

One thing that guarantee is not: a statement about whether the import is lawful where you live. It is a commercial undertaking about a parcel that does not arrive, and nothing more. Full terms are on the shipping page.

Before You Order: Check the Rules Where You Live

This one is yours, and no shop can do it for you. The legal status of these compounds — and, separately, the treatment of medicines ordered for personal use — differs from one country to the next and changes over time.

Several member states do not permit prescription medicines to be received by post for personal use at all, whatever the quantity, and thresholds circulating online are not the law. A customs authority may inspect, detain, refuse entry to or destroy a consignment and write to the addressee about it.

A vendor’s willingness to ship to an address is a commercial decision, not a legal opinion about your situation.

Check the current position with your national medicines agency and your customs authority before ordering. If you are not sure how to read it, a pharmacist or a legal source local to you is the right place to ask, and a pharmacist will usually answer a question of this kind for free. Country guides are published for the Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, Czechia, Italy and Spain, and they are pointers to a national authority rather than the authority.

Competitive Sport

Athletes have a further consideration that has nothing to do with medicines law: modafinil, armodafinil and adrafinil are all named on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List among stimulants, and the stimulant class is drafted to cover substances of similar chemical structure. Holding a prescription does not by itself make a substance permitted in competition — check with your own anti-doping authority.

Common First-Order Questions

Do I need a prescription to order?

Modafinil and armodafinil are prescription-only medicines in most EU countries and in the UK, and the lawful route runs through a doctor and a pharmacy. What we can tell you is what the classification is and where to verify it; what we cannot do is assess you, which is the thing a prescription is actually for.

Which brand should I start with?

Choose on manufacturer and price, because those are the two things that genuinely differ between brands declaring the same substance at the same strength. We will not rank them by how they are said to feel, and the grids that used to appear on this site doing exactly that have been removed.

How much does a tablet cost?

Price per tablet falls as pack size rises. Modafinil currently starts at €2,50 per tablet in the smallest pack, and Modalert runs down to €1,30 per tablet in a pack of 200. Paying in Bitcoin takes 20% off the whole order. Live prices are on the product and category pages.

What exactly arrives in the box?

Sealed manufacturer cartons with intact foil blisters for the tablets, or the sealed original container for adrafinil and flmodafinil, inside opaque inner packaging inside a plain outer box with a neutral sender reference. The batch number and expiry date are on the pack, and the tablet cartons contain the manufacturer’s own leaflet.

That leaflet is not a regulator-approved document: the tablets are Indian-Pharmacopoeia generics without an EU marketing authorisation, and the product information agreed by regulators for the authorised modafinil and armodafinil medicines is published separately in the national medicines registers, free for anyone to look up.

How do I check the batch?

Find the batch number on the carton, confirm the same number is on the blister foil, check the expiry date on both, then obtain the Certificate of Analysis for that batch and confirm the numbers match. The certificate confirms the identity of the active substance and the declared content — and nothing beyond that.

How long does delivery take, and what if it does not arrive?

Dispatch within 24 to 48 hours, then typically 3 to 7 business days tracked within the EU. If a tracked shipment has not arrived within the estimated window plus a five-business-day grace period, contact us with your order number: after the carrier record is checked, you choose a free reshipment or a full refund.

Why will you not tell me how much to take?

Because we are a shop and not a pharmacy. We hold nobody’s medical history, we assess nobody and we issue no prescriptions, so we have no basis for saying what quantity suits any individual. That question belongs with a doctor or pharmacist, with the leaflet in front of them — and a website that answers it is guessing about you.

Ready to Order?

Many first orders begin with the NeuroPeak Starter Kit — a tablet of each of the modafinil brands we stock, so you can see exactly what arrives, how it is packed and what the labelling looks like before committing to a full order.

You pay shipping only, and everything on this page applies to it: these are prescription-only medicines in most EU countries, the same national import rules govern a sample as govern a full pack, and the same carton and batch checks are worth doing on it.

From there, the modafinil and armodafinil category pages carry the current listings and live prices, and Modafinil in 2026: Legal Status, Brands and What the Carton Says goes deeper on regulatory status, manufacturers and batch checking.

Questions before you order? Our FAQ page covers legality, shipping, payment and lab testing, or contact us directly — we respond within 24 hours.

The one thing we cannot answer is how much to take or when. That conversation belongs with a doctor, and with the leaflet in the box.

NeuroPeak is a shop, not a pharmacy, and this article is not medical advice. Modafinil and armodafinil are prescription-only medicines in most EU countries and controlled substances in several; adrafinil and flmodafinil hold no marketing authorisation in the European Union and arrive with no approved patient information leaflet. Import, possession and personal-use rules vary between countries and are amended from time to time — check the rules in force at your delivery address before ordering, and consult a qualified healthcare professional before use.