Noopept vs. Modafinil (or Adrafinil): Which Is Better?
Noopept and Modafinil are nootropics that are hot right now. Both claim to improve memory retention specifically and have a smattering of other overlapping effects.
But which should you add to your stack, and which will give you greater effects?
For what it’s worth, I’ve asked the same question in the past. I’ve tried Modafinil as well as Noopept separately, and ultimately stuck with Noopept because I didn’t react well to Modafinil—but your mileage may vary.
In this article, I’ll look at Noopept vs. Modafinil and give you pros and cons to look at so that you can make your decision about which to include in your stack.
Noopept
Noopept is an OTC anti-amnestic and anxiolytic nootropic that is frequently compared to piracetam despite being chemically unrelated.
Noopept doesn’t have a long history of human use, though it has been studied scientifically going back as early as 1999.
Noopept was invented in Russia, where it is used to help people recover from brain damage and cognitive deficits.
My experience with Noopept mirrors that of many others: it’s a subtle nootropic that can pack a lot into a small dose and leave you sharper than normal for a couple of hours.
Noopept isn’t quite like a switch for putting me “in the zone,” but it does promote being a bit more effective at writing and arguing.
Noopept is also much loved for its ability to improve your memory retention, which many users consider a core feature.
A few users even use Noopept to enhance lucid and vivid dreaming, which is cool.
You can take Noopept right before sleep, and it typically won’t keep you up. Some users are stimulated by Noopept more than they are relaxed, so be sure to do a test well before bedtime or you might end up awake all night.
Noopept’s side effects are manageable, and typically similar to those of placebo. As with all psychoactive substances, Noopept’s side effects are sometimes the inverse of its purported positive effects.
If you keep your Noopept dosage low, you’re much less likely to experience side effects.
Modafinil
Modafinil is a prescription drug which promotes wakefulness. Many users report that Modafinil, or its related drug, Adrafinil, can also help with motor reflex control, focus, and memory retention.
My experience with Modafinil isn’t so great: it gave me sleepiness and brain fog to hell and back. Unfortunately, it seems like there are some users who have a certain genetic profile which leads to Modafinil acting in the opposite way as intended.
Don’t let that stop you from trying it out.
You should probably supplement choline at the same time as you use Modafinil because it’s thought that it taxes the body’s choline reserves more heavily than is normal.
If you don’t have a choline supplement nearby (tsk, tsk, every nootropic user needs to have choline on hand), eating a few eggs will do the trick just fine. Just be sure to wait an hour or so until dosing after eating.
Modafinil gets a lot of love for allowing people to stay up late studying and not miss the sleep, and it’s also known for having few side effects. In most users, modafinil will only lead to minor anxiety, thirst, and muscle tension.
These side effects scale cleanly with dosage, although dosing modafinil is much easier than other nootropics because it’s pressed into uniform pills.
This raises an issue with modafinil, however: you need a prescription or a shady foreign connection to get ahold of it. Modafinil is a scheduled drug in the US, though some of its biosimilars are not. The effective embargo makes modafinil quite pricey, in my experience.
Which is Better?
You’ll have to try both nootropics to figure out which one is the best for you specifically.
My take is that Noopept is probably the better option because it’s cheaper and easier to get a hold of than modafinil, but that’s not the end-all and be-all.
If you’re interested in staying up late, modafinil can offer you the wakefulness that Noopept simply can’t. Modafinil also has a much longer half-life than Noopept, so you won’t need to re-dose it like you would with Noopept.
Modafinil has a longer and more-studied history of use than Noopept does, which means that its safety profile is better understood, though so far Noopept has been found very safe.
I will say that you’re more likely to experience weird side effects of modafinil—like your pee smelling weird—than on Noopept.
Modafinil’s use cases and alternative uses are pretty well defined, but Noopept’s keep expanding.
There’s some evidence which suggests Noopept could even bolster the brain’s immune system for a long period after ingestion.
Double-stacking?
One of the other factors which you should consider when picking between modafinil and Noopept is the “stackability” of each.
Modafinil can be a bit hard on your liver, and probably shouldn’t be stacked with an extensive array of nootropics. Noopept, on the other hand, plays just fine with most other things that you might want to stack.
There’s also the question of using the two simultaneously. I don’t recommend using modafinil and Noopept together because they likely interact with the same neural systems, and could cause unwanted side effects.
If you’re feeling brave, rest assured that neither of the two has serious side effects when taken in isolation and that Noopept will clear from your system relatively quickly.
Final thoughts
I hope that this article has helped you to make up your mind about whether to supplement modafinil or Noopept.
Here’s a quick summary of their major differences:
- Modafinil isn’t OTC
- You’ll want to take a choline supplement with your modafinil
- Noopept is shorter acting than modafinil
- Modafinil lets you stay awake for longer
Like all nootropics, you don’t know how each of these will affect you until you add them to your stack and try them out for yourself.
Good luck with your experiments!