TLDR
ParaGuard is one bottle: a ten-herb liquid blend built on black walnut, wormwood and clove, taken for 10 or 30 days, and it costs about a third of ParaFy. ParaFy is a four-part kit: the same core herbs plus hawthorn and garlic, with separate drainage, heavy-metal and binder products, cleared for ages three and up. If you want a simple, cheap first cleanse, ParaGuard does the job. If you want the drainage and binding steps built in rather than bolted on, that’s what ParaFy is for.
Below: the ingredient lists side by side, dosing and duration, what each costs per 30 days, where each one wins, and who each one suits.
Why This Comparison Keeps Coming Up
Search for a herbal parasite cleanse and these two names come up more than almost any others. One is the widely stocked, Amazon-friendly option that has been around for years. The other is a newer kit with a bigger price and a longer ingredient list.
They look like they’re competing for the same job. They’re not, quite. And that’s the useful thing to understand before you buy either.
What Each One Actually Is
ParaGuard, made by Zahler, is a single 4 oz (118 ml) liquid. Ten herbs in a proprietary blend, 77 mg per 1 ml serving, suspended in vegetable glycerin and water. You take 30 drops three times a day, for ten days as a mild course or thirty days as an intensive one. There’s also a softgel version.
ParaFy, from RogersHood Apothecary, is a kit of four products. A five-herb antiparasitic tincture (also called ParaFy), a drainage tincture called Sustain, a heavy-metal tincture called Metal Flush, and a binder capsule called Cinnabin. You take 15 drops of each of the three tinctures three times a day before meals, plus one Cinnabin capsule morning or night, for 30 days.
So one is a product. The other is a protocol. That difference explains almost everything else on this page.
The Ingredients, Side by Side
Here’s where they overlap, and where they don’t.
| Ingredient | ParaGuard | ParaFy Kit | What it’s there for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black walnut hull | Yes | Yes | Adult-stage organisms (traditional) |
| Wormwood | Yes | Yes | Larval stages, bitter digestive support |
| Clove | Yes | Yes | Eggs (traditional), gas and bloating |
| Garlic | Yes | Yes | Antimicrobial, biofilm |
| Hawthorn berry | No | Yes | Circulation and drainage support |
| Pumpkin seed | Yes | No | Traditional against tapeworm |
| Oregano leaf oil | Yes | No | Broad antimicrobial |
| Fennel, peppermint | Yes | Peppermint only (in Sustain) | Carminatives, ease cramping and gas |
| Marshmallow root, slippery elm | Yes | No | Soothing mucilage for the gut lining |
| Usnea, Oregon grape root | No | Yes (Sustain) | Lymph and liver drainage |
| Burdock, dandelion, cilantro, white willow, lungwort | No | Yes (Metal Flush) | Heavy-metal and liver support |
| Activated charcoal, Ceylon cinnamon | No | Yes (Cinnabin) | Binder for what the herbs release |
Read the top four rows first. Both products are built on the same trio, black walnut hull, wormwood and clove, with garlic alongside. If you want the reasoning behind those three, it’s laid out in the guide to how black walnut, wormwood and clove work together.
Then look at the rest. ParaGuard adds herbs that soothe the gut while the bitters do their work: fennel, peppermint, marshmallow root, slippery elm. That’s a thoughtful choice for a single bottle, because those are the herbs that make a cleanse more comfortable to take.
ParaFy goes a different way. Instead of more herbs in the same bottle, it puts the support into separate products with separate jobs. Drainage in one. Metals in another. A binder in a capsule. That’s not better or worse on paper. It’s a different theory of what a cleanse is.
The Proprietary Blend Question
Worth being straight about this on both sides.
ParaGuard lists its ten herbs as one proprietary blend of 77 mg per serving. Ten herbs sharing 77 mg means each is present in a small amount, and you can’t see how the blend is split. That’s normal for the category, but it does mean you’re trusting the formulator rather than reading the numbers.
ParaFy lists every herb in every bottle by name and order, but it doesn’t give milligram amounts either. It’s a tincture, so the strength is in the extraction rather than a per-herb weight. More transparent on what’s in it. Not more transparent on how much.
Neither product has a clinical trial behind it. That’s true of almost every herbal parasite formula on the market, and it’s worth knowing before you read anyone’s claims, including ours.
Dosing and Duration
| ParaGuard | ParaFy Kit | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | One 4 oz liquid (or softgels) | Three tinctures plus one capsule |
| Daily routine | 30 drops, three times a day | 15 drops of each of three tinctures, three times a day before meals, plus one Cinnabin capsule morning or night |
| Length | 10 days (mild) or 30 days (intensive) | 30 days |
| Doses per day | 3 | 10 (9 tincture doses plus 1 capsule) |
| Binder included | No | Yes |
| Age | Adult dosing; no children’s guidance on the label | Ages 3 and up |
| Avoid if | Pregnant or nursing | Pregnant or breastfeeding, on blood thinners or chemotherapy, under 3 |
Be honest with yourself about the routine. Three doses a day from one bottle is easy to keep up. Nine tincture doses plus a capsule, spaced around meals, is a real commitment. Plenty of people manage it. Plenty of people also buy the bigger kit, lose the rhythm by week two and quietly stop. The cleanse you finish beats the cleanse you don’t.
What Each Costs for 30 Days
ParaGuard’s 4 oz bottle is around $50 and holds roughly 118 servings. At 90 drops a day, that’s about 39 days, so a 30-day course works out near $38, and the 10-day mild course uses a quarter of a bottle.
ParaFy is $100 for the full 30-day kit, or $85 on subscription. Four products, one purchase.
So ParaGuard is roughly a third of the price for the antiparasitic herbs alone. If you added a separate binder, a drainage tincture and something for heavy metals to a ParaGuard cleanse, you’d land somewhere near the ParaFy price. Whether you want those things is the actual question.
Where ParaGuard Wins
Price. Not close.
Simplicity. One bottle, one dropper, three times a day. Nothing to sequence.
Availability. Stocked almost everywhere, including Amazon, with a softgel option if you hate the taste of tinctures.
The soothing herbs. Marshmallow root and slippery elm coat an irritated gut lining. Fennel and peppermint calm cramping. For someone whose stomach reacts badly to bitters, that’s a genuine advantage of having them in the same bottle.
A short course option. Ten days is an easy first step if you’re unsure.
Where ParaFy Wins
The binder is in the box. This is the big one. What the herbs disturb has to leave your body, and a binder is how it gets carried out rather than reabsorbed. Most of what people call die-off is really the lack of one. ParaGuard leaves you to buy it separately and work out the timing yourself.
Drainage is a step, not a hope. Sustain (usnea, Oregon grape root, peppermint) and Metal Flush (burdock, dandelion, cilantro, white willow, lungwort) are there to keep liver, lymph and bowels moving while the antiparasitic herbs work. That’s the layered approach explained in the guide to how to do a parasite cleanse at home, built in.
Ages three and up. ParaGuard’s label gives adult dosing and no guidance for children. ParaFy states a floor of three, which matters if you’re cleansing a household. The kids’ guide covers what changes for younger children.
Hawthorn. A small thing, but it’s the herb that makes the ParaFy tincture a five-herb formula rather than the standard four, and it’s there for circulation and drainage rather than killing anything. The full breakdown is in what’s actually in the ParaFy Kit.
You can see every herb. No proprietary blend hiding the split.
Want the Full ParaFy Breakdown First?
Every product in the kit, every herb, what it’s for and how the 30 days are sequenced.
Read the ParaFy Kit ReviewWho Each One Suits
ParaGuard makes sense if you’re doing a first, light cleanse and don’t want to spend much. If you already own a binder and know how to space it. If a simple routine is the difference between finishing and not. Or if a sensitive stomach means you want the soothing herbs mixed in.
ParaFy makes sense if you’ve done a cleanse before and felt awful, because that usually means drainage and binding were missing. If you’re cleansing children alongside yourself. If you’d rather have the whole structure handed to you than assemble it. Or if you want the Amish-style herbal tradition without making the tincture yourself.
Neither makes sense if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, or you have a diagnosed infection that a doctor should be treating. Herbs are for maintenance, not for replacing a prescription. The herbal vs pharmaceutical dewormer guide draws that line properly.
Can You Combine Them?
People ask. The honest answer is that you’d be doubling up on the same four core herbs for no clear gain, and pushing your wormwood intake higher than either label intends.
What does make sense is using ParaGuard with a separate binder and some attention to drainage pathways. That gets you a fair way toward what the kit does, at a lower price, with more effort on your side.
If You Decide on ParaFy
The kit is sold through RogersHood Apothecary. Read the timing, follow the two-hour gap between Cinnabin and everything else, and keep your bowels moving daily. The full protocol guide walks the month week by week.
Ready to Start?
The ParaFy Kit: five-herb tincture, drainage, heavy-metal support and a binder, sequenced over 30 days.
View the ParaFy KitThe Bottom Line
Same core herbs. Different idea of what a cleanse is. ParaGuard is the herbs in one bottle, cheap and simple. ParaFy is the herbs plus the exit routes, at three times the price.
If you take one thing from this page, take the binder. Whichever bottle you choose, that’s the step that decides how the month feels.
And that’s worth knowing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ParaGuard the same as ParaFy?
No. They share four core herbs, black walnut hull, wormwood, clove and garlic, but ParaGuard is a single ten-herb liquid and ParaFy is a four-product kit that adds hawthorn to the tincture and includes separate drainage, heavy-metal and binder products. One is a bottle, the other is a protocol.
Which is cheaper, ParaFy or ParaGuard?
ParaGuard, by a wide margin. A 4 oz bottle is around $50 and covers about 39 days at the full dose, so a 30-day course is near $38. ParaFy is $100 for the 30-day kit, or $85 on subscription. The gap narrows if you add a binder and drainage support to a ParaGuard cleanse.
Does ParaGuard include a binder?
No. It’s the antiparasitic and soothing herbs only. If you use it, plan a separate binder such as activated charcoal or bentonite clay, taken two hours away from the drops, and keep your bowels moving daily. ParaFy includes its binder, Cinnabin, in the kit.
Can children take ParaGuard or ParaFy?
ParaFy states it’s suitable from age three. ParaGuard’s label gives adult dosing and no children’s guidance, so treat it as adults-only unless a practitioner says otherwise. Children under three should not take either. See the kids’ guide on this site for what changes for younger children.
How long does each one take?
ParaGuard offers a 10-day mild course or a 30-day intensive one, both at 30 drops three times a day. ParaFy is a fixed 30-day protocol with nine tincture doses and one capsule a day. Thirty days covers at least one reproductive cycle of the most common intestinal parasites, which is why both land there.
Is ParaFy worth the extra money?
It depends what you’re paying for. If you only want the antiparasitic herbs, no, ParaGuard has them cheaper. If you want drainage, heavy-metal support and a binder sequenced for you, and a formula cleared for children over three, then you’re paying for structure rather than herbs, and that’s where the money goes.
Which one has more evidence behind it?
Neither has a clinical trial. Both rely on the same body of laboratory and traditional evidence for black walnut, wormwood and clove. Anyone who tells you one is proven and the other isn’t is selling something.
