How much

How much melatonin should I take?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20266 sources

Start at 0.5 to 1 mg. About 0.3 mg is enough to match your own body’s peak on a normal night, 3 mg is plenty for most people, and 5 mg is the top, since jet lag trials found nothing more above it.

Store shelves are stacked with 5 and 10 mg bottles, so those look like the normal doses, and when one doesn’t seem to work, the next step up looks like the fix. Often the hour or the room is the real problem, and the bigger dose mostly buys a longer tail into the morning.

We’d take the smallest dose that works, at the right hour. Start at 0.5 to 1 mg, give it two weeks, and only then try more, stopping at 5 mg.

For moving your body clock, melatonin works like a doorbell. Once it’s loud enough to hear, ringing it harder doesn’t get anyone to the door faster.

The dose by job

If you’re under 18, pregnant or breastfeeding, or take a prescription medicine every day, none of these doses are for you. Start with the children’s answer, the pregnancy answer or the medicines answer.

Why so low?

Your own melatonin peaks at night at a level that a tiny tablet can match. In a 1994 study at MIT, 0.1 and 0.3 mg doses gave peaks inside the normal range of a person’s own night, and the amount in the blood rose in step with the dose. A 10 mg tablet is about 33 times that.

For moving your clock, more didn’t help. In a 2010 Chicago lab study, 0.5 mg moved the body clock about as far as 3 mg did, as long as each was taken at its own best hour. For older adults with poor sleep, 0.3 mg restored their sleep in a 2001 trial, and 3 mg helped too but kept melatonin raised into daylight.

What about the trials that found 4 mg worked best?

A 2024 analysis of 26 trials found the effect on falling asleep grew with the dose up to about 4 mg a day, and the authors suggested about 4 mg, 3 hours before bed. That’s a fair case for going up if a small dose does nothing for you after two weeks at the right hour. We still start low, because 0.5 mg moved the clock as far as 3 mg, older adults did well on 0.3 mg, and every extra milligram stays in your blood longer. Jet lag trials found 5 mg got people to sleep a bit faster than 0.5 mg, and nothing more above 5.

Is 300 mcg the same as 0.3 mg?

Yes. A milligram is 1,000 micrograms (mcg), so 300 mcg is 0.3 mg, 500 mcg is 0.5 mg and 1,000 mcg is 1 mg. If the label is in mcg, it’s usually one of the small doses this page recommends.

Gummies are the exception to trusting the label. In a 2023 lab test of 25 US gummy products, most held 1.2 to 1.7 times what the label said, so a 1 mg gummy is often more like 1.2 to 1.7 mg.

Try your dose in the tool below to see how long it stays above your own melatonin, or take the quiz for a dose and an hour that fit your night. Don’t drive after a dose.