Hims vs Keeps vs Ro: Honest Comparison (2026)

So: here's our actual honest take.

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What Are These Telehealth Platforms?

Hims, Keeps, and Ro are telehealth platforms. You fill out a medical intake form and upload photos of your hair. A licensed physician (or physician assistant, depending on state) reviews your case asynchronously and issues a prescription if clinically appropriate. Your medication arrives by mail on a recurring subscription.

They all offer finasteride and minoxidil — the two FDA-approved treatments for male pattern hair loss. The differences are in product range, pricing, UX, and the details.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Pricing: What You Actually Pay

Hims

Hims does not publish a price before you complete the medical intake. What is consistent is where it lands: it is the most expensive of the three for the same generic medication, and its topical finasteride + minoxidil spray costs more again than its oral finasteride.

Hims frequently runs promotions for new subscribers — sometimes a heavily discounted first month. The catch is that your regular subscription price kicks in at full rate afterwards, and cancellation requires navigating a few screens designed to keep you subscribed.

The honest downside on Hims pricing: They are consistently the most expensive option for equivalent medications. You pay a premium for the branding, app, and product range. If budget is your primary concern, Hims is not the best choice.

Keeps

Keeps also keeps its prices behind the intake flow. Its combination kit (finasteride + minoxidil) is its most popular product, and for equivalent treatment it generally undercuts Hims.

Keeps does not lean on teaser first-month pricing the way Hims does. Its own site cautions that the final cost depends on what the clinician prescribes, so treat any figure you are quoted as provisional until checkout.

The honest downside on Keeps: The platform feels more utilitarian. The app is functional but not polished. Customer service response times have been a recurring complaint in verified reviews. You get a solid product at a good price without much hand-holding.

Ro

Ro finasteride: $16-20/month (the lower price on longer plans). They also offer compounded topical finasteride + minoxidil formulations, which run higher ($40-60/month) but give you both drugs in one topical application.

Ro's strength is that it is part of a broader health platform (they offer weight loss, ED, mental health, and other categories). For some men, this makes it a one-stop shop for telehealth.

The honest downside on Ro: Ro ships hair loss treatment only in quarterly (3-month) shipments, so there is no month-to-month plan. Their hair loss focus is also less specialized than Keeps, which is built primarily around hair loss.

Over 12 Months

Ro is the only one of the three that publishes prices: $16-20 a month for oral finasteride, or roughly $192-240 a year. Hims and Keeps reveal a price only after the medical intake, so a like-for-like annual table isn't possible from the outside.

The ordering is stable even without the numbers. Hims is the most expensive of the three for the same generic drug, Ro the cheapest, Keeps in between. Hims' discounted first month doesn't change that: from month two you pay the regular rate. Whatever you sign up for, check the renewal price rather than the introductory one. If price is what's pushing you away from Hims, our Hims alternatives guide covers the lower-cost routes, and the hair loss treatment cost index prices every treatment side by side.

Product Range: Hims Leads, Others Are Adequate

Hims offers the widest product menu:

• Oral finasteride (generic)
• Topical finasteride alone
• Topical finasteride + minoxidil combo (their flagship for men concerned about systemic side effects)
• Oral minoxidil
• Topical minoxidil foam
• Ketoconazole shampoo
• Biotin gummies (skip these — limited evidence)
• Progress tracking photos via app

Keeps focuses on the essentials:

• Oral finasteride
• Topical minoxidil (foam and liquid)
• Combination kit
• Topical finasteride + minoxidil
• Oral minoxidil
• Keeps-branded shampoo

Keeps has also added compounded multi-ingredient formulas, some using dutasteride (not FDA-approved for hair loss) in place of finasteride.

Ro offers:

• Oral finasteride
• Compounded topical finasteride + minoxidil, with tretinoin (a real differentiator)
• Oral minoxidil
• Topical minoxidil

The compounded topical option from Ro is worth knowing about: instead of applying finasteride orally and minoxidil topically separately, you apply one combined topical solution daily. Some men strongly prefer this for adherence reasons.

UX and App Experience

Hims has invested heavily in its digital experience. The intake process is streamlined, the app allows you to message your provider, view your prescription history, and submit progress photos. Notifications and reminders are well-implemented. For men who want a polished consumer experience, Hims feels like a product; Keeps and Ro feel like a service.

Keeps is functional. The onboarding questionnaire covers the clinical essentials. The app does what you need — reorder, contact support, review your prescription. It does not try to be anything more.

Ro's platform is broader, which is both a strength and a distraction. If you are only there for hair loss, you will encounter a lot of prompts about other health categories you did not ask about.

Shipping and Logistics

Hims: 2-4 days standard. Priority options available. Packaging is discreet and well-designed (if you care about that).

Keeps: 3-5 days standard. Packaging is plain and discreet. No frills.

Ro: 2-3 days — fastest of the three on average. They have a well-organized fulfillment operation that benefits from their scale.

All three platforms automatically refill your prescription on a recurring schedule: Keeps ships every 3, 6, or 12 months, Ro ships hair loss treatment quarterly, and Hims bills on set cycles (for example every 30 or 90 days). All three require you to proactively cancel, though Hims and Keeps both let you pause a subscription.

Cancellation and Customer Service

All three are subscriptions that renew until you cancel. Support runs mostly through asynchronous messaging (Keeps also lists phone support, 8am–8pm ET daily), and follow-up medical questions typically get a clinician's reply within 24–48 hours.

Hims carries the most documented complaints on Trustpilot and the BBB — billing errors, slow responses, and friction when cancelling. Cancellation runs through a multi-step flow that presents retention offers along the way.

Keeps customers most often cite slow customer service response times, a recurring theme in verified reviews, though not markedly worse than Hims.

Ro draws fewer documented complaints than Hims, from a smaller review base, and its cancellation process attracts fewer complaints — though it is still not a one-click cancel.

Whichever you use, the quickest way out is to say it plainly in the messaging interface — "I want to cancel my subscription" — rather than working through automated retention screens.

How Do These Platforms Handle Side Effects and Medical Oversight?

All three platforms prescribe finasteride only when clinically appropriate. They will not prescribe to men under 18, men with certain health conditions, or men with contraindications.

All three have licensed physicians reviewing intake forms. None have synchronous doctor-patient relationships — this is asynchronous telehealth, not a video call. If you have complex medical history, a traditional dermatology appointment is more appropriate.

On finasteride side effects: sexual side effects (reduced libido, erectile dysfunction) occur in approximately 2-4% of men based on clinical trial data. These are real, they are reported across all three platforms, and they deserve a direct conversation with a provider before starting. All three platforms discuss this in their intake flow, but the quality of that conversation varies.

If you experience sexual side effects, stopping finasteride typically resolves them within weeks. There is a small, contested literature on post-finasteride syndrome (persistent sexual dysfunction after stopping) — see our complete finasteride guide for the honest discussion of the evidence.

Progress Tracking

Hims has the best progress tracking feature — the app prompts you to submit standardized photos at intervals and lets you overlay them for comparison. Useful, since hair changes are subtle and gradual enough that unaided perception is unreliable.

Keeps allows photo uploads but the comparison feature is less developed.

Ro does not currently have a meaningful in-app progress tracking system.

Our Verdict

Choose Keeps if: You want the best value for oral finasteride and/or minoxidil with no frills. You are comfortable managing your own expectations without an elaborate app.

Choose Hims if: You want the widest product range, especially topical finasteride (or topical combo). You value a polished app experience. You are willing to pay a moderate price premium for that.

Choose Ro if: You want the lowest base price for finasteride, you are interested in compounded topical finasteride + minoxidil, or you want one platform for multiple health categories.

The bottom line: All three are legitimate, physician-supervised platforms offering FDA-approved treatments. The differences matter at the margins. If you are newly starting treatment, we'd start with Keeps for the value, or Hims if you are specifically interested in topical finasteride to reduce systemic exposure.

For a deeper look at the medications themselves, read our finasteride guide and minoxidil rankings.

Sources

1. Kaufman KD, Olsen EA, Whiting D, et al. Finasteride in the treatment of men with androgenetic alopecia. Finasteride Male Pattern Hair Loss Study Group. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. 1998;39(4):578-589. PMID: 9777765.
2. Olsen EA, Dunlap FE, Funicella T, et al. A randomized clinical trial of 5% topical minoxidil versus 2% topical minoxidil and placebo in the treatment of androgenetic alopecia in men. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. 2002;47(3):377-385. PMID: 12196747.
3. Mella JM, Perret MC, Manzotti M, et al. Efficacy and safety of finasteride therapy for androgenetic alopecia: a systematic review. Archives of Dermatology. 2010;146(10):1141-1150. PMID: 20956649.
4. Zhou Y, Chen C, Qu Q, et al. The effectiveness of combination therapies for androgenetic alopecia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Dermatologic Therapy. 2020;33(4):e13741. PMID: 32478968.
5. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Propecia (finasteride 1mg) NDA approval, 1997; Minoxidil topical solution (Rogaine) approval, 1988, and OTC switch, 1996. FDA Drug Approvals and Databases.
6. Hims Inc. Prescription hair loss treatment pricing. hims.com/hair-loss. Accessed March 2026.
7. Keeps Health. Finasteride and minoxidil subscription pricing. keeps.com. Accessed March 2026.
8. Ro Health. Roman hair loss treatment pricing. ro.co/hair. Accessed March 2026.
9. Keeps. Our products and FAQ pages. keeps.com. Accessed September 2026.
10. Ro. Hair loss FAQ and pricing pages. ro.co. Accessed September 2026.
11. Hims & Hers Health, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results. investors.hims.com. February 2026.

The online option we'd recommend: if you want one physician-reviewed compounded topical that combines finasteride and minoxidil (and optionally more), Strut Health is our pick — it's LegitScript-certified.

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