Merios vs Function Health: Which Is Right for You? (2026)

If you are shopping for a modern health platform in 2026, Function Health and Merios will almost certainly both land on your shortlist. Both promise to translate a routine blood draw into something you can actually act on. Both have biological age scores. Both have polished mobile experiences.

They solve the same problem very differently.

This is the detailed comparison we wish existed when we were building Merios: a plain-English, no-marketing-fluff breakdown of where each product wins and where each one falls short. If you're looking for a Function Health alternative, this is the piece to read.

The 30-second answer

• Choose Function Health if you want to order new 100+ biomarker panels on a schedule, you want MRI / CT scan add-ons, and you don't care about pulling in wearable data.
• Choose Merios if you want to use the blood tests you already have, you want one unified health score that combines blood + Apple Watch + daily check-ins, and you want GDPR-grade data control.

Side-by-side comparison

Where Function Health wins

Let's start with what Function Health does genuinely well. This is not a hit piece.

1. Depth of the panel

Function Health's standard membership includes 100+ biomarkers per panel, twice a year. That's genuinely comprehensive, and their panel goes deeper than most primary care physicians would ever order. ApoB, Lp(a), thyroid deep dive, heavy metals, full lipid subfractionation — it's all there by default.

2. Imaging add-ons

Merios does not do imaging. Function Health integrates MRI scans, CT heart scans, and the Galleri multi-cancer early detection test. If you want a single subscription that covers both blood and imaging, Function is the easier answer today.

3. Scale and brand momentum

Function Health raised a $298M Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation in November 2025 and has celebrity investors (Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Kevin Hart). That means serious research and engineering budget. Their Medical Intelligence chatbot keeps getting better.

4. Lab logistics are solved for you

You book a Quest appointment through the app. You show up. They draw. Results land in the app. That's a real convenience benefit if you don't already have a lab you work with.

Where Merios wins

1. Your existing blood tests work

This is the single biggest practical difference. If you have a PDF of a blood panel from your primary care physician, from LabCorp, from a workplace biometric screening, or from any lab anywhere — Merios parses it with OCR and pulls out 130+ biomarkers. You do not have to re-order, re-pay, or re-travel for a draw you already have.

With Function Health, you are locked into their Quest Diagnostics ordering pipeline. If you get bloodwork through your primary care physician next month, you cannot feed those results into Function Health.

2. Wearable data is a first-class citizen

Function Health is lab-only. That's a surprising gap for a product positioned as a complete health picture. Your blood shows you a snapshot every six months. Your Apple Watch shows you HRV every night, resting heart rate every hour, VO2 max weekly, and sleep architecture every morning.

Early metabolic dysfunction, chronic stress, and poor recovery all leak into wearable data before they show up in blood. Merios pulls all of that through HealthKit and correlates it with your biomarkers — so if your HbA1c crept from 5.4 to 5.7 and your resting heart rate jumped three beats over the same period, you see the pattern. With Function, you'd see the biomarker, period.

3. One unified health score

Function Health deliberately does not give you a single score — they want you to see each marker on its own and let their chatbot help you interpret. That's defensible but it's also a lot of cognitive load.

Merios gives you one 0-100 score across 6 pillars (blood, heart, sleep, activity, nutrition, mental). It is not meant to replace the detail — you can always drill into any marker. It's meant to answer "am I headed in the right direction this month?" in a glance. Behavior change research strongly favors that kind of single summary metric for sustained engagement.

4. Daily wellness check-in

Thirty seconds a day. Mood, energy, sleep quality, stress. Over three months, that becomes a signal of its own — and a joining data set between lifestyle and biomarkers. Function does not have anything equivalent.

5. Pricing

Function Health is $365 per year (down from $499 in 2025). Merios Pro is $14.99 per month, or roughly $180 per year — half the price — and the Basic plan is free. If you are getting your blood work elsewhere anyway, Merios is dramatically cheaper and you don't duplicate the lab fee.

6. EU hosting and GDPR by default

Your health data is probably the most sensitive personal data you have. Merios is EU-hosted and GDPR-compliant by default, which is the strictest health-data regime in the world. Function Health is US-only. Both are HIPAA-aware, but GDPR has stronger individual rights around portability, deletion, and explicit consent.

When Function Health is the better choice

Be honest with yourself about how you operate. Function Health is the right pick if:

• You do not already order blood work, and you want the subscription to handle that for you.
• You are specifically interested in imaging add-ons (MRI, heart CT, Galleri).
• You want a very deep panel with no effort on your part.
• You don't care about wearable-driven context.
• You can comfortably absorb $365 per year for the subscription plus any add-ons on top.

When Merios is the better choice

• You already get blood work (or can easily get it through your PCP or Quest) and just want to make sense of the PDF.
• You wear an Apple Watch and want your watch data to mean something beyond a step count.
• You want one clear score that moves as your behavior changes.
• You want a daily, lightweight touchpoint — not a twice-a-year reveal.
• You want GDPR-grade data control.
• You want to pay less than half of what Function Health charges.

Can I use both?

You can. Nothing stops you from subscribing to Function Health for the lab logistics and imaging, then scanning the Function PDFs with Merios OCR to get the unified score plus wearable correlations. Some of our early users do exactly that.

But for most people, that's overkill. Pick the one that matches how you actually behave, not how you wish you behaved.

The bottom line

Function Health is a fantastic lab-ordering and deep-panel product. Merios is a health analytics and behavior product that happens to understand blood work. Those are related but different jobs.

If you're looking for a Function Health alternative because you want to use blood tests you already have, combine them with your Apple Watch data, and keep your data in the EU, Merios is the one.

Get early access to Merios →

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Sources: Function Health membership pricing and feature list as of Q1 2026 (functionhealth.com). Merios feature set as shipped in v1.0. PhenoAge biological age algorithm: Levine et al., "An epigenetic biomarker of aging for lifespan and healthspan," Aging 2018. This page will be updated when either product changes materially; see "Last updated" at the top.