Do you earn anything from these figures?

No. No affiliate programme on this site is live and no commercial link renders anywhere on it. The two most useful products we cover have no affiliate programme at all, which means our most useful recommendation is also our least profitable one.

Do I need a prescription for the test?

For three of the five we track, yes. Two can be ordered directly. That changes the real cost, because a practitioner-only test arrives with an appointment attached and often a second one to discuss the result. A direct-to-consumer test skips that cost, and also skips the person who would have interpreted the number for you.

Is a home breath device a cheaper option?

It is a different product answering a different question. FoodMarble AIRE is a personal fermentation tracker: no lab, no timed substrate challenge, no clinician report. It measures your breath around meals you choose, which is not the standardised procedure the published thresholds were written for. It also sits in the middle of the price range for the tests above, so it is not the cheap route either.

What this actually costs

By BeatSIBO editorial team · Updated August 6, 2026

Money is the missing variable in almost every article on this subject, and it is the one driving most of the reading.

The number that explains the whole niche

The short answer

A two week course of the standard prescription commonly runs 2,200 to 2,940 dollars cash in the United States without insurance coverage. That figure, more than any clinical argument, is why people search for alternatives. An article recommending herbal options that does not mention it is hiding the reason its reader arrived.

We think saying this plainly matters, because it reframes what a comparison between the prescription and an herbal alternative actually is. It is not primarily a clinical comparison. It is a comparison between a well-documented expensive option and a poorly documented cheap one, and pretending otherwise flatters everybody involved.

Testing

Test	Hydrogen sulfide	Hydrogen	Methane	Price	Prescription
trio-smartGemelli Biotech · results in 7-14 days	Yes	Yes	Yes	$349–369verified 2026-08-03	No
SIBO 2-hour / 3-hourGenova Diagnostics · results in 10-15 days	No	Yes	Yes	$225–349verified 2026-08-03	Yes
SIBO breath testCommonwealth Diagnostics International · results in 7-10 days	No	Yes	Yes	$295verified 2026-08-03	Yes
QuinTron breath testQuinTron / breathtests.com · results in 5-10 days	No	Yes	Yes	$195–249verified 2026-08-03	No
SIBO breath testAerodiagnostics · results in 7-14 days	No	Yes	Yes	$299verified 2026-08-03	Yes

Prices verified on the date shown against each provider’s own page. A price without a date is a claim about today made from memory.

What each test cannot tell you

trio-smart — Gemelli Biotech: Measures three gases but cannot tell you what to do about the result. There is no validated hydrogen sulfide threshold in any published guideline; the North American Consensus contains no H2S criterion at all. A number without a threshold is not a diagnosis.
SIBO 2-hour / 3-hour — Genova Diagnostics: Does not measure hydrogen sulfide. Infers it from a third-hour flatline, which is an unvalidated inference rather than a measurement. A negative result does not rule out hydrogen sulfide overgrowth.
SIBO breath test — Commonwealth Diagnostics International: Does not measure hydrogen sulfide, and says so plainly on its own site.Their own site: “no diagnostic technology on the market can test for H2S at levels of parts per billion”
QuinTron breath test — QuinTron / breathtests.com: Does not measure hydrogen sulfide. Direct to consumer with no clinician required, which also means no clinician interprets the result for you.
SIBO breath test — Aerodiagnostics: Does not measure hydrogen sulfide. We do not link directly to their storefront; order through a clinician or the provider's main site.

Not a SIBO test

These devices come up constantly in the same conversations. They measure something real. They do not answer the same question, and we do not list them above because doing so would imply they do.

FoodMarble AIRE 2 $269 (verified 2026-08-03): A personal fermentation tracker, not a diagnostic test. No CLIA lab, no timed consensus protocol, no clinician report. It measures your breath after meals you choose, which answers a different question from a standardised substrate challenge.

Prices range from 195 to 369 dollars across the five tests we track, and the spread is mostly about how many gases a test can measure. Every figure above reads from the same data file the rest of the site reads, and renders the date it was verified, so a price here cannot quietly disagree with a price on another page.

The cheaper test is only a saving if it can answer your question. A two gas test cannot detect hydrogen sulfide. If that is part of what you are asking, buying the cheaper one and then buying again is the expensive path.

Repeat rounds

The short answer

Non-response and recurrence are both commonly reported, so a single course is frequently not the whole cost. We are not going to put a number on how many rounds people need, because the honest answer is that it varies and the published evidence is thin. Budget for the possibility rather than for the best case.

Pimentel M et al., American Journal of Gastroenterology 2020 Clinical guideline

The guideline covering this rates five of six recommendations as resting on very low quality evidence, which is worth holding alongside any cost you are being quoted for a protocol built on it.

What is not settled here

We cannot tell you what your insurance will cover, what a compounding pharmacy near you charges, or whether a given clinic's package price is reasonable. Those vary enormously and any site quoting one national number for them is guessing. What we can do is show you the list prices we verified and the date we checked.

What we earn from this page

Nothing. No affiliate programme on this site is live and no commercial link renders anywhere on it. The breath test that measures all three gases has no affiliate programme at all, and neither does the device we tell people is not a SIBO test.

That is worth stating on the cost page specifically, because a page about money is exactly where you should ask who is being paid.

Common questions

Do you earn anything from these figures?: No. No affiliate programme on this site is live and no commercial link renders anywhere on it. The two most useful products we cover have no affiliate programme at all, which means our most useful recommendation is also our least profitable one.
Do I need a prescription for the test?: For three of the five we track, yes. Two can be ordered directly. That changes the real cost, because a practitioner-only test arrives with an appointment attached and often a second one to discuss the result. A direct-to-consumer test skips that cost, and also skips the person who would have interpreted the number for you.
Is a home breath device a cheaper option?: It is a different product answering a different question. FoodMarble AIRE is a personal fermentation tracker: no lab, no timed substrate challenge, no clinician report. It measures your breath around meals you choose, which is not the standardised procedure the published thresholds were written for. It also sits in the middle of the price range for the tests above, so it is not the cheap route either.