The Polish supplement market: size and categories

How big the market is: PLN 7 billion and counting

The most widely quoted figure for the Polish supplement market comes from PMR Market Experts and the Polish Economic Institute (PIE): about PLN 7.1 billion in 2024, as reported by XYZ.pl. Trade press citing PMR puts growth in 2024 at around 10% and expects 7-9% a year in 2025-2027 (Świat Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego, 2025). The forecasts that follow from that are more than PLN 9 billion in 2027 and more than PLN 10 billion in 2028 (Rzeczpospolita citing PMR, 2025).

International research houses use different definitions and land higher. Grand View Research estimates the Polish dietary supplements market at USD 2.22 billion in 2024, rising to USD 4.12 billion in 2030 at a 10.9% CAGR. At an exchange rate of roughly 4 PLN per dollar, that is close to PLN 9 billion, noticeably above PMR. The gap is normal: global houses often fold in sports nutrition and adjacent categories that Polish analysts count separately. When you build a business case, quote the range and name both sources rather than picking the flattering number.

The long-run curve is steep regardless of whose number you take:

Per-capita spending tells the same story from the other end. NIK estimated average spending at around PLN 100 per consumer in 2015 (NIK); PMR data reported in 2025 puts it at more than PLN 200 per person per year (Rynek Zdrowia). Poles did not just start buying supplements, they started buying more of them and paying more per pack.

Two takeaways for a foreign brand. First, the market roughly quadrupled between 2008 and 2024 in nominal terms. Second, growth is now high single digits, not the double-digit surge of the pandemic years. That makes Poland a large market that still grows, not a gold rush.

Who buys: three quarters of adults, about PLN 200 a year

Penetration is high by any European standard, but the exact share depends on the survey question:

• About 75% of Poles, roughly 23 million people, buy supplements according to PMR (Polityka Zdrowotna, 2025). Spending averages more than PLN 200 per person per year (Rynek Zdrowia, 2025).
• 89% of Poles use supplements in Statista Consumer Insights data for April 2023 to March 2024, as cited by New Zealand MFAT.
• Nearly three quarters used supplements and 48% did so regularly back in 2019 (PIE). The same study found that only 27% could define a supplement correctly.
• 40% use them daily (XYZ.pl citing 2024 data), and 35% take several products at once (MFAT citing PMR, 2024).

PMR also finds that women buy slightly more often than men (78% versus 72%), and that price is now a purchase factor for 50% of consumers, up 6 percentage points year on year (PMR via Polityka Zdrowotna). Recommendations from doctors and pharmacists matter to 43%. Read those two numbers together: a Polish shopper wants a credible product and a fair price at the same time, and will switch brands to get both.

Which categories lead

Category splits are where the public data is thinnest, so treat the figures below as directional:

The two "vitamins" numbers do not contradict each other: PMR groups vitamins with minerals and measures sales value, Grand View measures the vitamin ingredient segment alone. Both point the same way. The base of the Polish market is still vitamin D, vitamin C, magnesium and multivitamins, bought seasonally and often on promotion. Growth sits at the edges: sports and protein, gummies and other convenient formats, and "modern" needs such as stress, sleep and focus. We cover individual ingredients in our analysis of the fastest-growing supplement ingredients in Poland.

Where the money goes: pharmacy, online, everything else

Pharmacies remain the backbone. Grand View reports that offline channels held the largest revenue share in 2024 (Grand View Research), and in a 2021 survey 95% of OTC buyers had bought at least once in a bricks-and-mortar pharmacy (Wiadomości Kosmetyczne).

Online is the fastest-moving part, and here sources disagree on the level:

• More than 23% of market value was sold online in 2023 (XYZ.pl).
• About 30% of supplement sales are online in PMR figures reported in 2025 (Świat Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego).
• 36% of Poles bought supplements online in 2023, up from 5% in 2016 (MFAT citing PMR).

A reasonable working range is therefore a quarter to a third of value online, with pharmacies taking most of the rest and drugstores, supermarkets and sports shops sharing the remainder. PMR expects stationary pharmacies to lose around 2 percentage points of OTC and supplement sales to online by 2029 (Wiadomości Kosmetyczne on PMR, 2025). Channel behaviour is covered in depth in how Poles buy supplements.

What the GIS notification register shows

Every supplement sold in Poland requires a GIS notification before its first sale, so the register is the closest thing to a census of supply. It is also easy to misread. Public counts of new notifications, from GIS data cited by XYZ.pl, look like this:

Our AI agent, Wellmade Intelligence, works on a cleaned copy of the full register: roughly 200,000 notifications from 2015 to mid-2026. Three things matter when you use it:

• About 23% of those notifications are bulk registrations by a couple of companies selling personalised formulas. A naive count by year or by ingredient is badly distorted by them, and spikes in individual years should be checked for this effect before anyone calls them a trend.
• The ingredient composition field is only filled from 2020 onwards. Anything you conclude about ingredient trends before 2020 needs label research, not a register query.
• A notification is not a sale. Many notified products never reach meaningful distribution. The register tells you about intent and competition, not revenue.

The register also carries a history of weak oversight. The 2017 NIK audit found that about half of the notifications filed in 2014-2016 had never been verified, and that verification took 455 days on average. The supplement market grew into its current size under that light-touch regime, which is why regulators and legislators keep returning to it.

The same register is also the best free competitor map you have. Filtered correctly, it shows who has launched in your category since 2020, how many new products appear each year, which forms dominate and which operators keep filing. We read it together with the shelf: the register tells us who is trying, Allegro and pharmacy listings tell us who is actually selling.

What this means for a foreign brand

Put together, the numbers describe a market that is large, crowded and price-aware:

• Scale is real. A PLN 7 billion market with 23 million buyers can support a foreign brand in a well-chosen niche. You do not need a large share to build a profitable business.
• Competition is dense. Tens of thousands of notifications per year mean your category almost certainly has local brands at lower prices. Differentiation has to be concrete: dose, form, format, evidence or audience.
• Price matters more every year. Half of buyers name price as a purchase factor. Build your Polish price point from the shelf, not from your home market price list converted into złoty.
• Compliance is a filter. Doses, health claims and novel food status decide whether your product can launch as it is. The larger the market grows, the more attention it attracts from GIS, UOKiK and legislators.

If you want these market numbers narrowed down to your own category, competitors and price points, our market entry report does exactly that.

Sources

• XYZ.pl, citing PMR, PIE and GIS data (2025)
• Świat Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego, citing PMR (September 2025)
• Rzeczpospolita, citing PMR Market Experts (2025)
• Grand View Research, Poland Dietary Supplements Market
• New Zealand MFAT, Poland's Supplement Boom (October 2025)
• PMR Market Experts by Hume's, via Polityka Zdrowotna (2025)
• Rynek Zdrowia (September 2025)
• Polish Economic Institute (PIE), December 2019
• NIK, audit on placing supplements on the market (2017)
• CBOS, OTC medicines and food supplements (2016)
• Dziennik Internautów, citing PIE (January 2025)
• Wiadomości Kosmetyczne, PMR OTC market report (January 2025)
• Wiadomości Kosmetyczne, non-pharmacy OTC sales report (2023)