Your Guide To Marine and Bovine Collagen: What Matters (And What's Just Noise)

Open any collagen tub and the claims start contradicting each other before you've got the lid off. One brand says marine is better absorbed. Another insists you need five collagen types at once to see anything. A third will tell you bovine and marine are interchangeable. If you've stood in front of a shelf of powders and capsules trying to work out which one does something, that confusion is real.

So, we put the questions to Ancient + Brave, the brand behind our best-selling Wild Collagen and True Collagen, and asked them to separate what's backed by research from what's marketing shorthand. Here's what they told us, plus the detail of an independent, placebo-controlled trial on their products.

The difference between Type I and Type III collagen

Your body actually has around 28 to 29 different types of collagen. When it comes to conversations around "collagen types" in the wellbeing world, there are two main types to keep an eye out for. Type I is the most abundant collagen in skin, bone and connective tissue, while Type III is the other main one found in skin, and it works alongside Type I to give it structure, but the two are close enough that once collagen has been broken down into peptides, they're very similar. Ancient + Brave's Wild Collagen is Type I only, while the True Collagen carries Type I and III.

Molecular weight and absorption

Marine collagen is often talked about as being "better absorbed" because its peptides, which are measured in something called "Daltons", tend to be a bit smaller. But both Wild Collagen and True Collagen are less than 5,000 Daltons, or a molecular weight that is less than 5,000 grams per mole (g/mol). Ancient + Brave points to a 2024 randomised, double-blind crossover study in Frontiers in Nutrition that compared collagen hydrolysates from bovine, porcine and fish sources at different molecular weights and found comparable plasma uptake across the board. A few individual peptides varied slightly by source, but overall absorption held up regardless of origin.

Marine versus bovine

This actually isn't the question you should be asking, as the two versions actually deliver roughly the same thing – just with different mechanisms. This is especially true of Ancient + Brave's two collagen offerings.

True Collagen is Ancient + Brave's bovine-sourced blend, carrying both Type I and Type III collagen. It's the one most people should reach for unless they have a specific reason not to: there's no dietary or ethical restriction attached to it, and according to the brand, once collagen is hydrolysed, the body can't tell a bovine peptide from a marine one anyway, according to Uta Boellinger, mBANT, rCNHC and Head of Nutrition at Ancient + Brave.

Wild Collagen is the marine (fish-sourced) alternative, and includes only Type I collagen. This is a good one to reach for if you're pescatarian, avoiding beef, or simply prefer not to take a bovine product for personal or religious reasons. Boellinger points to a slightly smaller molecular weight and a different amino acid profile as the only real differences between the two sources, neither of which translates into a meaningfully different result in practice. Her advice is straightforward: "It really does come down to dietary preference."

Do you really need every type of collagen?

Some brands now market blends of five collagen types at once, as though packing in each type automatically translates to more benefit. But Boellinger calls this one of the biggest misconceptions in the market right now: "We are seeing claims that a collagen product must contain multiple collagen types... The reality is that once collagen raw materials are hydrolysed into peptides and amino acids, the body cannot distinguish between the original collagen type."

It's good to keep that in mind when you're browsing collagen supplements that tout the number of types they include over other factors.

How long before you'd notice anything

Collagen works gradually. Ancient + Brave's own timeline, drawn from published research plus their trial and consumer data, runs roughly as follows: gut comfort from around six weeks, visible skin changes from around eight weeks, broader effects on energy, sleep and recovery by 12 weeks, joint comfort building over three to six months, and bone-density effects, in those already at risk, only after a year or more of consistent use.

"Individual responses will vary depending on factors including age, baseline nutritional status, hormonal stage, lifestyle, sleep, stress, physical activity and overall dietary patterns," says Boellinger. So, remember to judge a supplement over months of use, not simply a few days.

What to look for on a label

Dose, sourcing transparency, and independent testing matter, and Ancient + Brave makes sure that is clear in their products. "Benefits are typically cumulative and most evident with consistent, long-term use as part of a broader wellbeing approach," says Boellinger. So, if you're struggling to choose between marine and bovine, or Type I versus a Type I and III blend, remember that one type isn't doing more heavy lifting than another. Instead, check to make sure that your supplement provides a dose in the 5–10g range in molecular weight, and trial data you can go and read, which is the standard Ancient + Brave holds themselves to.