Pureis vs Cannaray: The Paperwork and the Price
Two British CBD brands put through this desk's two tests: what each one publishes, and what a milligram costs. They are not close — and not in the direction the marketing on either site suggests.
By Gemma Hartley
No CBD food product is authorised for sale in Britain yet. The Food Standards Agency’s consultation, which ran from 28 August to 19 November 2025, covered three applications — synthetic cannabidiol, CBD isolate, and isolated CBD derived from hemp — and the agency drafted recommendations to authorise all three. Both brands below sit inside that process: the FSA’s own register files Pureis under application RP-07 and Cannaray under RP-350, two of the three.
So the shelf is judged on what brands publish themselves. Both lean on strong claims and both ask the same shopper for money. The usual two tests apply: what does each publish, and what does a milligram cost?
The paperwork each one shows you
Cannaray runs a lab reports page that does the plain thing: certificates of analysis, as PDFs, filed by product category and openable without an account. The accompanying text says testing is done on every batch with an independent third-party laboratory, which it does not name. That is still more than most of this shelf offers.
The gap is batch matching. Certificates are filed by product rather than searchable by batch, and no test dates were visible from the index. Batch codes do appear inside some certificate filenames, so the trail is not cold — but a buyer holding a bottle works backwards.
Pureis, on the pages reachable at the time of checking, publishes claims rather than certificates: “Clinically tested and approved”, “Safety has been confirmed by the UK Food Standards Agency for Pureis® CBD”, and the headline “Pureis® achieves world-first CBD regulatory approval”.
Here a novel-foods reader should sort those apart. The safety line is grounded: per the FSA, a positive safety assessment for that application was published in April 2024, the first the agency had issued for a CBD novel food. “Approval” is the word running ahead of the file. An assessment is a stage, not an authorisation — the determination sits with ministers and has not been made, and the regulator is blunt on its own register, which states that it “is not endorsing the sale of any CBD food products, regardless of whether on the list or not”. Everything here is a food supplement sold to adults, not a medicine.
The arithmetic
Cannaray’s oils are the cheapest CBD here by a wide margin. A 3,000mg bottle at £45 is 1.5p per milligram; the 500mg at £18 is 3.6p, so the small bottle costs more than twice as much per milligram as the large. Gummies run 4p to 6p, and the 600mg capsule bottle at £36 is 6p.
Pureis is dearer throughout. Its best figure is the 28-pack of 20mg capsules at £30, about 5.4p per milligram. The 560mg spray at £35 is 6.3p, the 280mg sprays at £20 are 7.1p, the seven-serving pack at £9 is 6.4p. Note the ladder: the 10mg capsules at £17 for 28 come to 6.1p, more per milligram than the 20mg in the same format. The pack matching the FSA’s published 10mg-a-day figure is the dearer one.
In its favour, Pureis is metered. A capsule delivers a stated amount; a dropper delivers whatever you squeeze. If a labelled unit matters more than unit price, that is a fair reason to pay more — but it should be a decision, not an accident.
Where each one overreaches
Cannaray leans on reference pricing across the range — a hand cream at £9.50 against £15.00, a lip balm at £7.50 against £9.50, a two-gummy bundle at £41.00 against £50.00. No one is outlandish, but a “was” figure beside almost every item stops carrying information. Several listed products state no CBD content at all, so the ashwagandha and valerian gummies at £25, and the canned drink at £2.30, cannot be assessed per milligram. The range also calls its products “always THC-free”, a strong absolute; the binding question is the 1mg-per-container ceiling for controlled cannabinoids, and only a batch report answers that.
Pureis’s overreach is regulatory rather than commercial, and narrower than it first reads: the safety work is real and published, the word “approval” is not. Neither brand’s pages, at the time of checking, pointed a shopper to the public list or restated the published intake advice.
Verdict
On this desk’s two tests Cannaray wins both, which is not what either site’s marketing would lead you to expect. Pureis lands about a point lower: the metering is useful and its file is further along than most of this shelf, but a brand that has come this far can afford to name the stage it has reached — and to publish a batch report while it waits.
Worth restating, because it applies to both: appearing on the public list is not approval — the list records products tied to an application still working through the process. With the first authorisations still pending, the consultation pack is the document to read.
Check the product against the list, then the certificate, then the price.