Background <p>Intrinsic capacity (IC) and comorbidity burden are both associated with health outcomes in older postmenopausal women, yet whether they capture independent dimensions of health remains unclear.</p> Aims <p>To examine whether comorbidity burden is independently associated with IC in older postmenopausal women, and to evaluate the role of age as a potential confounder of this relationship.</p> Methods <p>IC was evaluated across five WHO-defined domains using ICOPE-aligned tools, and the number of preserved IC components (range 0–6) was calculated as an index of functional reserve. Comorbidity burden was quantified with the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI).</p> Results <p>A total of 200 postmenopausal women were included (mean age 68.2 ± 8.5 years, range 46–89). The mean CCI score was 3.5 ± 1.9 and the mean number of preserved IC components was 3.4 ± 1.3. Preserved IC components were inversely correlated with CCI (ρ = −0.33, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). In multivariable analysis, CCI was not independently associated with preserved IC (β = −0.036, 95% CI − 0.142 to 0.070, <i>p</i> = 0.505), whereas age was a strong independent predictor (β = −0.078, 95% CI − 0.100 to − 0.055, <i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). The partial correlation between IC and CCI controlling for age was negligible (<i>r</i> = 0.003, <i>p</i> = 0.962). Sensitivity analyses using Poisson regression and a 5-component IC score excluding the vision domain confirmed these findings. CCI was not independently associated with any individual IC domain in domain-specific logistic regression models.</p> Discussion <p>The observed association between IC and comorbidity burden was largely explained by age, suggesting that these constructs capture overlapping but not identical dimensions of health vulnerability.</p> Conclusions <p>IC captures dimensions of functional vulnerability not fully accounted for by comorbidity burden alone.</p>