No matter you’re gaining muscle or losing fat, your first choice supplement should be creatine.
Creatine is one of the most researched and commonly used natural supplements that helps to improve exercise strength and performance, increases lean muscle mass, and promotes quick muscle recovery.
In this article, we’ll go through the top seven best creatine supplements on the market with tips that guide you on choosing the best ONE and some FAQs regarding the creatine.
So, let’s get started!
Quick List: Best Creatine Supplements
- Best overall: BulkSupplements.com Creatine
- Runner-up: MuscleTech Platinum Creatine
- Best unflavored: Optimum Nutrition Micronized Creatine
- Best flavored: BPI Sports Creatine
- Best for muscle growth: NOW Sports Creatine
- Best vegan: EFX Sports Creatine Monohydrate
- Best capsule: Met-Rx Creatine Supplement
Top 7 Best Creatine Supplements of 2021
Check out some of the best creatine supplements on the market and choose the one that meets your needs.
The products in this article are selected based on the following criteria:
- 100% Creatine monohydrate.
- Free of added sugar, additives, gluten, and artificial color.
- The product should be third-party tested or certified by organizations like NSF.
Best Overall
Key Features
- Item form: Powder
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate (micronized)
- Flavor: Unflavored
- Material feature: Certified organic
The BulkSupplements Creatine is one of the most popular and our best choice creatine supplement in a monohydrate form.
The supplement assures you that it’ll easily and quickly dissolve in the water or smoothes as it is pure micronized creatine.
This product comprises 100% pure micronized creatine monohydrate, which means it’s free of added sugar, soy, dairy, yeast, gluten, and additives.
Whether you’re building lean muscles, gaining weight, increasing strength and performance, this BulkSupplements’ creatine monohydrate is definitely helping you get your goal. It’s also vegan-friendly, with no fillers or additives.
Runner-Up
Key Features
- Item form: Powder
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate (micronized)
- Flavor: Unflavored
- Material feature: Certified organic (No fillers, no sugar)
The MuscleTech Platinum is a 100% pure, HPLC-tested, micronized creatine monohydrate, and it’s one of the bestselling creatine supplements on the market of 2021.
Clinical studies have shown that taking this supplement for 10-days will increase the bench press strength by an amazing 18.6%.
The MuscleTech creatine is made of only one ingredient means there’s no artificial color and flavor, and it mixes well with water and juices.
The MuscleTech creatine monohydrate can be for both men and women (18+) to increase muscle growth, strength, and performance and also helps in faster recovery. You can use this supplement in your pre-or post-workout, and it’s also a keto-friendly one.
Best Unflavored
Key Features
- Item form: Powder
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate
- Flavor: Unflavored
- Material feature: No artificial preservatives, nut-free, no artificial flavors, no artificial colors, gluten-free, yeast-free, lactose-free, egg-free, fish-free.
Optimum Nutrition is one of the top-rated brands in the fitness industry, and their micronized creatine monohydrate is a widely used one.
This creatine monohydrate is an unflavored one, and there are no other ingredients added to it, which means you’ll get a 100% pure micronized creatine monohydrate.
As this Optimum’s creatine monohydrate is unflavored creatine, you can mix it in your favorite beverage, and it’ll help you to maximize your muscle size, strength, and power. It’s tasted to Banned Substance means it’s completely safe and effective for you.
Best Flavored
Key Features
- Item form: Powder
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate, Himalayan pink salt, silica, natural and artificial flavors, citric acid, creatine alkaline
- Flavor: Flavored (Watermelon)
- Material feature: Gluten-free, no artificial color.
The BPI Sports Creatine is a flavored monohydrate form. It also includes six advanced forms of creatine into one powerful blend that promotes better muscle Growth, improved strength and power, faster recovery, and more.
When it comes to quality and safety, this creatine is completely safe to use as the FDA, GMP verifies it, and other third-party lab tests.
Suppose you want some flavor and other ingredients without compromising the product quality. This BPI creatine monohydrate can be for you, which helps increase strength, muscle growth, and optimal recovery without experiencing bloating.
Best for Muscle Growth
Key Features
- Item form: Powder
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate
- Flavor: Unflavored
- Material feature: GMO-free, Kosher certified, vegan
NOW Sports Creatine Monohydrate provides clean muscle fuel and has no additives or preservatives. This Now Sports Creatine is one of the best muscle-building supplements on the market.
This supplement gets the NPA A-rated GMP certification to assure you that you’d get the best quality and safe to use creatine supplement.
Whether you’re a vegan or vegetarian, this Now Sports Creatine Monohydrate is perfect for you, and of course, it’ll help you to put on some lean muscle mass, increase energy production, and strengthen to crush your gym workouts.
Best Vegan
EFX Sports Creatine Monohydrate
Key Features
- Item form: Capsule
- Ingredients: Creatine monohydrate
- Flavor: Unflavored
- Material feature: Vegan, gluten-free
The EFX Sports creatine monohydrate comes in capsule form means there’s no need to mixing, measuring, or guessing. Just grab the bottle, take a few capsules, and you get to work.
The EFX is 99.9% pure creatine monohydrate — science-backed, clinically tested, and safe for professional athletes and gym-goers.
The company guarantees that this product is 100% banned-substance-free which is certified by Informed-Sport.
The Kre Alkalyn EFX’s multi-patented creatine has pH levels of 12-14, producing a fully stable, buffered creatine molecule, which means the EFX creatine remains fully stable for your body to assimilate and utilizes it efficiently.
Best Capsule
Key Features
- Item form: Capsule
- Ingredients: See photo for complete product ingredient listing at merchant’s website
- Flavor: Creatine 4200
- Material feature: Gluten-free
The Met-Rx creatine comes in capsule form. The bottle of MET-Rx Creatine contains 240 capsules, which comes at an extremely cheap price.
MET-Rx creatine has been specifically formulated with a precise nutrient profile to produce specific metabolic effects.
You can consume this supplement with your protein shake or bars to superpower your workout and faster recovery.
If you want an easy-to-consume supplement to avoid mixing or measuring, then this Met-Rx Creatine Monohydrate capsule can be best for you. It can accelerate your power during your workout and recovery after and helps to gain muscle size.
What to Look For in a Creatine Supplement
When buying a creatine supplement, you must consider few things to get a quality and authentic product that helps to get your desired result safely. So, let’s read!
Forms and Types of Creatine
There are several forms of creatine supplements on the market, including creatine monohydrate, creatine ethyl ester, hydrochloride, buffered, liquid creatine, and creatine magnesium chelate.
However, creatine monohydrate is the most well-researched and commonly used form, and also researchers showed that it’s a safe and effective form compared to others.
The other form of creatine (except monohydrate) supplement isn’t much well-studied and not recommended to use.
So, when you are buying a creatine supplement for increasing your performance, muscle growth, or any other fitness goal, it’s best and recommended to go with a creatine monohydrate supplement.
Typically creatine doesn’t dissolve easily in the water or shaker bottle. That’s why it would be best to buy a product that contains micronized creatine monohydrate.
There’re two types of creatine supplements — powder and capsule.
You can mix powder creatine with water, juice, or protein shake. It’s very easy to consume, but it may take little effort to measure, mix with water to have it.
When your priority is convenient, the capsule can be for you. All you need to do is take the capsule from the bottle and have it with water or juice, no need for any guessing or mixing.
I recommend powder over capsule because it’ll dissolve better with water, and instead of taking 5-10 capsules at a time, it would be best to go with powder which is also a popular one.
Flavor and Texture
Generally, creatine is a tasteless and scentless powder, but it depends on the manufacturer and which ingredients they added to their product.
Typically, creatine powder mixes easily with water or juice, doesn’t settle at the bottom, and doesn’t have any taste.
When you are purchasing creatine, it would be best to go for a supplement that doesn’t contain any artificial colors and flavors, which is safer and more effective.
Other Ingredients
The ingredients of creatine are completely dependent on manufacturers and how they make their products. Some brands add artificial sugar, color, additives, and so on.
So, be a smart buyer and choose the one with 100% pure creatine monohydrate, which should not contain any other ingredient.
Ensure Safety and Quality
It is crucial to buy a genuine, authentic product that helps us achieve our desired fitness goal safely. And we all know that a fake product can’t help to get desired results.
So when you’re purchasing a creatine supplement, choose one that has undergone third-party testing and is certified by organizations like NSF to ensure quality and safety.
Some companies may also provide a special CoA so that you can check the detailed information about the purity of the product on their website or mobile app.
Best Creatine Supplements FAQs
What is the best creatine on the market?
There’re several forms of creatine supplements on the market, but the most well-researched and safe form is creatine monohydrate. Researchers proved that it is also the most effective supplement to enhancing strength and body composition.
After deep research on creatine supplements on the market of 2021, our experts recommend BulkSupplement’s creatine monohydrate, which is a 100% pure micronized form, assuring better dissolve in the water or juice.
The BulkSupplement’s creatine is a certified vegan, with no fillers or additives. It’s a safe and effective creatine monohydrate that boosts your strength, endurance and increases muscle growth.
Why Creatine is bad for you?
Although creatine is a relatively safe supplement, it has few side effects depending on person to person and their medical condition. When taking creatine, you should keep in mind that:
- Creatine may cause bloating or stomach discomfort when you consume it too much at a time.
- It may be dangerous to take creatine when you are dehydrated. So, when taking creatine, you must make sure that you’re drinking 3-4 liters of water per day.
- When you’re on some medication or health issue, do not add any supplement (including creatine) to your diet.
Sometimes your kidneys may not be in normal condition, so it would best and recommended consulting a doctor or healthcare provider before taking any supplement.
What is the best way to use creatine?
Creatine is the most researched, safe, and widely used supplement out there on the market. Adding creatine to your diet, you’ll notice lots of benefits in your fitness journey.
But there’re some drawbacks if you aren’t taking it in the right way. All we need to do is take it in the right way to get the most benefits.
What is the best way to take creatine?
There’re two ways to take creatine:
- Loading phase: 20 grams every day for 5 to 7 days and then transition to 3-5 grams per day.
- Or, you can take 5 grams per day from the beginning, and you’ll still saturate your muscles with creatine.
I recommend starting with 5-6 grams of creatine per day and no need to loading because our body isn’t familiar with creatine before, so rapidly loading it may not suit your body. I prefer adding 3-gram in your pre-workout and 3-gram post-workout total of 6 grams per day, which is completely safe.
Some people choose the cycle-creatine, where people take for 6 to 12 weeks and stop for four weeks. However, there is no conclusive evidence in favor of cycling or not-cycling.
Summary: If you choose to cycle, you may want to do a loading phase at the beginning of each of your cycles. On the other hand, when starting with 5 grams per day, you can consistently take it without stopping, and later you may drop to only 3 grams per day rather than a full five.
Conclusion
Remember, creatine isn’t a magic supplement that boosts muscle size and performance. All you need to focus on your diet and eat real foods, then creatine can help you get the extra benefits.
You’ll observe our chart highlights some of the best creatine supplements on the market, and I hope you have chosen the best one according to your needs.
If you’ve any questions, feel free to ask in the comment section below! We’ll love to help you.
