The Definitive Guide to Comparing the Best Creatine Supplements (Part 1)
In our creatine guide, we went into details covering all aspects of creatine supplements. We covered topics on its effects, types, and loading and its use. As a continuation of that, we're preparing a consumer's guide to buying creatine supplements. With so many different products on the market, how do you decide what to buy and what gives you the biggest bang for your buck?
This guide will be broken down in to roughly 3 sections mainly comparing 4 categories of creatine products including: 1) creatine monohydrate, 2) creatine and carbohydrate formulas, 3) Kre Alkalyn creatine and creatine and NO mixed supplements.
As usual, much of our comparison will be based on cost analysis to figure out which products gives the biggest bang for your buck. The comparison will be based on cost per gram of creatine (CPGC) and cost per serving (CPS). Sometimes CPS may not be the best metric to use simply because various supplements will include varying amounts of creatine, so often times, the CPGC metric gives a slightly more accurate comparison between similar supplements.
Best Pure Creatine Powder
In all of our supplement comparison guides, we make our selection based on the supplements we know the best, and the supplements that we've used most often. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different creatine supplements on the market, and it would be too much of a tedious task for us to compare every single one of them; therefore, we elect to compare what we consider some of the top brands that most users would already be familiar with.
In this first part, we will compare the basic creatine monohydrate (CM) supplements. For this, we picked four brands of micronized products including AST, Dymatize, Optimum, and Prolab. We also included two sizes for the Optimum brand. Below is a table comparing the five different CM products.
It's a bit difficult to decide which product gives the best value when they all come in different container sizes and prices, but once you've calculated the cost per serving (CPS) and cost per gram of creatine (CPGC), it makes an easy comparison.
Looking at the table above, it is clear that the Dymatize Micronized creatine comes in first both CPS ($0.09) and CPGC ($0.018). The ranking based on cost comparison is as follows:
- Dymatize - $0.018 CPGC
- Optimum Nutrition - $0.020 CPGC (2000g size)
- Prolab CM - $0.022 CPGC
- Optimum Nutrition - $0.023 CPGC (1200g size)
- AST Micronized Creatine - $0.028 CPGC
Now as far as quality goes, I've used all of them and have to say that I really don't notice any differences in product quality. However, I do find myself using the Dymatize creatine and Optimum creatine (1200g size) most often. Although the 2000 gram size for the optimum creatine is slightly cheaper than the 1200gram size, it's a little big for my liking, so I've typically stuck with container sizes around the 1000g range. If you were to base your buying decision purely on cost, then Dymatize micronized creatine comes out on top here.
However you want to look at it, these pure powder supplements are usually the most cost effective anyways. So, while Dymatize comes out on top for cost effectiveness, if you have a certain preference for one of the other brands, you're certainly not spending all that much extra.
>> Click here for Dymatize Micronized Creatine
>> Click here for Optimum Micronized Creatine
>> Click here for Prolab Creatine Monohydrate
>> Click here for AST Micronized Creatine
Part 2: Creatine and Carbohydrate Formulas >>
