When it comes to effective bodybuilding and fitness supplementation, nothing beats creatine monohydrate.

One study showed that taking around 100 grams of carbs with 5 grams of creatine increased total muscle creatine by 60 percent.5 Another showed similar results by taking 5 grams with around 50 grams of carbs, and 50 grams of protein—the equivalent of two scoops of protein and two bananas, a cup of grape juice, or a cup of cooked rice. Find the best muscle and workout supplements with creatine and branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), tests for contamination with dicyandiamide, evidence for increasing muscle strength and endurance, improving your workout, dosage, safety, side effects and more. Find out which ones passed our tests and why.

Since creatine became a popular supplement in the 1990’s, there’s been over 1,000 studies. In all of these studies, including studies where subjects of all ages took high doses of creatine daily for up to 5 years, the only consistently reported side effect from creatine supplementation has been weight gain due to water retention in the muscles.

Creatine is the most widely studied natural supplement ever released onto the market and is supported by mounds of research showing direct effects on strength, power and muscle growth.

But what kind of creatine results should be expected once you begin supplementing with this hugely popular compound, and how quickly?

Creatine Results: Benefit #1
Improved Strength And Overall Gym Performance

When you train with weights, your body produces energy by utilizing a molecule known as “ATP” (adenosine tri-phosphate). By breaking off one of the phosphate groups, energy is produced and muscular contractions can be achieved.

ATP is then converted into ADP (adenosine di-phosphate) and has to wait until the third phosphate group is re-attached before more energy can be produced.

By supplementing with creatine, you provide additional phosphate groups to your muscle cells so that ADP can be converted back into ATP at a more efficient rate.

As a result, you’ll be able to handle heavier poundages on all of your exercises and perform additional repetitions.

This increase in gym performance is one of the key creatine results you’ll achieve, as it will directly translate into additional gains in lean muscle mass.

Creatine Results: Benefit #2
Muscle Cell Volumization

The second benefit on the list of creatine results is an expansion in overall muscle cell volume.

In order for creatine to be stored in your muscle tissue, it requires additional water to be held there. This ends up driving more fluid into your muscle cells to give you a harder, more muscular overall appearance.

It also increases the overall anabolic state of the muscles, since muscle tissue is about 70% water to begin with.

Some users wrongly fear that this will cause them to become “bloated” or “puffy” looking. But since all of the increased water is stored inside the muscle cell rather than beneath the skin, creatine actually has the opposite effect and causes an increase in overall muscle definition.

Creatine Results: How Long Do They Take?

If you supplement with the recommended dosage of 3-5 grams of creatine monohydrate daily, you’ll experience full creatine results within about 2-3 weeks.

All of your lifts in the gym will see an increase in weight/reps, and you’ll also likely gain anywhere between 2-8 pounds of lean body weight. This varies between individuals and depends on genetics as well as how much natural dietary creatine was being consumed before supplementation.

In order to ensure that you experience optimal creatine results, make sure to supplement with premium grade German “CreaPure” creatine monohydrate. Lower quality alternatives from China may not deliver the same effect.

– Sean

Here’s what to do next…

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Do you want to add muscle and gain power? Look no further than creatine.

And no, it’s not just for bodybuilding. Creatine can improve muscle strength, muscle size, and muscle power, making it a must-have supplement for serious athletes.

First, we’ll review the best creatine supplements on the market. Then, we’ll dive deeper on how creatine works and how you can use it to improve your strength and power.

Rankings

1. Creatine HMB: Creapure + HMB

To be the best you can’t be acting like the rest of the pack. Enter Creatine HMB by Transparent Labs.

Creatine HMB leads the creatine pack because it combines the proven with the new.

• Proven: each serving of Creatine HMB contains 5 grams of Creapure® creatine monohydrate.
• New: each serving of Creatine HMB contains 2.5 grams of HMB, anabolic metabolite from leucine.

That means you’re getting more strength and muscle building potential per serving than any other ‘plain Jane’ creatine product.

Transparent Labs Creatine HMB comes in both unflavored and blue raspberry. In its natural state, Creatine HMB is tasteless with a slight spice taste from BioPerine® black pepper added to increase uptake.

It’s made using the world’s purest, most tested creatine combined with industry leading manufacturing practices.

That’s why Creatine HMB is our top pick.

2. BulkSupplements Pure Micronized Creatine

Bulk Supplements makes a name for itself by offering cheap, pure, and simplistic supplements, and its creatine offering is no exception.

As you might guess, it has exactly one ingredient: creatine monohydrate. Lab testing confirms this fact; its creatine content is 100%—no binders, fillers, byproducts, flavorings, or colorants.

On top of this, BulkSupplements is careful enough with their manufacturing processes that they can guarantee the product is free of common allergens like gluten, dairy, yeast, and soy.

Other companies will sometimes cut costs by manufacturing other products, like soy protein, on the same equipment as a product that has no soy ingredients. While this is not a problem for the vast majority of people, it’s a nice touch if you’ve got allergies or sensitivities.

3. Optimum Nutrition Micronized Creatine

The creatine supplement made by Optimum Nutrition is simple and straightforward powder-form supplement. Creatine monohydrate is its only ingredient; it passes laboratory analytical testing with flying colors.

As with many other powder forms of creatine, Optimum Nutrition has micronized its product, meaning the powder is ground down into a very fine consistency. This is good both for absorption reasons and for practicality—it’s easier to mix into a protein shake, and it is also absorbed more readily by your body.

4. MyProtein Creatine

Chalk this one up as another in the no-nonsense category. It comes in several flavors, but the most popular variant is the unflavored creatine monohydrate, which comes in a simple foil pouch and is 100% creatine monohydrate by weight. It’s highly pure and very cheap per serving.

MyProtein also offers flavored variants which are a good choice if you can’t stand the taste of natural creatine. The ingredients of each specific flavor vary slightly, but most contain natural flavoring agents, sucralose, acesulfamine-K, and coloring agents.

Depending on your level of tolerance for other ingredients in your supplements, you’ll have to choose whether the flavored or unflavored versions are right for you.

While the protein does come with a scoop, MyProtein encourages you to use a scale to measure out your daily supplement servings, as scoops are not particularly accurate.

5. Naked Creatine

As the name suggests, the creatine supplement manufactured by Naked Supplements has only one ingredient, and that’s creatine monohydrate.

It’s an unflavored and super-minimalist source of creatine, and it blends up pretty well in water, which makes it a great pick for just about everyone.

6. NOW Sports Creatine monohydrate

With its flashy branding and bright-orange bottle, you might think that the creatine supplement made by NOW Sports is another one of the maximalist formulations that tries to cram in extra ingredients and supplements to stand out from the crowd.

In fact, just the opposite is true: it’s another single-ingredient creatine monohydrate powder. It does well on independent lab testing, with fully 100% of its contents being creatine monohydrate by weight, and it contains no impurities or contaminants.

Its cost per serving is quite low, too, even in competition with less flashy and well-known brand names.

It does not appear to be micronized, so it may be a little trickier to blend into your protein shakes without getting clumps, but a good shaker bottle and whisk ball should make short work of that.

7. MusclePharm Creatine

In contrast to your standard creatine supplement whose only active ingredient is creatine monohydrate, MusclePharm uses a six-part blend of various forms of creatine. In addition to creatine monohydrate, various other forms of creatine are included.

MusclePharm Creatine also does well on lab testing, containing 100% creatine by weight (in its various forms), and contains no dangerous or watch-list ingredients.

8. MET-Rx Creatine 4200

Met-Rx provides a creatine capsule supplement for those who hate the taste of powder form creatine or just want an easier way to take their daily dose while in training.

Each capsule contains 700 mg of creatine monohydrate, as well as a small amount of silica and magnesium stearate, which both serve as binders, stabilizers, and anti-clumping agents. But capsule and binders aside, MET-Rx Creatine 4200 is highly pure: lab tests find that it’s essentially 100% creatine.

Among the capsule forms of creatine, MET-RX is one of the best, so if you find the convenience is worth a slightly higher price, by all means go for it.

9. TwinLab Creatine Fuel Stack

TwinLab makes a capsule-based creatine supplement that also includes glutamine and taurine. Each capsule contains 833 mg of creatine, along with 333 mg of glutamine and 33 mg of taurine.

These other two active ingredients are supposed to help with building muscle and sustaining energy output during exercise—both taurine and glutamine are amino acids.

These two are both popular supplements among weightlifters, power sport athletes, and bodybuilders, and at least one study found that they are more useful when combined with creatine (4). Regardless, that’s not the same thing as being better than just creatine.

In any case, if both of these are on your supplement regimen anyways, TwinLab Creatine Fuel Stack is worth a look.

10. MuscleTech Platinum Creatine

MuscleTech is a widely-known brand that you’re likely to find at your local supplement store as well as on the internet.

MuscleTech makes a pretty basic creatine powder, which doesn’t stand out much from the crowd, aside from being micronized.

Category winners

Best creatine overall: Transparent Labs Creatine HMB

Creatine and HMB make a great pair: creatine boosts muscular power and size, while HMB helps accelerate muscle recovery. Transparent Labs puts both to work in an excellent all-around creatine supplement.

Best creatine for women: MyProtein Creatine

MyProtein has a super-clean supplement design and doesn’t have any extraneous ingredients, like flavoring or artificial sweeteners, that can get in the way of improved muscle strength. It’s great for women with serious fitness goals.

Best creatine for mass gains: BulkSupplements Pure Micronized Creatine

For peak muscle gains, you want to absorb your creatine supplement as efficiently as possible. BulkSupplements makes that easy to do with their micronized creatine powder, making it the perfect choice for maximum gains.

Best creatine for muscle power: BulkSupplements Pure Micronized Creatine

Like with mass gains, improving muscle power with creatine is all about increasing your intracellular creatine concentration as effectively as possible. The highly bioavailable form of creatine in this supplement ideal for improving power output.

Best creatine for runners: MyProtein Creatine

Runners taking creatine will benefit in short, high-intensity sprinting workouts. MyProtein Creatine is best for this purpose: the super-pure and moderate-dose formulation makes improving leg speed a breeze, but prevents you from getting muscle-bound.

Best creatine for athletes: Transparent Labs Creatine HMB

The combination of creatine for muscle power and HMB for muscle growth is hard to beat when it comes to athletic performance. If your sport demands strength, power, or speed, Transparent Labs Creatine HMB is the way to go.

Who should buy creatine?

Though creatine was originally studied as a way for high level athletes to gain muscle mass and strength, creatine is gaining support as a way for anyone who wants to preserve or build muscle strength—not just elite athletes.

Of course, creatine is still a great supplement to take if you want to lift more or sprint faster, but it’s also great if you want to preserve muscle mass while your arm is in a cast, or increase your muscle strength if you’ve been sedentary for a long time and are starting a weight lifting program.

Some emerging research even suggests that taking creatine could help you recover from a concussion, due to the fact that your brain burns creatine for energy. If you fit into any of these wide ranging categories, creatine could be a good supplement to add to your routine.

How we ranked

When making our rankings of the best creatine supplements on the market, we looked to the scientific literature for guidance. Since all of the successful research studies use fairly high doses of creatine split up into several servings per day, we prioritized creatine supplements that made it easy to follow this kind of protocol.

First of all, that meant opting for highly pure products. We culled anything from the field of candidate supplements that did not focus primarily on creatine as its main active ingredient, so pre-workout supplements or protein powders that added creatine as a secondary ingredient did not make the cut.

Next, we focused on the method of delivery. Since they’re so much more amenable to variable dosages, powder-based creatine supplements had a clear advantage over capsule based products.

We ended up eliminating almost all of the capsule-based creatine supplements because they couldn’t measure up in terms of purity and dosage flexibility compared to powder-based products.

We put a lot of emphasis on products which were certified as being free from common allergens like soy, gluten, and eggs, as these are good indicators of high-quality manufacturing processes.

Finally, we looked at the packaging itself—while many of the best products come in resealable plastic bags, rigid plastic tubs can be somewhat easier to work with.

This didn’t always tilt the scales (for example, our top product still ended up being BulkSupplements Creatine, which comes in a fairly simple bag), but it did result in a reshuffling of some of the rankings, based on this more practical aspect of creatine supplementation.

Benefits

Creatine is great for muscular strength and high-intensity power. Creatine is a muscle- and power-building supplement that directly provides additional fuel for your muscles during short, high-intensity exercise. This primary energy-boosting effect enables better training sessions: you can lift heavier weights for more reps, and this causes direct gains in muscle mass and strength as a secondary effect.

For these two reasons, creatine supplements are very popular with weight lifters, power sport athletes (football, rugby, sprinting, etc), and body builders. Additional evidence indicates creatine can also be helpful for people who need to rebuild muscle mass after an injury or after being on crutches or in a cast for a long time.

Research on athletes is very clear: creatine has a strong, specific effect on muscle power and muscle force production. Creatine supplementation is particularly effective when combined with protein supplementation, as outlined in a 2001 study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition.

In the study, Darren G. Burke and other researchers at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada followed 36 men over the course of six weeks of resistance training (5). One third of the men were given a protein and creatine supplement, one third of the men were given a protein supplement only, and one third of the men were given a placebo, to function as a control group.

At the study’s conclusion, the researchers found that the protein and creatine group had the greatest increase in lean muscle mass, as well as in their maximum bench press and knee extension strength.

Notably, not all performance measures improved to a greater extent in the creatine plus protein group—squat strength and knee torque improved to an equal extent in the protein and creatine group versus the protein alone group, when both were compared to the placebo group.

According to a review study published in 2003 by Richard B. Kreider at Baylor University, the effects of creatine on athletic performance are well-validated and fairly well-understood (6).

Creatine has a specific and strong effect on short-term power production in muscles. This means that it is very well-suited for tasks like maximal lifting, short sprints or repeated bouts of sprinting, and for building muscle overall—which is a result of creatine supplementation enabling you to lift heavier weights for more repetitions.

Creatine is not, however, well-suited for aiding performance in longer-duration tasks, like long sprinting or aerobic exercise. The energy demands of these exercises are fundamentally different; your body relies on its creatine stores comparatively little for longer-duration exercise.

Creatine isn’t just for hardcore athletes, either. A 2001 study by Peter Haspel and colleagues at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium found that creatine supplementation can be helpful for people who need to rebuild muscle mass after an injury or accident (7).

In the study, 22 subjects had their leg immobilized in cast for two weeks. Afterwards, they underwent a rehab program designed to measure and improve muscular strength in the immobilized leg. Half the subjects received a creatine supplement, while the other half received a placebo.

Over the course of the rehab program, the researchers tracked the subjects’ muscle mass and muscle strength in the immobilized leg. They found that the creatine supplement group gained back their strength more quickly than the group which took the placebo.

This increase was related to a boost in markers of protein synthesis in the muscles, leading the researchers to conclude that creatine helps directly increase the cross-sectional area of muscle fibers during a rehab program.

Creatine is an effective way to increase muscle mass in the elderly. Following along the path of many supplements for strength, researchers have begun to explore whether creatine is also helpful for non-elite athletes who also want to add muscle mass.

Older adults are a particularly good test case, because they need to build or maintain muscle mass for totally different reasons. Frailty is one of the biggest causes of disability and falls among the elderly, and it can be traced directly to sarcopenia—the shrinking of muscle fibers that happens in older adults if they don’t exercise.

Resistance training (e.g. through a weight lifting program) is the usual treatment of choice to reverse or prevent this loss of muscle mass and muscle strength, but research suggests that creatine could be a useful addition to resistance training programs for the elderly.

One study, published in 2016 in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle, tested a resistance program alone compared to the same resistance program plus a creatine supplement in a group of elderly subjects over the course of 12 weeks (8).

All of the participants took a supplement, but half of them were taking a placebo, while the other half were taking a protein supplement.

After the 12 week training program, the researchers examined the strength gains in each group. As we might expect, both groups increased their muscular strength and muscle mass, but the group taking the creatine supplement experienced significantly more strength and muscle mass gains than the placebo group.

Findings from this and other research suggests that creatine could be very useful for older adults looking to increase their muscle mass and strength to maintain a better quality of life in old age.

Creatine can help improve brain function in certain situations. Creatine isn’t just used by your muscles. When the brain is under stress, it relies more heavily on creatine to perform executive functioning.

One of the most exciting frontiers in creatine research is not on its application for muscles, but its application for cognitive function. New research suggests that creatine could be useful in situations ranging from concussion recovery to cognitive performance at high altitudes and during periods of limited or no sleep.

A scientific paper published in 2019 in the European Journal of Sports Science reviewed the current state of research on the nootropic and cognitive benefits of creatine supplementation (9).

The scientific research papers that are reviewed in the article cite the ability of creatine to boost cognitive functioning or prevent deterioration of cognitive performance in stressful situations, such as at high altitudes or when you are sleep-deprived.

Some of the most interesting work is on creatine supplementation as a part of concussion recovery programs. While the research in humans is in the early stages, cellular biology work suggests that the presence of creatine can reduce the negative cellular cascades that are activated after a concussion, indicating that creatine supplementation could potentially be useful following a concussion (10).

Side effects

Fortunately, creatine appears to be a very safe supplement. According to a book chapter on the subject authored by Adam Persky and Eric S. Rawson, the short-term safety of creatine is well-demonstrated.

There are still some questions on its long-term safety due to a lack of comprehensive multi-year studies, but those which have been conducted have not found any negative effects of creatine supplementation on kidney, liver, muscle, or heart function (8).

A 2011 study by Hyo Jeong Kim and other researchers advises against using creatine if you have kidney disease or people at high risk for kidney disease (including diabetics and people with high blood pressure), but beyond that, there should be no problems associated with even heavy loads of creatine (up to 20 grams per day) in healthy people.

Recommended dosage

When it comes to the optimal dose, many scientific studies use protocols which call for 15 to 20 grams of creatine per day, split up into five gram doses taken at different times during the day.

However, according to R.L. Terjung and other researchers at the University of Missouri, similar results can be achieved with doses as low as three grams of creatine monohydrate per day (11).

At some point, your muscles become saturated with creatine and any additional creatine in your system is simply wasted. By this logic, the optimal dose is going to be higher if you are a person who already has more muscle mass—you have a bigger muscular fuel tank to fill up compared to a smaller person.

In most cases, between five and 15 grams of creatine per day should be appropriate during a loading phase, and three to five grams per day during a maintenance phase.

FAQ

Q: What is creatine?

A: Creatine is a pretty simple molecule that is used by both your brain and your muscles. Creatine can be used by muscles to rapidly generate large amounts of energy through the creatine phosphate energy pathway, and creatine also directly stimulates the growth of muscle tissue.

In the brain, creatine can also be used for energy, and new research suggests that your brain might benefit from creatine supplementation during stressful situations.

Q: What does creatine do?

A: Creatine can be used by your muscles to generate a lot of power in a short amount of time. Over the course of weeks or months, a regular supply of supplemental creatine can prime your body to increase muscle mass and muscle strength in response to a resistance training program to a greater degree than just doing the same lifting or training program without creatine.

Its ability to stimulate synthesis of new muscle tissue is by far the most popular reason for people to take a creatine supplement, but even if your goals are purely related to short-term anaerobic performance, creatine can still be very helpful.

Creatine works for a wide variety of people, not just elite athletes: it’s been studied as a way to increase muscle mass in frail, elderly adults, for example, when combined with resistance training programs.

Q: Is creatine bad for you?

A: Creatine is about as close as you can get to a model supplement—it has a well-demonstrated profile of efficacy, and on top of that, it is very safe.

Creatine has been successfully used in high-level athletes as well as the elderly, without any adverse health effects. The safety of creatine has been confirmed in long-term studies that take regular blood samples looking for signs of damage to the kidneys or liver, but creatine does not show any toxic effects even over long durations of use (12).

Protein Supplements With Creatine

Creatine is not currently recommended for people under 18, but this is largely because of a lack of research, not because of any evidence indicating that it could be bad for you.

Q: Should I be taking creatine?

A: Creatine is one of the most effective and safest supplements for building muscle mass and muscle strength. However, it’s not right for everyone.

If your primary focus is an endurance sport like running or cycling, creatine is not going to help you. The benefits of creatine are strictly for short-term anaerobic performance, which includes things like sprinting and weight lifting.

Moreover, while creatine can be helpful for your brain, these cognitive benefits appear to be limited to stressful situations, like brain recovery after a concussion or cognitive performance at high altitude or after sleep deprivation. Other nootropics (even something run of the mill, like caffeine pills) might function better if you want to boost your cognitive functioning during normal situations.

Q: What does creatine do to your kidneys?

A: Some initial skeptics of creatine pointed to some hypothetical dangers for kidney function that could be caused by long-term ingestion of high levels of creatine.

The argument was that creatine intake would stimulate the generation of toxic compounds called HCAs, which could damage the kidneys. However, according to a meta analysis of research on creatine, long-term studies of creatine find essentially no change in blood biomarkers of kidney health (13).

Still, creatine has not been studied in people who have kidney disease, so the official recommendations are that creatine is not recommended for people with kidney disease or renal failure. It’s safe for healthy people, though: even long-term studies have found no biological evidence for any deleterious effect on kidney health or kidney function.

Q: What are the dangers of creatine?

Creatine Supplements Risk

A: Creatine poses very little risks, even when taken for long periods of time. Initial reports of side effects like cramping have not stood up to more intense scientific scrutiny, for example.

Creatine is thought to cause some amount of water retention, but this does not rise to the level of a “danger.” Technically speaking, creatine is not recommended for people who have kidney problems, and for people who are under age 18. In both cases, these recommendations are based on a lack of research, not strong evidence indicating a harmful potential for creatine.

Q: Is creatine safe?

A: Yes, among all of the potential supplements that you could take to increase your muscle mass and muscular strength, creatine is as safe as plain protein powder.

As a natural compound that can be found in fairly large amounts in foods like chicken and beef, it should not be surprising that creatine is a safe supplement.

The latest consensus statements from international sports science researchers make the case that creatine is both safe and effective (14).

Q: Is creatine good for bodybuilding?

A: Creatine is a very popular supplement among bodybuilders, particularly when trying to “bulk,” or add muscle mass, as rapidly as possible.

Bodybuilders often use sophisticated loading/unloading strategies when supplementing with creatine, as the water retention effects of creatine supplementation can work against a bodybuilder’s goals when trying to cut body fat (and non-muscle mass generally) as much as possible, and particularly in the run-up to a bodybuilding competition.

Q: When should you take creatine?

A: Most studies on creatine suggest that it is best to take creatine several times per day. Some research has used small doses taken as often as five times per day!

Generally, though, you can get away with around three doses of creatine spread throughout the day and garner all of the benefits of creatine supplementation.

Q: What is creatine loading?

A: Creatine loading is a supplementation strategy that aims to rapidly increase intramuscular creatine levels as quickly as possible, then maintain high levels of creatine in your body with a lower dose.

The loading protocol recommended by a 2017 position stand by the International Society of Sports Nutrition is fairly typical: For five to seven days, take 0.3 grams of creatine per kilogram of body mass. Then, maintain your creatine intake at 3-5 grams per day (15).

As you might imagine, different researchers and performance experts have different recommendations when it comes to the precise method of creatine loading, but the general strategy is the same: a short period of high-dose creatine intake, then a maintenance phase with lower intake levels.

Related articles

Recap

A dose of five to 15 grams of creatine monohydrate per day can help you lift more, sprint faster, and see more rapid increases in muscle mass and muscular strength.

Top Creatine Supplement

If you want a safe, reliable way to build muscle, increase power, or recover muscle mass after an injury or accident, taking a creatine supplement is a great choice. It is a safe, reliable way to boost your body’s short-term energy reserves.

Results Of Creatine Supplementation

For BodyNutrition‘s #1 creatine recommendation, click here.