Not a doctor, not an athlete. Just someone who reads labels for fun, kept getting cramp on the stairs, and got tired of paying $40 a tub on the strength of a nice front-of-pack. So I bought eight and drank one a week for two months. Hope this saves you the trouble!
Eight powders tested across mineral profile, taste in plain water, cost per glass, ingredient quality, mixability and label clarity. One scoop each, same glass, same scorecard.
82 cents a glass against $1.30 for LMNT
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$1.30 a glass
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$1.12 a glass
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$0.84 a glass
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$1.50 a glass
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$0.94 a glass
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$0.75 a glass
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$1.44 a glass
(See details)The right amount of salt, not the most. Most everyday powders land between 300 and 600 mg a glass. You only need more if you are sweating for hours. Our winner uses 22% of the daily limit in a glass. LMNT uses 43%.
Minerals that work together. Salt alone is not hydration. Look for roughly two parts salt to one part potassium. Two of the eight here are badly out of balance, in opposite directions.
Sugar you did not ask for. Sugar speeds water into you, which is why the sweet ones feel fast. Deliberate in a rehydration product. But 7, 9 and 11 grams a glass adds up every morning.
What else is in the packet. Two of these eight are sweetened with sucralose and acesulfame potassium and coloured with dyes. The rest use natural flavours. Three use an unrefined salt, which is about how processed you want your ingredients rather than nutrition, since the sodium is the same. Only one ticks every box.
Something you will actually finish. A powder you drink four times a week beats a better one you give up on. Half of these I stopped wanting to drink before the week was out.
Honest trade-offs. Every powder here has its pros and cons spelled out, including our winner.
If I ran marathons, LMNT would have won. It has nearly twice the salt, and that is a real advantage when you are losing it over several hours. But I do not, and neither do most people. Within a fortnight I was watering the LMNT packets down by half.
Live It Up fitted the life I actually have. Sea salt, natural flavours, 68 mg of vitamin C, no added sugar. It is also the only one of the eight that ticks every box on the clean-label list further down. Several came close. None managed the full set.
On price, it depends how you buy it. The repeat delivery is where the good rate sits, around 82 cents a glass with free postage. A single pouch costs a fair bit more, and their offers move, so check the current price on their page. What I can tell you is it was the only one I finished and reordered without thinking about it.
A specialist product, not an everyday one. If you run marathons or train in real heat, buy it and ignore our ranking. For everyone else, including most people who go to the gym three or four times a week, it is more salt than you need.
It adds nothing beyond the minerals, deliberately. That is why it scores bottom on extras and top on ingredient quality at the same time.
The one I would keep in a suitcase, and reach for with a stomach bug. Not the one I would want every morning. The sugar is not a mistake, it is what makes an oral rehydration solution work. But 7 grams every day is a different decision from 7 grams when you are ill.
A good mixture with an unpleasant texture, and a strange balance: 1,000 mg of potassium against only 40 mg of sodium, the least of the eight. Worth the chalkiness if you fast regularly. If you sweat at all, the sodium will not go far.
A rescue drink rather than a daily one. Good after a rough night or a long flight, and it has the most added vitamins here. But they arrive with 11 grams of sugar and 45 calories, and it costs the most per glass of the eight.
A good, inexpensive, low-salt drink mix. Right for children and easy days, underpowered for the problem most people buy electrolytes to solve. At 55 mg of sodium the ratio to potassium is inverted. The low salt that counted against it here is an advantage if you are buying for a child.
A good product I could not make myself finish. Its low placing is about drinkability, not quality. The ingredients are as clean as anything here and at 75 cents it is the cheapest per glass. But it never fully dissolved. Fair choice if you train hard in heat.
Keep a box in the cupboard for when someone has the flu. It was never trying to be a daily drink, and judging it as one is not entirely fair. For the job it was designed for, it is the most proven thing here.
What pushed it to last was the price. I had assumed it was the cheap option: it is not. The eight-packet box works out at $1.44 a glass, more than everything here except Liquid I.V. Add the sugar and two artificial sweeteners and there is little argument for drinking it daily.
31 · desk job · four workouts a week
I care about what actually goes into the things I buy, and I read labels for fun. That is roughly the whole qualification.
I bought all eight at full price, drank one a week for eight weeks, and had my dad score the flavours blind so my own hopes could not do it for me. He called Re-Lyte "like licking a rock". This page is the result.