Choose creatine monohydrate, sold as the only ingredient, with a serving that delivers 3 to 5 g and a label that prints that figure in grams rather than inside a blend. Prefer an unflavoured powder to gummies, keep it dry and sealed, and read any certificate for two things: whether it names a lot, and whether the sample was raw material or a finished container.
None of this needs a brand to decode it. Every check below runs on the label and one document, takes about a minute, and works on any tub — including ours, which is graded against the same list at the end. The dosing behind the checks is in how much creatine per day; the age question, for readers over 45, is in creatine for men over 45, and the short answer is that it changes adherence, not the molecule.
| What to check | What good looks like | The red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Creatine monohydrate, named as such | “Creatine complex” or a newer form sold on a smaller dose |
| Ingredients | One active: creatine monohydrate | A second active sharing the scoop |
| Serving | 3–5 g of creatine monohydrate, printed in grams | Under 3 g, or a capsule count that takes a handful |
| Flavour system | Unflavoured, or creatine grams printed apart from the flavouring | Only a scoop weight, with no creatine figure |
| Blend | None | One total weight for several ingredients |
| Certificate | A measured figure against a specification, a named lot, and the sample stated | Limits with no measured figure, no lot, or a raw-material test presented as a test of the tub |
| Format | Dry powder | Gummies or ready-to-drink liquid with no assay at the end of shelf life |
| Storage and date | Sealed, dry, room temperature; the date read as the maker’s own statement | A clumped tub beside the kettle; a date read as a measurement |
What is the best type of creatine to buy?
Creatine monohydrate. The 2017 position stand of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) calls it the most effective ergogenic nutritional supplement available to athletes for increasing high-intensity exercise capacity during training, and says none of the forms it names — citrate, serum, ethyl ester, buffered or nitrate — has been shown to promote greater creatine retention than monohydrate. A 2011 review in Amino Acids found “little to no evidence” that the newer forms are more effective or safer, and called their regulatory status less clear.
The form also sets the arithmetic. Creatine monohydrate is one creatine molecule bound to one water molecule, C4H11N3O3 in PubChem’s entry, so by arithmetic on that formula 87.9% of its weight is creatine and a 5 g serving carries about 4.4 g. Other salts carry other fractions, and the head-to-head trials have their own pages: creatine HCl, buffered creatine, creatine ethyl ester and micronized creatine, which is the same molecule ground finer. The full trial record is in the creatine research summary, and every form side by side on the supplement forms hub.
How much creatine should one serving contain?
Three to five grams of creatine monohydrate, the maintenance range in the 2017 ISSN position stand, which also describes an optional loading phase of about 0.3 g per kilogram of bodyweight a day for five to seven days. Then do the division: net weight over serving gives the servings, so a 300 g tub at 5 g lasts 60 days. A serving that delivers less than 3 g is selling a fraction of the studied dose.
Run the division on the serving you will actually take, not only the one printed. The FDA’s labelling guide defines a supplement’s serving size as the maximum amount the label recommends per eating occasion, so the panel is the brand’s own recommendation handed back to it. A tub that prints a 2.5 g serving halves its servings count the moment its owner takes 5 g instead. Capsules make the cost visible: at 750 mg of monohydrate a capsule, a 5 g dose is nearly seven capsules (5,000 ÷ 750 = 6.7). The same arithmetic, run on all three of our products, is in how many doses are in the tub.
Is flavoured creatine as good as unflavoured?
It can be, if the label prints the creatine in grams apart from everything else. A flavour system can add acids, sweeteners, colours and flavourings to every scoop, so a flavoured serving weighs more than the creatine it carries and a tub of the same size holds fewer doses. The check takes seconds: find creatine monohydrate in grams on the panel. If the only figure is a scoop weight or a blend total, the dose is unknowable.
The additives sit in the “Other ingredients” line below the panel, which carries names and no quantities, so its length is the clue rather than its contents. Unflavoured also has an advantage that has nothing to do with chemistry: it disappears into whatever is already being drunk, at whatever hour it is already being drunk, which is most of what daily use asks of a powder.
Why avoid creatine in a proprietary blend?
Because a blend prints one total weight for several ingredients and no figure for any one of them, so the creatine dose cannot be found. The FDA’s labelling guide requires a blend to list, on one line, the total weight of the other dietary ingredients inside it; it does not require the parts. A “creatine matrix” of 5 g could hold 4 g of creatine or very little, and the panel reads the same either way.
The bounds a blend leaves, and the arithmetic it removes, are worked through in what is a proprietary blend; the rest of the panel, line by line, is in how to read a supplement label and the terms in the supplement label glossary.
What should a creatine certificate of analysis show?
A measured figure beside the specification it was measured against, a method, a named lot, a date, a signature, and a plain answer to one question: what was the sample? A certificate on raw material in a sack is a real document about the ingredient before it became a product, not a test of the tub on the shelf, and a serving-size field reading N/A is one sign of exactly that.
Two more fields decide how far the document reaches. The customer of record: a certificate is addressed to whoever commissioned it, which can be the ingredient supplier rather than the brand handing it over. And the lot: a raw-material lot is not the lot printed on a tub, and nothing on the certificate connects the two. A high purity figure by HPLC is a strong measurement of a powder; whether that powder is the one in a given container is a question the document does not answer. The line-by-line reading is in what is a certificate of analysis, and the three different checks one badge word can stand for in its own explainer.
Are creatine gummies as good as creatine powder?
Not on the evidence available. Creatine converts to creatinine in the presence of water, heat and acidity, and a gummy is a moist, acidic matrix that sits at room temperature for months, while a dry powder in a sealed tub has almost none of the first. A gummy also holds little creatine by weight, so 3 to 5 g takes several. The document that would settle it, an assay at the end of shelf life, is rarely published.
The research record does not transfer automatically either: the creatine literature was built on powder, and the format question is a stability question that literature was not designed to answer. The full argument is in do creatine gummies work.
Does creatine go off, and how should it be stored?
Dry creatine monohydrate is stable; what ends it is moisture, warmth and time in solution. Keep the tub sealed, dry and at room temperature, keep a wet scoop out of it, and mix each serving shortly before drinking it rather than hours ahead. A date printed on a supplement is the manufacturer’s own statement rather than a measurement, and it is worth exactly as much as the data behind it.
A clumped tub has met moisture, which is the condition the conversion needs; it does not follow that much creatine has gone, and nothing on the outside can tell. The detail, and the dating rules, are in does creatine expire.
Can you buy creatine online in New York?
Yes, with conditions on the seller. New York General Business Law §391-oo bars sales of certain dietary supplements to anyone under 18 and requires a delivery seller to use a shipping method that needs an adult’s signature, backed by a valid government-issued photo ID. Creatine is one of the ingredients the statute names as a factor in deciding which products are covered, so a seller either ships creatine to New York that way or does not ship it there.
What the research does not show
It does not show that any newer form beats monohydrate. The ISSN stand found none of the forms it names promotes greater creatine retention, and the 2011 review found little to no evidence of greater effect or safety. A smaller recommended dose for another form is a claim about the product, not a finding about the body.
It does not show that a purity figure on raw material describes a finished tub. A certificate reports what a laboratory found in the sample it was given, on the day it was given it; it says nothing about a container filled later from the same powder, and only a test of the finished container could.
It does not settle what is left in a gummy, a ready-to-drink bottle or a tub kept in a warm kitchen at the end of its shelf life. The conversion chemistry is described; the domestic numbers are not published, ours included.
And it does not support a creatine sold for an age. A tub marketed to men over 50 holds the same molecule at the same dose. The 2014 meta-analysis of trials in older adults by Devries and Phillips, 357 participants with a mean age of about 64, pooled creatine taken alongside resistance training, and the dosing literature carries no age adjustment. The ranked list for older lifters is in supplements for men over 45 who lift.
Where Base Work sits against these checks
Base Work is creatine monohydrate, one ingredient, unflavoured, 5 g a serving, 60 servings in a 300 g tub, with no blend. Its certificate reports a measured figure, and a narrow one: the raw material was measured by an independent laboratory (Ethos Analytics, for Vox Nutrition; raw-material lot CM20251225A; the powder made by Accobio USA Inc.) at 99.87% creatine monohydrate against a greater-than-99.5% specification. That certificate covers raw material, not a finished TARE tub. Base Work does not ship to New York addresses. Every row of the document is on Testing & Certification.
The same checks for the other two ingredients are in how to choose a collagen supplement and how to choose a magnesium supplement, with their evidence in the collagen research summary and the magnesium research summary.
Sources
- Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, et al. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 2017;14:18. PubMed 28615996
- Jager R, Purpura M, Shao A, et al. Amino Acids 2011;40(5):1369–1383. PubMed 21424716
- Devries MC, Phillips SM. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2014;46(6):1194–1203. PubMed 24576864
- PubChem. Creatine monohydrate, CID 80116 (molecular formula C4H11N3O3). pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- US Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplement Labeling Guide: Chapter IV. Nutrition Labeling (2005). fda.gov
- New York General Business Law §391-oo. nysenate.gov