Independent supplement ratingsUS and Canada · Updated weekly
A ratings desk for a category that has spent thirty years grading its own homework.
A ratings desk for a category that has spent thirty years grading its own homework.
We ran the five electrolyte products in our ranking through one calculation: what a gram of sodium actually costs you. The spread is nearly seven-fold.
An electrolyte drink has one job that the research actually supports: replacing the sodium you lose in sweat. So there is one number worth comparing, and it is not on the front of the box. Here is that number for every product in our electrolyte ranking, and what each one charges you for it.
You lose sodium in sweat in far larger amounts than potassium, magnesium or calcium — this is settled physiology, not a marketing angle. Sweat sodium concentration varies a lot between people, but a working average is roughly 800 mg of sodium per litre of sweat. A hard, hot hour can cost you a litre or more.
Which puts useful replacement for a serious session at roughly 500–1,000 mg of sodium per serving. That is the range our dose bars measure against, and it is the line that separates an electrolyte drink from flavoured water.
These are the five products we have rated end to end. Sodium is per serving, as declared on the label; price per serving is what we recorded at publication.
LMNT is the only product here that delivers a full hard-hour dose in a single serving. Liquid I.V. lands on the bottom edge of it. The other three require two or three servings to replace what an hour of heavy sweating costs you — which changes the price comparison completely, because the price you should compare is the price of an adequate dose, not the price of a stick.
Ultima Replenisher costs the least per serving of anything in the ranking, and roughly seven times more per gram of sodium than the most expensive one. At 55 mg a serving you would need eighteen sticks to replace a litre of sweat. It is a pleasant, sugar-free flavoured mineral drink. It is not, in any useful sense, an electrolyte replacement for hard training.
Every product here is marketed on hydration, and hydration is not a regulated claim with a required dose behind it. That is how a 55 mg sodium drink and a 1,000 mg sodium drink end up on the same shelf, using the same language, at prices within a dollar of each other.
We did not survey the whole category. This is the five products in our ranking, with their labels read and their arithmetic done — not a claim about every electrolyte product on sale. We will extend the table as the ranking grows, and this post will grow with it.
Two honest limits before you treat those numbers as gospel.
Sweat sodium varies enormously between people. The 800 mg per litre we use is a working average; real individual concentrations span roughly 200 to 2,000 mg per litre. "Salty sweaters" — the ones who finish a session with white crusting on a cap and skin that tastes of salt — genuinely need much more than the table implies. Someone at the low end needs much less.
Sweat rate varies just as much. An hour of easy indoor cycling and an hour of hill running in August are not the same litre. If you want your own number instead of an average, weigh yourself before and after a session and subtract any fluid you drank: each kilogram lost is roughly a litre of sweat.
Most people, most days. Electrolyte replacement earns its place when sweat losses are large — a hard hour or more, real heat, or several sessions in a day. Below that, food covers it comfortably: a normal diet supplies far more sodium than any of these sachets, and thirst handles the water.
The category's marketing has quietly widened from "athletes in the heat" to "everyone is chronically dehydrated and under-salted", which is a much bigger market and a much weaker claim. If you sit at a desk and drink when thirsty, a stick of electrolytes is a pleasant flavoured drink, not a physiological need.
The exceptions worth taking seriously: illness with vomiting or diarrhoea, where an oral rehydration formula is genuinely the right tool; very hot manual work; and endurance events lasting hours.
Some products here add sugar, some don't, and neither is automatically wrong — it depends what you are doing.
During prolonged endurance exercise, carbohydrate alongside sodium is a feature: it fuels the work and modestly helps fluid absorption. That is the logic behind traditional sports drinks and behind oral rehydration formulas.
For a 45-minute gym session it is 15–20 g of sugar you did not need. Check the "Total Carbohydrates" line, decide which situation you are actually in, and don't let a product designed for one sell you on the other.
Far less than sodium. You lose comparatively little of either in sweat and food covers most of it. Sodium is the number that decides whether an electrolyte product is doing anything at all.
Only outside endurance work. For long sessions the carbohydrate is doing a job.
Not in any way a label can show you. You are comparing salt, potassium, magnesium and flavouring. Price per gram of sodium is the honest comparison, and it does not track price per stick.
Yes — and the "electrolytes all day" habit is where that risk lives, not in one drink after a hard session. If you have high blood pressure or a heart condition, deliberately adding sodium is a question for your doctor.
Written and fact-checked by the NFS editorial team · Last updated 06 Aug 2026. Sodium figures are as declared on each product's label at the time we rated it; prices are checked at publication and re-checked monthly. Educational only — not medical advice.