2025 Drink Mix Industry Report

Carbs Fuel has created this report. We have shared our key findings and we share potential considerations that expand beyond the data set shown below. 

This report focuses on the best value drink mixes available for purchase in the United States. We focused exclusively on carbohydrate contents and cost. This is not a report focused on electrolyte drink mixes, but rather fueling drink mixes. Some of the drink mixes in this report do contain large amounts of electrolytes, while others do not. This does not factor into the ranking of best value drink mix. Below you will find a few different sections we laid out to talk through the composition of this industry report. We broke this down into Key Findings and Considerations, followed by the raw data, filtered top to bottom; best price to worst price for 100 grams of carbohydrates. Key Findings will walk you through the list itself, how it's composed and details you should understand. Considerations will help you get the full view of why and what we built.

Key Findings

Best Value Drink Mix: The tried and true Gatorade Thirst Quencher takes a convincing win! Nothing says economies of scale quite like that convincing win. You're going to have to buy an incredibly large amount of Gatorade powder in order to get that price, but it sure is available! Even in smaller quantities, the value is still compelling. Some other honorable mentions are Formula 369 and Blank's Sports Nutrition. At Carbs Fuel, we applaud you for your commitment to providing amazing value fueling products for athletes. 

Best Value Single-Serve Drink Mix: Buy in bulk and save big money! Sometimes. There are some options on this report that offer the convenience of single-serves without the huge markups. This view offered some surprises! How about Maurten's value!? It is also important to note, and makes sense, that in order to utilize great value in single-serving sachets, they will include large portions of carbohydrates. There is a tight range - Carbs Fuel offering the lowest option at 75g and Styrkr and Formula 369 at the high end 90g. The single-serving options are potentially difficult to find in this report, so we will highlight the top 5 below: 

• • 1st Place: Formula 369 Single-Serving 90g packet

  • 2nd Place: Styrkr Mix90 

  • 3rd Place: SiS Beta Fuel Drink Mix 80g Sachet

  • 4th Place: Carbs Fuel 75g Single-Serve Drink Mix

  • 5th Place: Maurten Drink Mix 320 

Serving Sizes: This report highlights the huge variety of serving sizes, number of servings, and costs. There are two key takeaways in the serving size category: 

1. 1. Some of these serving sizes are a way of communicating the intended use of the product. While it is possible to scoop as much of any mix as you'd like into a bottle to make it high-carb, it may not have been formulated with that in mind. Oftentimes, companies will formulate the flavor to work best with a certain number of scoops in a certain liquid volume - refer to each company's recommendation. 

   2. Others may be stating a huge number of servings and a smaller serving size in an attempt to make the product seem better value than it actually is. We hope this report helps organize your options so it is more clear which products are actually offering great value. 

Expensive or Misunderstood: While there are some exceptionally great value options on the market, there are a ton of exceptionally expensive options on the market. Are these products overpriced and out of touch or just misunderstood? Some are the former and some are the latter. Not every drink mix on this report was necessarily formulated and brought to market with the intent to be used as a high-carb fueling product - think of options such as Liquid IV and Mortal Hydration. Also, some products are single-serve stick packs and packaging is expensive! It is a price to pay for convenience - think products like the Skratch Hydration stick pack or the Hammer Perpetuem single-serving.

The Elephant in the Room: DIY drink mixes. For the educated readers, you'll know the best value out there is bulk cane sugar. Even bulk maltodextrin like what you can find on Amazon or Bulk Supplements. There has been a huge wave of athletes that have grown tired of buying drink mixes that are expensive and not exactly what they are looking for. People are opting to buy ingredients like Maltodextrin, Cane Sugar, Fructose, and whatever flavoring they may want to add to make their own custom mix. That value is tough to beat and it allows you to fine tune the exact ratio of glucose to fructose you want and dial in the flavor you're looking for. We will caution you on this approach, though. There are some considerations we will highlight below that are often overlooked among these DIYers.

The Other Elephant in the Room: Carbs Fuel is the best value energy gel, but not even in the top 10 for drink mix!? That's right, and we aren't afraid to admit it. Our mission is to help more athletes effectively fuel their sport. We are doing that by offering simple, effective, and affordable products. When we looked at the whole sports nutrition market, we knew we wouldn't solve a big issue with a drink mix. There are great value products that exist. That wasn't our fight. Among energy gels, every single product was disturbingly expensive. We needed to provide a top quality option that was far more accessible and convenient to athletes. When we decided to launch our drink mix, we were focused on making the best performing product we possibly could - and offer it at an exceptional value. It wasn't about beating the other companies' price - it was about making an amazing product that was still accessible to anyone. We aren't cashing in on the product either, we use some expensive ingredients and need to charge what we do. See why in the considerations below.

Considerations

Intended Serving Size: As we mentioned above, not all of the products below were intended to be used as a high-carb fueling product. We dare you to put 100g of carbs of Gatorade Thirst Quencher Powder in a 16-24oz bottle - it won't be drinkable - because that wasn't the purpose of the product! Other products like Carbs Fuel, Maurten 320, SiS Beta Fuel, etc were formulated with consuming huge amounts of it in that size bottle in mind. 

Different Goals Depending on the Drink Mix: As we mentioned above as well, this is a black and white report looking at carbohydrate contents and cost. This does not factor in the additional nutrients products may offer - such as electrolytes. There are some products in this report formulated primarily for hydration (Liquid IV, Mortal Hydration, Skratch Labs Hydration, etc), some are focused entirely on carbohydrates (SiS Beta Fuel, Precision Fuel Carb Only, Maurten, etc), and some that focus on delivering a combination of carbohydrates and sodium (Carbs Fuel, Tailwind, NeverSecond C30, etc). 

Ingredient Lists and Quality: There is varying product simplicity and quality in the report - ranging across both extremes - overly simplistic to overly complicated. Some products contain an ingredient list as short as 3 ingredients, while other products contain an ingredient list with 20 things in it - the latter usually accompanied by bold unbacked claims for marketing purposes. There are other companies that strike a balance between being thoughtfully formulated, yet as simple as it can be. We'd like to highlight a couple things worth considering when looking at ingredient lists:

For you DIYers, three very important things to consider:

1. 1. 1. Not all maltodextrin is created equally. There are a huge number of different maltodextrins - varying from source, purity and dextrose equivalents. Different maltodextrins have huge impacts on the taste, texture, odor, and digestibility of a product. Maltodextrin available for consumer purchase in places like Amazon or Bulk Supplements may be very different than the maltodextrin in a professionally formulated product. For example, Carbs Fuel tested over 30 different variations of maltodextrin in the product development of our energy gel and drink mix products. We do a full deep-dive on maltodextrin here. 
      2. Ingredients, such as maltodextrin, are not 100% pure glucose. We read reddit threads diving into the numbers for their homemade mixes and have not seen people factoring in impurities. There can be significant impurities, especially among cheaper maltodextrins, including trace amounts of ash, fat, sodium, etc. So 100g of maltodextrin will not be 100g of carbohydrates. When you buy a Carbs Fuel formulated product, all impurities are factored in to ensure accurate nutrition facts and carbohydrate contents. 
      3. Different carbohydrate sources can impact the osmolality of a drink. This is a further look at the digestibility of your product. Ingredients such as sucrose, or cane sugar, are low in DE while highly branched cyclic dextrin (aka cluster dextrin) are very high in DE. Maltodextrin can have a huge range from low DE to high DE. This is also generally marketed as slow-release or fast-acting energy. It is worth experimenting with different types of drink mixes to see what works best for you. The importance of this consideration is more prevalent when it is a bigger day of activity, a hotter day where sweat rate is higher, or when consuming larger amounts of carbohydrates on an hourly basis. 

Too simple, too complicated, or just right: Put simply, the only things to consider consuming during an activity to either improve performance or maintain a high level of performance is water, carbohydrates, sodium, and caffeine. Other electrolytes, amino acids, ketones, protein, fat, and flavoring (although, worth seeing below) will not be helpful during your activity. Most of those are helpful to consume after an activity for recovery or to have a balanced diet, but not helpful to consume in that activity, for that activity. Put less simply, there are varying degrees of quality among carbohydrate sources - specifically maltodextrin and highly branched cyclic dextrin. Some maltodextrins are better than others, and highly branched cyclic dextrin - while being more expensive - is an exceptional ingredient. 

Flavor and Texture: While flavors and textures don't make a difference for performance, it may impact your motivation to consume the product hour after hour, day after day. The best fueling strategy is the one you stick to - and people generally stick to simple and enjoyable things. You will experience a huge range of different flavors and textures among drink mixes - some exceptionally light and some very thick. Also, some mixes will be very sweet and syrupy, while others more light in sweetness and almost water-like. Finally, some will have added flavors and some will be the natural flavor the ingredients impart. Carbs Fuel formulated its mix to be exceptionally light in taste and sweetness and almost water-like in texture. 

Carbohydrate Ratios: The other key consideration is the ratio of glucose to fructose in a drink mix. The majority of athletes should look for a 1:0.8 or 2:1 ratio - proven by the most up-to-date research to deliver the most optimal ratio of carbohydrate forms when consuming high amounts of carbohydrate per hour. Some mixes are 1:1 (Formula 369), some are 1:0.8 (Carbs Fuel, SiS Beta Fuel, Maurten), some are 2:1 (NeverSecond, Enervit) and some don't prescribe to any ratio (Skratch, Gatorade). It is worth experimenting with and what works well for one athlete may not work well for another. 

What you've been waiting for, the raw data!

The table above is data gathered from publicly available channels on January 9th, 2025. We found the lowest possible price for each drink mix, but did not include any promotional discounts they may have been offering. We did our best to accurately represent product details of each brand. This information may be inaccurate and we did not intentionally misrepresent any brand in the table above. We also did not include every drink mix on the market; we either didn't think they'd be relevant for the report or we were unaware of the product's existence. We exclusively focused on brands offering drink mix in the United States; we intentionally left off products which are not easily available for purchase inside of the United States.