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Here it is, plainly.
We're new. Nobody has vouched for us yet, and you have no reason to take our word for anything. But what we do have is paperwork.
Creatine powder gets made in a factory, then shipped to a different country and packed into bags. The country printed on the front is usually the country where it was packed, but creatine powder itself mostly comes from China.
JUST CREATINE comes from China too, we're just saying it out loud. It's manufactured by Inner Mongolia Chengxin Yongan, and packed in Slovenia. Both are named further down this page, along with what the lab found when it checked the powder for things like purity and heavy metals.
Trusting a brand means taking its word on where your creatine came from. Outside one plant in Germany, creatine is made in China. A bag with Europe on the front can hold powder made in China, and often does, because brands are betting you won't spot the difference between "Packed in Europe" and "European origin". So the price gap between two bags of creatine is mostly not about the powder, but more of a marketing gimmick.
A supplement label tells you which brand is selling the bag. It usually doesn't tell you who made what's inside it. Those are two different companies, and the second one is the one that actually made your creatine.
JUST CREATINE is manufactured by Inner Mongolia Chengxin Yongan Chemical. The bags were filled in Slovenia by a company we also name. Both are on this page.
Show the sourcing chainPowder can pick things up on its way from a factory to a bag. Small amounts of impurities like lead or mercury are the usual worry. There's no way to see them, so the only way to know is to have somebody test a sample and print what came back.
That test was done for this batch. The unedited results are on this page.
Show the certificateAny bag can say ultra pure on the front. Nothing stops it. The word costs nothing to print and there's no number attached to it.
The lab certificate for this batch lists what was measured and what came back. You can open it and read it yourself.
| Test item | Standard | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Purity (assay) | 99.5–102.0% | 101.1% |
| Loss on drying | 10.5–12.0% | 11.4% |
| Creatinine | ≤ 100 ppm | 22 ppm |
| Dicyandiamide | ≤ 50 ppm | 48 ppm |
| Particle size (200 mesh) | ≥ 70% through | 73% |
| Total impurities | ≤ 2.0% | 0.0070% |
Creatine monohydrate is the most studied form there is, and it survived the studying. Every "upgraded" form (hydrochloride, ethyl ester, buffered creatine, magnesium chelate, nitrat) has been sold as more soluble, more bioavailable, effective at a lower dose. None has beaten monohydrate in a fair head-to-head at an equal dose (Jäger 2011; Kreider 2022; Antonio 2021). "More soluble" doesn't mean "better absorbed" when monohydrate is already nearly 100% absorbed (Jäger 2011). What the alternatives reliably deliver is a price two to ten times higher.
We use 200 mesh micronised monohydrate. Smaller particles dissolve better. That's the only "upgrade" here worth paying for, and it's a few cents.
| Form | Price premium | What the evidence shows |
|---|---|---|
| Creatine monohydrate (ours) | Baseline | The form nearly every study below is measured against. |
| Creatine HCl | 2–4× | No advantage over monohydrate at an equal creatine dose in head-to-head trials. |
| Creatine ethyl ester | 3–5× | Breaks down into creatinine, a waste product, before it reaches muscle (Giese & Lecher 2009). Underperformed monohydrate in the published head-to-head trial. |
| Buffered creatine (Kre-Alkalyn) | 3–6× | No greater stability or effect than monohydrate. Its absorption claims haven't replicated. |
| Creatine malate / citrate | 2–3× | Equivalent to monohydrate. Better solubility doesn't translate into a measurable performance difference. |
| INGREDIENT | PER DOSE [5 G] | % NRV* |
|---|---|---|
| CREATINE MONOHYDRATE | 5000 MG | // |
| (OF WHICH CREATINE) | 4400 MG | // |
| TEST | RESULT | LIMIT |
|---|---|---|
| ASSAY (CREATINE MONOHYDRATE, DRY BASIS) | > 99.5% | 99.5–102.0% |
| CREATININE | 22 ppm | ≤ 100 ppm |
| DICYANDIAMIDE | 48 ppm | ≤ 50 ppm |
| DIHYDROTRIAZINE | NOT DETECTED | ≤ 0.0005% |
| LEAD | 0.001 ppm | ≤ 0.1 ppm |
| HEAVY METALS (TOTAL) | CONFORM | ≤ 10 ppm |
| MICROBIALS (E. COLI, SALMONELLA, S. AUREUS) | NOT DETECTED | — |
| PARTICLE SIZE | 73% through 200 mesh | ≥ 70% |
| ALLERGEN | AS RAW MATERIAL | CROSS-CONTAMINATION |
|---|---|---|
| CEREALS CONTAINING GLUTEN AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| CRUSTACEANS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| EGGS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| FISH AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| PEANUTS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| SOYBEANS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| MILK AND PRODUCTS THEREOF (INCLUDING LACTOSE) | NO | NO |
| NUTS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| CELERY AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| MUSTARD AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| SESAME SEEDS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| SULPHUR DIOXIDE AND SULPHITES (> 10 MG/KG AS SO2) | NO | NO |
| LUPIN AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
| MOLLUSCS AND PRODUCTS THEREOF | NO | NO |
After the sealing defect, we stopped taking pouch quality on trust. Every pouch delivery now gets checked by us before a single pouch is filled, and a delivery that fails the check doesn't get used.
It's the check we should have been doing from the start. Now it's part of how every batch gets approved.
Just before Just Creatine went live, we found a problem with the pouches. The manufacturer had sealed a batch poorly, and powder was leaking from the bottom seam. We pushed the launch back to deal with it.
We hadn't been checking pouch quality ourselves before this. It didn't occur to us that we needed to when ordering from a respected and supposedly very reliable manufacturer, so part of the responsibility for the delay sits with us too. We're fixing it as fast as we can, and we introduced our own rigorous pouch checks as a standard part of how every batch gets approved.
The original plan wasn't creatine. It was Fairy Dust.
We wanted it to be first, but the formula turned out more complex than we'd planned for, and getting the raw materials we wanted, at the standard we'd set, took longer than expected.
We could have shipped a compromised version and called it done. We didn't want to. We gave it the extra time instead of rushing a half product out the door.
So we changed the order. Just Creatine became the first product instead. Creatine monohydrate is one of the most studied compounds in nutrition science, and it let us introduce the brand the way we wanted to: one ingredient, explained honestly, with the standard visible from day one.
We make no health claims, on purpose. The EU keeps a register of pre-approved sentences a brand is permitted to recite about a supplement. Creatine gets exactly two, but you will never see our product carry them. Because the whole system is a charade; a permission slip dressed up as rigour.
Being allowed to print an approved sentence doesn't make a product work. The evidence was never in what the bureaucrats put their legal stamp on. The evidence is the research data behind the product, linked and explained right here.
Read what the literature shows and make an informed decision for yourself. We'd rather hand you the evidence than recite you a line we don't even agree with, just because the regulator signed it off.
All your cells, especially muscles and other energy-intensive tissue, hold a pool of creatine, and part of it is phosphorylated into phosphocreatine, which acts as the cell's energy reserve. During high energy demand, like for example an all-out effort such as sprinting or lifting weights, phosphocreatine donates a phosphate group to ADP to regenerate ATP, the molecule a cell has to spend to do the work. A cell carrying more creatine can hold a larger phosphocreatine reserve, and that's the biochemical rationale for why supplementing creatine is more often than not a pretty good idea (Kreider 2017).
Muscles hold most, about 95% of all body creatine (Kreider 2017), but it's not the only tissue that needs it. The brain and nervous system, the heart, the kidneys, basically every tissue with a high energy turnover runs on the same phosphocreatine system. The more energetically demanding the tissue, the more it relies on creatine. And the more creatine that tissue carries, the more robust it is: better able to hold up under stress, fatigue, and crises. Muscle is just the one we can saturate most easily, while other organs, especially the brain, need stronger supplemental encouragement.
| TYPE | Anaerobic alactic |
| DURATION | ~8–12 s of max-intensity effort |
| WHEN IT DOMINATES | Short maximal bursts (a sprint, a near max lift) |
| RECOVERY | 3–5 min between efforts |
| MUSCLE STORAGE | ~120 mmol/kg dry muscle |
For muscle, the dose is settled: 3–5 g a day saturates your stores in 3–4 weeks. 5 g is a clean default, loading just gets you there faster (Kreider 2017; Hultman 1996).
However, 3–5 g is a floor, not a ceiling. Sometimes 5 g isn't the number:
| MUSCLE SATURATION | 3–5 g/day, loading optional: Settled |
| SCALING TO BODY SIZE | ~0.1 g/kg/day: Supported |
| BRAIN UPTAKE | 10–20 g/day, sustained: Promising |
| BONE (+ TRAINING) | >10 g/day, with resistance training: Emerging |
| ADULTS 55+ (+ TRAINING) | >5 g/day, with resistance training: Supported |
Creatine monohydrate is by far the most studied form there is, and it's not even close. Also, it's the only form that actually "survives" the examination. None of the "upgraded" forms, hydrochloride, ethyl ester, buffered (Kre-Alkalyn), magnesium chelate, nitrate, that are pitched as more soluble, more bioavailable, effective at a lower dose, have ever beaten monohydrate in a fair head-to-head at an equal dose (Jäger 2011; Kreider 2022; Antonio 2021).
Some are actually much worse: for example ethyl ester, which converts to creatinine, the inactive waste product, before your muscles can use it. The chemists who pinned it down concluded it's "a pronutrient for creatinine rather than creatine" (Giese & Lecher 2009).
"More soluble" doesn't mean "better absorbed" when monohydrate is already nearly 100% absorbed (Jäger 2011). What the alternatives reliably deliver is a price two to ten times higher.
We use micronised monohydrate. Smaller particles dissolve better. That's the only "upgrade" worth paying for. Simply because it makes mixing it in liquid less of a chore.
| HCL | No better absorbed |
| ETHYL ESTER | Degrades to creatinine |
| BUFFERED | No buffering advantage shown |
| MALATE / CITRATE | Less creatine per gram |
| PRICE PREMIUM | 2–10× monohydrate |
A loading phase, about 20 g a day (split into four 5 g doses) for 5–7 days, fills your muscle stores faster. Skip it and just take 3–5 g a day, and you land at the exact same saturation in three to four weeks. Destination is the same, it just takes a bit longer (Hultman 1996; Antonio 2021).
Skip it if you can't be bothered; most people do. Also worth knowing is that loading is the reason for most of the creatine-associated GI discomfort people have been reporting after starting supplementation. If that's you, start on the lower end of 3–5 g and increase the daily total gradually. Splitting the total into two or more doses, with a few hours in between them, may also smoothen the transition.
The 3–5 g here is the muscle baseline. It saturates most people's muscle stores. Not all though; some bodies and goals need more (see "Why 5 grams"). Loading only changes how fast you reach muscle saturation.
| LOAD (OPTIONAL) | 20 g/day (4 × 5 g) × 5–7 days = 7–10 days to muscle saturation |
| OR SKIP | 3–5 g/day from day one = 3–4 weeks to muscle saturation |
| MAINTENANCE | 3–5 g/day, forever |
| WASH-OUT | ~4 weeks |
For muscle, 5 g a day covers most people, which makes it a standard dose: the general recommendation given when the other factors deciding an individual's true dose are unknown. That is why you see 5 g thrown around most often.
For the cases where you want to know what a true recommended dose is once the key factors influencing it are accounted for, we built you the tool below. Tell it your weight, pick what you're dosing for. This tool is for informational purposes only and must not be considered medical advice nor a nutritional recommendation. Before starting any supplement or making changes to your diet always consult your doctor. Obviously.
There are none to show, so this space stays empty rather than filled with something we wrote. When people do write them they go to Trustpilot, who verify them and will not let us edit or delete what lands there.
Check for yourself →The training case. If you do any repeated high-intensity work, such as lifting, sprinting, team sport, creatine has the best evidence-to-cost ratio of anything in the category. Decades of trials, hundreds of studies, a mechanism that's actually understood. Nothing else comes close on proof per euro.
The dietary case. Your body turns over roughly 2 g of creatine a day. About half you make yourself (in the liver and kidneys, from amino acids); the other half is meant to come from meat and fish. The fact is that making your own creatine isn't free: it's the single biggest user of your body's methyl groups, about 40% of your daily budget (Brosnan et al. 2011). Eat little or no meat and you run lower; some researchers now argue creatine is a "conditionally essential" nutrient on exactly that basis (Ostojic & Forbes 2022). It is not yet a settled matter, but it isn't a fringe one either. Both papers are in the references below.
Who it's probably not for. If your diet's a mess, your sleep is consistently bad, or your training is inconsistent, then fix those first. No amount of creatine can paper over a collapsing foundation.
Who it's for. Someone whose basics are covered, who wants to remove a variable rather than add a magic ingredient.
Two parts, and we're going to be straight about both.
Your legal right. Changed your mind and the bag's still sealed? You have a 14-day right of withdrawal under EU consumer law. You get a full refund, no reason needed. That's your right, not our generosity. And if it turns up damaged, or we ship the wrong thing, or the product itself is faulty, we replace it. It's basic fairness.
What we don't do is a "satisfaction guarantee." Because "money back if you don't feel it" is a sales tactic, and we don't run those. Here's what we'll give you instead: the truth about why it might not move the needle for you. A real share of people are "non-responders"; their muscle creatine is already near full, often because they eat a lot of red meat or fish, and they get little extra from supplementing (Syrotuik & Bell 2004). That's biology, and you deserve to know it before you pay, not after. If your diet already has this covered, you may simply not notice a strong effect.
One caveat on that "you may not need it" is that it's a muscle statement. The brain plays by different rules. A brain topped up with creatine isn't something you feel on a normal day; where the reserve earns its keep is the bad ones, like a stretch of almost no sleep, say. And even then you might not feel it working: you'd just hold steadier while someone running on empty starts to fade. The research points this way (see "Why 5 grams"), but it's a buffer you can't easily perceive. It's promising, not a promise.
The product isn't. The way we operate around it is.
We don't list a study and call it proof. We link the actual paper so you can see what it shows, what it doesn't, and where the authors themselves drew the line.
The "purest creatine" competition is a charade. "Pharmaceutical-grade," "ultra-pure," "next-generation," "99.99%"; all of this is a contest brands win to justify the price, not a difference you can feel or, usually, even check. Any creatine monohydrate whose certificate says it's creatine monohydrate is creatine monohydrate.
So we don't claim purest. We publish the actual certificate and let you read it. Then go ask a brand selling "ultra-pure" for theirs, and see if you get a number back. And if you do: good luck finding one that's meaningfully cleaner than the Chinese creatine you were taught to look down on.
No flash sales, no countdown timers, no discount codes. And it's manufactured in China, like essentially every creatine in this category. We're just the ones saying so.
Honestly: a few weeks, minimum. There's no faster version. Creatine works by saturating your muscle stores, and that takes time however you dose it.
At 5 g/day: full saturation in 3–4 weeks. Pick a time of day and stick to it.
Loading (20 g/day, split, 5–7 days): same endpoint, shorter runway, slightly more GI risk.
And set the expectation honestly: you won't feel a "surge." Creatine isn't a stimulant. It enlarges the reservoir of fast energy your working muscle can draw on. You might notice it as a little less drop-off in your last sets. Or you might not feel it at all and only see it in the numbers over time. That's what the evidence actually supports.
And there's a longer horizon worth naming. A lot of what nutrition does is cumulative. You probably won't feel it tomorrow or in a few weeks. It's a benefit you bank over years of doing it right, and only for as long as you keep it up. Creatine's brain side may belong in that category: less an effect you notice next week than a reserve you keep topped up for the long run. And we have to be honest about it being a long bet. Consider it an education we make for the product. It's not a claim or a promise we can give you an absolute guarantee on. The honest version is in Why 5 grams above.
Here it is, plainly.
It's made in China, like essentially all basic creatine monohydrate. The plants that can make it at scale while also keeping quality high are all there, and ours is Inner Mongolia Chengxin Yongan. We're not hiding it behind "European standards" language: the certificate's right there. If that's a dealbreaker, by all means go find a brand that won't tell you where theirs is really from (probably China too), or one that plays dumb and forgets to mention that "ultra-pure" doesn't make its powder any better for you than everyone else's.
We can't tell you it'll work for you. The research is real, the mechanism is understood. What we can't tell you is whether you're a responder, or whether your diet already covers your needs.
We won't chase you with discount emails. You buy more when you need more. That's it.
We might tell you not to buy it. Ask us whether creatine makes sense for your situation and if the honest answer is no, that's what you'll get. The education is the actual product. Just Creatine is just the proof we'll hold ourselves to the same standard we ask you to.
Every change to this product lands in the change log before it lands anywhere else.