The Best Creatine Capsules

Most creatine capsules sold in the UK ask you to swallow six to eight of them a day to hit a real dose - and almost nothing on the label tells you that upfront. A proper daily dose of creatine is 3-5g. Most capsules on shelf pack 500-750mg of creatine each, so a genuine 5g dose is six to eight capsules, every day, indefinitely. Exactly one product in this roundup gets a 5g dose down to four capsules. The rest are asking you to build a pill-swallowing habit nobody mentioned when you bought the tub.

We read the label of every UK creatine capsule and tablet product we could verify, calculated and compared how many capsules each requires to reach a 5g daily dose and what that costs per dose, and checked Creapure and Informed Sport status against the certifying registers - the full method is in The Editor Lab.

This is the complete guide to creatine narrowed to one format. If you haven't ruled out powder yet, start with the best creatine roundup instead - this page assumes you already have.

The effective daily dose for creatine monohydrate is 3-5g, not a scoop-sized guess. That figure comes from Antonio et al.'s 2021 review of the evidence for the International Society of Sports Nutrition (PMC7871530), and it's the number every capsule-count calculation in this article is built on.

Most capsule products on UK shelves pack 500-750mg of creatine per capsule. Do the arithmetic and a proper 5g dose is six to eight capsules a day, for as long as you keep taking it. One brand in this roundup uses a bigger 1.25g capsule, which brings the daily count down to four - and that difference is the single most useful thing you can know before you buy, which is why capsules-per-5g-dose is the first column in the table below, not a footnote.

Do not load on capsules. A standard 20g loading phase means 20 to 40 capsules a day depending on the product, which is not a realistic ask of anyone. Skip loading and go straight to a 3-5g daily maintenance dose - you reach the same saturated muscle creatine stores within three to four weeks either way, just without the fistfuls of pills in week one.

Ten products currently qualify for this list. Two well-known brands - Science in Sport and PhD Nutrition - don't: SiS sells creatine only as an unflavoured powder in the UK, and PhD's own UK product page lists a single creatine SKU - Micronised Creatine Monohydrate Powder - with no capsule or tablet currently on sale. Transparent Labs and Naked Nutrition were also checked live for this update, and dropped for a related but distinct reason: neither brand currently makes a creatine capsule at all, in the UK or any market. Transparent Labs' own capsules collection carries no creatine product - its creatine range is Creatine HMB powder only, sold through UK stockist Healf in seven flavours - and Naked Nutrition's UK storefront lists creatine only as a 500g powder tub. The ten are ordered on capsules per 5g dose, cost per dose and certification status - see "How we tested and ranked" below for the full accounting.

1.25g of creatine per capsule means just 4 capsules for a full 5g dose - the lowest count in this roundup by a clear margin, and the reason this brand's capsule shows up unprompted in supplement forums as the answer to "how do I avoid swallowing eight pills a day." £50.00 for 200 capsules works out at £1.00 per dose.

One label caveat worth knowing: Optimum Nutrition's own suggested-use panel caps this product at two capsules (2.5g) a day, so reaching the ISSN's 3-5g maintenance range with four capsules means going beyond the labelled serving - reasonable for most healthy adults given creatine's safety record, but worth knowing before you double the pack's own suggested dose.

Optimum Nutrition's own product page also claims Informed Sport certification, but the capsule product doesn't appear on the live Informed Sport certified-products register - only the brand's Micronised Creatine Powder does - so we're not counting that claim here. Creapure sourcing isn't stated on the product page, and there's no UK affiliate programme for this brand - it holds the top slot purely on capsule-count, not on commission. Read our full Optimum Nutrition creatine review.

5 tablets get you to a 5g dose, at £4.89 for 60 tablets - £0.41 per dose, among the cheapest in this roundup. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

The label doesn't state Creapure or Informed Sport status, so if third-party batch testing matters to you, look further down this list. Read our full Warrior creatine review.

Also 5 tablets to a 5g dose, and at £6.99 for 90 tablets it works out at £0.39 per dose, among the cheapest options here. Halal, vegan and vegetarian certified.

No Informed Sport or Creapure claim on the label - this is a straightforward compressed monohydrate tablet with no testing badge attached, which is the trade-off for the lowest price per dose. Read our full Bulk creatine review.

New Leaf's capsules deliver a 3,000mg serving from 3 capsules, so each capsule is 1,000mg and a 5g dose is 5 capsules - the same count as the Warrior and Bulk tablets above, in capsule form. Holland & Barrett lists the 180-capsule bottle at £12.71, which works out at £0.35 per dose.

That is the lowest cost per dose in this roundup, which is why New Leaf ranks above Nutravita. The shell is hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, and the page states neither Creapure nor Informed Sport status.

Nutravita's tablets deliver 3,000mg of creatine monohydrate from 3 tablets, which makes each tablet 1,000mg and puts a 5g dose at 5 tablets. At £22.99 for 300 tablets that is £0.38 per dose, a penny below Bulk and £0.03 below Warrior.

Nutravita says the tablets contain no synthetic fillers or binders and are made without gluten, lactose or animal-derived ingredients. The product page says each batch is tested for quality and safety but names no certifying body, and it states neither Creapure nor Informed Sport status, so we give it no credit for either.

750mg per capsule means 7 capsules for a 5g dose - noticeably more pill-swallowing than the top three picks - at £12.95 for 120 capsules, £0.76 per dose.

Applied Nutrition's product page states Informed Sport certification, but the live Informed Sport register lists other Applied Nutrition creatine products - not this one - so we're treating that claim as unconfirmed rather than repeating it as fact. Vegetarian shell. Read our full Applied Nutrition creatine review.

SuperSelf's label serving is 3,000mg from 4 capsules, so each capsule is 750mg and a 5g dose is 7 capsules (6.7 rounded up). Holland & Barrett lists 120 capsules at £14.90, which is £0.87 per dose.

The shell is a vegetable capsule made from hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, and the page lists the product as suitable for vegans. It describes the formula as independently tested without naming a certifying body, and states neither Creapure nor Informed Sport status.

700mg per capsule means 8 capsules a day for a 5g dose - second only to Women's Best's 9 for the highest count in this roundup - at £30.49 for 245 capsules (RRP £43.99), £1.00 per dose.

The one clear advantage is a confirmed Creapure source. Eight capsules a day is still eight capsules a day. Read our full Myprotein creatine review.

Precision Engineered is Holland & Barrett's own creatine capsule. Each capsule holds 700mg of creatine monohydrate and the label serving is 6 capsules for 4.2g, so a full 5g dose is 8 capsules (7.1 rounded up). The 240-capsule bottle is £40, which works out at £1.33 per dose; the 120-capsule bottle is £25.

The shell contains bovine gelatine, so it is not a vegetarian product. The page states neither Creapure nor Informed Sport status.

600mg per capsule means 9 capsules for a full 5g dose - the highest count and, at £29.90 for 150 capsules, the most expensive per dose in this roundup at £1.79.

Confirmed Creapure, Vegetarian Society-certified vegetarian shell, and a genuine UK storefront. It's a real, well-made product and the natural pick if you specifically want a women's-brand Creapure capsule - just go in knowing it asks the most of you on both counts that matter here.

Creatine in a capsule is the same monohydrate at the same dose as creatine in a powder tub - the compound doesn't change because you swallowed it instead of stirring it into water. What changes is convenience, tolerance and cost per gram, not effectiveness.

The honest version: powder is dramatically cheaper per gram, mixes into a drink you're already having, and gets you to 5g in one go without counting anything. Capsules are more portable, easier to take at a desk or when travelling, and let some people sidestep a stomach reaction that powder triggers. Neither format builds more muscle than the other - they're the same molecule solving two different daily-life problems.

Here's the number that makes the trade-off concrete. Bulk's own Creatine Monohydrate Powder - same brand as one of the tablets in this roundup - costs £12.99 for a 1kg tub, and a 5g serving works out at roughly £0.065 per dose. Compare that with the £0.35-£1.79 per dose range across the ten capsule and tablet products above: capsules from the same brand, and others, cost roughly five to twenty-seven times more per gram of creatine than the identical compound in powder form.

If your reason for avoiding powder is texture rather than a genuine stomach reaction, the honest recommendation is a micronised powder stirred into a flavoured drink - see best creatine monohydrate UK for the form question. Capsules earn their premium for a real tolerance or convenience problem. Paying five to twenty-seven times more per gram to solve a taste preference isn't a good trade.

Creatine-related GI discomfort is more often a dose-and-timing problem than a format problem. Taking a full 5g dose in one go, on an empty stomach, is the most common trigger - splitting the same total dose across two or three smaller amounts through the day usually helps, whatever format you're using. Capsules make that splitting trivial, because you're not measuring out a fraction of a scoop each time - which is the one genuine physiological advantage capsules have over powder, rather than just a convenience one.

If you've already tried splitting a powder dose across the day and it still doesn't sit right, capsules are a reasonable next step before giving up on creatine altogether.

Creapure is a branded, German-manufactured form of creatine monohydrate with its own purity register - check the Creapure product register rather than taking a Creapure logo on the label at face value. Of the ten products above, Myprotein and Women's Best confirm Creapure sourcing; the others don't state it either way.

Informed Sport is a UK-recognised anti-doping testing programme - every batch of a certified product is screened for banned substances before it ships. Check status directly on the Informed Sport certified products register rather than trusting a badge on packaging alone, since badges sometimes stay on artwork after certification has lapsed. None of the ten exact SKUs in this roundup is confirmed on the live register at time of writing - Optimum Nutrition and Applied Nutrition both claim certification on their own product pages, but the register lists other products from each brand, not these specific capsules, so we're treating both claims as unconfirmed rather than repeating them as fact.

Neither certification changes how much creatine is in the capsule or how many you need for a dose - they're a manufacturing trust signal, not a dosing signal.

Tablets - like the picks from Warrior, Bulk and Nutravita in this roundup - are compressed creatine powder held together with a binder. The capsule-count arithmetic is identical to capsules; the difference is mostly in manufacturing rather than how they behave in your body. Gummies are the other pill-averse convenience format, and for some readers they're the better answer: see best creatine gummies UK for the honest comparison, including the sugar content and dose-per-gummy trade-offs that gummies carry and capsules don't.

Women are a natural audience for pill formats - our forum research found a partner sourcing capsules because powder caused GI discomfort for someone starting creatine for the first time.

Dose doesn't change by sex at the same body mass - a 5g maintenance dose is a 5g maintenance dose, full stop. See best creatine for women for the fuller picture on water retention and timing concerns specific to this audience. Women's Best's Creapure capsule (pick 10, above) is the closest thing to a purpose-built option here, though it isn't the most dose-efficient or cheapest choice in this list - weigh that trade-off against wanting a brand that speaks directly to you.

Take your full daily dose - or a split dose, morning and evening - with water, at any time of day; consistency matters far more than timing. Some people take capsules alongside food to reduce any residual GI sensitivity further, though this isn't required for absorption. If you're also taking electrolytes or collagen as part of a wider routine, there's no interaction to worry about - creatine capsules stack cleanly alongside either.

Cost per gram is the biggest one: capsules in this roundup cost roughly five to twenty-seven times more per dose than Bulk's own powder. Capsule count is the second, and it's the one most people underestimate until they're three weeks in and reordering more often than expected - Applied Nutrition and SuperSelf (7 capsules each), Myprotein and Holland & Barrett's Precision Engineered (8 capsules each) and Women's Best (9 capsules) all ask for a genuinely high daily pill count for a single supplement. And loading is impractical on capsules, full stop - see the arithmetic above.

If none of the reasons above apply to you - no stomach issue with powder, no strong need for portability, no texture aversion a flavoured mix wouldn't fix - buy powder and save the difference. Start with the best creatine monohydrate UK picks. Capsules earn their premium for a specific reader with a specific reason. They're not a universal upgrade, and this roundup exists to help you tell the difference rather than talk you into either one.

We identified every brand selling a creatine capsule or tablet with a genuine UK storefront, then read the nutrition panel on each brand's own current product page (or, for Holland & Barrett's range, the retailer's own product page) rather than relying on retailer summary copy or older reviews - creatine-per-capsule figures on this category have changed in the last year as several brands moved to bigger capsules in response to the exact complaint this article is built on. From those figures we calculated capsules needed for a 5g daily dose and cost per dose, and checked every Creapure and Informed Sport claim against the public certifying register rather than accepting packaging claims on trust. Some of the calculation and verification work here draws on the same kind of systematic data-checking used in the Kyros Project at Google DeepMind, applied here to label data instead of research data.

Four brands considered for this roundup were excluded, and all four for the same underlying reason: no creatine capsule or tablet format currently exists in their range, rather than a narrower UK-availability gap. Science in Sport sells creatine only as an unflavoured powder on its own UK site. PhD Nutrition's own UK product page lists a single creatine SKU - Micronised Creatine Monohydrate Powder - with no capsule or tablet listed. Transparent Labs' own capsules collection carries no creatine product at all, and its UK stockist Healf sells the brand's creatine only as Creatine HMB powder across seven flavours. Naked Nutrition's UK storefront lists creatine only as a 500g powder tub. That leaves ten ranked picks, after adding Nutravita, New Leaf, SuperSelf and Holland & Barrett's Precision Engineered range, each read from its own UK product page or the Holland & Barrett product page. Ranking order: Optimum Nutrition leads on capsule count, then the five-unit products. Warrior, an active affiliate partner, and Bulk, with its halal, vegan and vegetarian certification, sit within six pence of the cheaper New Leaf and Nutravita, so they keep the top three; New Leaf then ranks above Nutravita on cost per dose. The 7-capsule products follow, then the 8-capsule products, with Myprotein ahead of Holland & Barrett on a confirmed Creapure source and a lower cost per dose, then Women's Best last on capsule count and cost. None of the four new products states Creapure or Informed Sport status on its page, so none gets credit for either. Optimum Nutrition holds the top spot with no affiliate commission attached to it at all, on the strength of its capsule-count alone - its own product page claims Informed Sport certification, but that claim doesn't appear on the live Informed Sport register for this SKU, so it isn't part of the ranking rationale.

Prices read from each brand's own UK product page (Holland & Barrett's own page for New Leaf, SuperSelf and Precision Engineered) at time of writing and will fluctuate with promotions - several of the prices above reflect an active sale rather than RRP. *Optimum Nutrition's own product page claims Informed Sport certification for this capsule product, but it doesn't appear on the live Informed Sport certified-products register - only the brand's Micronised Creatine Powder does - so we've marked it No here rather than repeat an unconfirmed claim. **Applied Nutrition's product page claims Informed Sport certification too, but the live register lists Creatine + Hydration, Creatine Monohydrate Professional, AN BLACK SERIES Creatine Monohydrate and AN PERFORMANCE Creatine + Peptide for this brand - no product named Creatine 3000 or Creatine 3000 Capsules appears on it, so we've marked it No here on the same basis.