Does more expensive creatine also deliver better results?
Published 9 September 2026
Hello! Wednesday is our knowledge day — once a week, we share an educational article with you to give you something to think about and help you make more informed choices.
This time, food technology and biotechnology student Anette Auväärt writes about creatine. It is one of the most extensively researched supplements of all, yet on store shelves you will find around a dozen different forms side by side, each claiming to be better than the last. Does a more expensive tub also deliver better results — and why does your weight actually increase rather than decrease during the first few weeks of taking creatine?
One fact you can take away right now
Anette conducted a spot price comparison in Estonian online stores. The price per kilogram of unflavored creatine monohydrate ranged from approximately 30 to 60 euros. Creatine HCl cost around 100 euros per kilogram, while the price of buffered creatine could exceed 300 euros per kilogram.
At the same time, monohydrate is the form with the most research behind it. Based on the current evidence, no alternative form — whether HCl, buffered creatine, or ethyl ester — has proven superior to monohydrate in direct comparisons.
Why your weight increases during the first few weeks
When you start taking creatine, the number on the scale may rise before you notice anything in the mirror or in your training performance. This is due to simple osmosis: when more creatine enters a muscle cell, the concentration of dissolved particles inside it increases, and water also moves into the cell to maintain balance. This is called intracellular water retention — it is not fat mass, and it does not persist after you stop taking the supplement. Around 95% of the body's creatine stores are located in skeletal muscles, with the remainder found mainly in the brain and heart.
Creatine is no longer just a gym topic
Because the brain also uses the same creatine-phosphocreatine system, its effects on memory, sleep, mood, and women's health are now being studied. A 2024 meta-analysis found a small positive effect on memory, with a greater effect in women and in the 18–60 age group (Xu et al., 2024). For depression, a possible small to moderate effect on symptoms was found, but the quality of the evidence was very low (Eckert et al., 2025) — creatine is not a substitute for treatment. It is an exciting direction, but the evidence is still preliminary.
The article also explains why creatine is not a fat burner but may still help preserve muscle mass during weight loss, why vegetarians typically have lower baseline creatine stores in their muscles — and what question you should ask yourself instead of “Does creatine work?”
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About the author
Anette Auväärt is a food technology and biotechnology student at TalTech. Her interest in nutrition began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she developed a desire to better understand how everyday food choices affect health, well-being, and work performance. Over time, this grew into a desire to gain a deeper understanding of how the human body works and to learn to distinguish evidence-based information from common myths — which is precisely what led her to study food technology and biotechnology. On the blog, Anette shares evidence-based and practical information to help distinguish facts from myths and make more informed choices.
Enjoy the article — and if the fundamentals (sleep, nutrition, training program) are shaky, creatine is just expensive powder sitting in your cupboard!
