How Many Servings Are Really in a Tub of Creatine

By the BasketLab team · updated 20 September 2026 · how we rank

Creatine is one of the few supplements where the product is genuinely the same across brands: creatine monohydrate is creatine monohydrate. So the marketing has to happen somewhere else, and it happens on the serving count.

The number on the front is a choice, not a measurement

A tub of creatine holds a weight. How many servings that weight becomes depends entirely on how big the brand decides a serving is, and nothing forces that decision to match what you will actually take.

Divide the weight by the serving count and you get the answer immediately. A kilogram sold as 333 servings is counting 3 g. A kilogram sold as 200 servings is counting 5 g. Same tub, same powder, same money, and one of them looks like it lasts two thirds longer.

Neither label is lying. The 3 g one is just answering a different question from the one you are asking.

Why 5 g is the number to divide by

The daily maintenance dose used in most creatine research, and printed in the directions on most of these same tubs, is around 5 g a day. Some people load with more for the first week, most settle at 5 g and stay there.

So the useful figure is the weight divided by 5. A 500 g tub is 100 days. A 1 kg tub is 200 days. A 250 g pouch is 50 days, which is a month and a half, not the season that the pouch size suggests.

Once every tub is converted to the same serving, price per day falls out and the shelf reorders itself. Tubs that looked cheap because they were small stop looking cheap, and the difference between the best and worst value on the shelf turns out to be several times over, for a compound that is chemically identical.

What actually differs between tubs

Three things are worth paying for and one is not.

Micronised means the powder has been milled finer so it disperses instead of sitting on the bottom of the glass. It is the same creatine, and whether it is worth a premium depends on how much the texture bothers you.

Creapure is a branded creatine made to a specific purity standard in Germany. Tubs that carry it usually say so on the front, because it costs the brand more to buy.

Flavouring and added ingredients are where the price climbs fastest and where the comparison gets hard, because you are no longer buying one thing. If you want to compare like with like, compare unflavoured monohydrate.

How to check a tub in ten seconds

Find the weight. Find the serving count. Divide the first by the second. If the answer is under 5, the serving count on the front is not the number of days you are buying.

Then divide the price by weight-in-grams over five. That is your cost per day, and it is the only number on the shelf that compares one tub with another.