Best Amino Acid Supplements: Top 5 of 2026
Best Amino Acid Supplements We examine the five best amino acid supplements based on quality, effectiveness, value, and safety. Daniel is a managing editor and writer at Innerbody Research. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in writing, he attended post-gra
Best Amino Acid Supplements
We examine the five best amino acid supplements based on quality, effectiveness, value, and safety.
Daniel is a managing editor and writer at Innerbody Research. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in writing, he attended post-graduate studies at George Mason University and pursued a career in nutritional science.
Jordan Stachel is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and a member of Innerbody Research's Review Board. For several years, she has worked as a dietitian in private practice, helping clients of various ages achieve their health goals and address numerous concerns and clinical conditions. Jordan earned her master’s degree in nutrition and dietetics from the University of Southern California in 2019.
In this Review
Photo by Innerbody Research
You don't have to be a bodybuilder or an athlete to benefit from essential amino acid (EAA) or branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) supplementation. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, providing your body with the means for cell growth and repair and contributing to overall health. This fast-growing market is estimated to value almost $50 billion globally by 2030.
These supplements are generally taken around workouts to help your body build muscle and improve athletic performance. They can also boost your endurance and reduce post-workout soreness and fatigue.1
All amino acid supplements are not created equally, however. This guide breaks down our top five picks for best amino acid supplements in 2024 based on their effectiveness, cost, safety, and customer satisfaction.
If you don't have time to read our complete guide, glance over our top picks below.
Summary of recommendations
Best overall: Naked EAAs
Best budget pick: Bulk Supplements EAA Powder
Best tasting: Type Zero Clean Amino Burn
Best for gut health: Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine
Best pre-workout: RULE1 Essential Amino 9
Cleanest ingredient profile: Naked Nutrition
A clean ingredient profile, mixability, and affordability that set this vegan-friendly supplement apart from the rest.
Naked Nutrition includes a 9.25g dose of EAAs with nearly 5g of BCAAs. No fillers, artificial flavors, or sweeteners. Take 20% off your order when you opt for a subscription on Naked Nutrition.
Why you should trust us
At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each health service or product we review, including amino acid supplements. We’ve used these products before, during, and after workouts to see if any or all of them had any effect on our experience. We critically assess the entire ordering process to save you from any surprises and prepare you for each company’s customer service standards and logistical quality.
In addition to actually trying these products for ourselves, our team pored over hundreds of scientific publications regarding amino acids, exercise performance, and muscle building. More than 1,000 hours of concerted research went into making this page as helpful as possible.
Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy. We’ll continue monitoring the landscape to try new amino acid supplements that come along and keep this article current.
Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions involving staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.
How we evaluated amino acid supplements
One person's needs from an amino acid supplement may be different from another’s, but there are still undeniable objective criteria we use to evaluate the potential of these supplements. Those objective criteria include efficacy and safety — determined by their ingredients and doses — as well as cost. We also applied subjective criteria like taste and customer service experience to round out our rankings.
Efficacy and safety held the most sway in our product rankings. And since we actually tried these products, we can speak to which ones taste the best, which is going to be a sticking point for many. Cost was less of a factor, considering the relatively similar prices you find among groups of flavored or unflavored EAAs. And while our customer service experiences are worth noting, they only partially influenced our considerations; we’ve ordered many, many products, and the fact is that you may end up having a more positive or negative shipping experience based on supply chain issues, your expectations, or simply your luck of the draw.
Let’s take a closer look at each criterion in more detail to better understand how we came to our conclusions.
Effectiveness
Winner: Naked Nutrition EAAs
The effectiveness of a given amino acid supplement will depend in part on what you want to get from it. If you’re just looking for a little boost in energy and overall health, a supplement with a lower dose of amino acids might suit you. But if you’re looking to build muscle or increase exercise performance in general, you’ll want something more robust. And since so many of these supplements are powders that you mix into a liquid, getting a stronger product is typically smart; you can easily cut a dose in half if the serving is larger than you want.
Of course, strength isn’t the only issue here. Balance is also key. An amino acid supplement that doesn’t contain all nine essential amino acids will have a more specific function than a balanced product containing every one of them. Studies show that, in terms of muscle protein turnover, if any of the nine essential amino acids are absent during absorption, muscle protein synthesis will likely fail to overtake the rate of protein breakdown.6 That’s not to say a supplement like Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine will be ineffective. It just means that its efficacy is more limited, forcing you to consider supplement timing and meals that can provide additional amino acids.
To that end, we found Naked Nutrition’s EAAs to offer the most potential for efficacy across a variety of needs. It contains just over 9g per serving of nine essential amino acids in good balance, with a 2:1:1 ratio of the three BCAAs and higher doses of the other six amino acids than many competitors’ products. And since each bottle contains 50 servings at a very reasonable price, anyone hoping to build muscle better through supplementation can easily take a double dose or more so long as they clear it with a doctor first.
Safety
Winner: Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine
Safety is an important consideration when buying any dietary supplement, in large part because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates these products differently than conventional foods and drugs. When considering safety among amino acid supplements, we looked at the following factors:
Manufacturing methods
Ingredient transparency
Food allergens
Fillers and additives
Third-party testing
Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine is the winner in this category based on its clear labeling of ingredient amounts and its inclusion of high-quality fermented BCAAs and glutamine. You’ll even see doses in the “other ingredients” section, where almost every other company in the U.S. lists the ingredients but not the doses of things like citric acid, silicon dioxide, or natural flavor.
Transparent Labs also utilizes a third party to perform testing that looks for potential contaminants like mercury or E. Coli. The site also lists certificates of analysis you can check against the lot number printed on your product, though sometimes the publication of these certificates lags behind product sales. The lot to which our BCAA Glutamine belonged was one number higher than the latest published data. That means you might have to check back if you’re genuinely interested in the results of Transparent Labs’ third-party testing, but the effort remains steady, and we believe it speaks to the product’s overall safety.
Taste
Winner: Type Zero Clean Amino Burn
One of the advantages of actually trying these products for ourselves is that we can give you a real-world account of their taste. This is a subjective measure, and not everyone will share the opinions of a few product testers, but if you're concerned about flavor — and trust us, you should be — you'd be wise to consider our findings.
Despite being our top overall pick, taste is where Naked Nutrition EAAs doesn't shine. It's not a knock on the company or the product, though; that's an unflavored amino acid supplement, and no unflavored amino acid supplements taste good on their own. Some liquids are better suited to concealing the taste of an unflavored amino acid. To name a couple that we'd recommend, consider smoothies (with a lot of tart, acidic ingredients) and bone broths.
Insider Tip: Because unflavored amino acid supplements are quite bitter, you can tame their intensity by adding a pinch of salt to whatever mixture you use to consume them. Salty and bitter tastes compete for the same taste buds, so a little salt can prevent you from tasting as much bitterness. Just make sure you don’t overdo it, especially if your supplement already contains sodium in an electrolyte blend.
Our team put together ratings for how each of our top five amino acid supplements tasted, as well as how well they each mixed into a liquid. For taste and mixture assessments, we used 11 ounces of cold water with plain crackers as palate cleansers.
Here are our results:
Naked Nutrition EAAs
Unflavored
1
9.5
Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine
Tropical Punch
6.5
8
Type Zero Clean Amino Burn
Peach Mango
RULE1 Essential Amino 9
Black Cherry Limeade
2.5
7
Bulk Supplements EAAs
8.5
As you can see, nothing came close to Type Zero for taste. This is partly because it uses erythritol and stevia for sweetness, rather than stevia alone (Transparent Labs) or sucralose (RULE1). Of course, recent research has associated erythritol with a heightened risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), and it’s gotten a lot of attention in the news. The study is compelling, and it highlights the need for further research to ensure the ingredient’s safety; it does not establish causality between erythritol and MACE.
Type Zero’s product didn’t mix in quite as well as the unflavored version did — which left almost no discernable presence in clear water. There is a little clumping and settling with all of the flavored products if you use a fork to stir the mixtures together. In a plastic mixing cup with a mixing ball inside or in a blender, any of these powders will mix well.
Cost
Winner: Bulk Supplements EAAs
At first glance, the cost of many amino acid supplements seems pretty similar, with prices typically ranging between $25 and $40. But there are a few variables you might not initially consider that can render one purchase more economical than the next. For example, both Transparent Labs BCAA Glutamine and Naked Nutrition EAAs bear a $40 price tag. Both companies also offer 10% off that price when you subscribe. But Naked Nutrition’s EAA bottle contains 50 servings compared to the 30 you get from Transparent Labs. And Naked Nutrition also takes an extra 10% off your first shipment, bringing down the cost of your initial investment.
However, no one seems able to compete with the prices of Bulk Supplements. This company also has a package containing 50 servings, but it costs about $16 less than Naked Nutrition’s. What you ultimately sacrifice in the deal is the ability to know exactly what you’re getting with each dose, as Bulk Supplements conceals its ingredient-specific dosages behind a proprietary blend. It’s not a bad gamble to take if budget is your primary concern, and you can take an additional 5% off of your purchase price using discount code INNERBODY5.
Bulk Supplements also has the lowest threshold at which you receive free shipping, but it has some of the highest shipping fees if you don’t reach that point. It’s not typically enough to offset the savings you find on the products themselves, but it's worth noting.
Customer service
Winner: Naked Nutrition
Customer service and satisfaction are essential considerations when buying dietary supplements because not everything works for everyone. We look for things like ease of contact, efficiency of communication, good return policies, and reasonable shipping times to make this determination.
None of these companies offer a money-back guarantee. Each has its own specific return policy, all of which require that the product is still unopened. The longest of these windows (30 days) is shared by Transparent Labs, Type Zero, and Bulk Supplements. RULE1 and Naked each give you about two weeks.
Despite not having the best return policy, we still gave the win for customer service to Naked Nutrition thanks to a few factors.
Shipping
For starters, it offered the fastest shipping time of any amino acid supplement we tested, arriving just three days after we placed our order. We also had a problem with our first order because we initially planned to purchase several Naked products separately and realized we could combine the purchases to get free shipping only after we’d already put the first order through. With a simple email request, Naked voided the first order in a little over 24 hours, and we were able to place the larger order and save on shipping.
Chat
Naked also has a chat interface, which only Type Zero can claim in kind. Type Zero’s interface is a little faster, with Naked’s platform serving as more of an email contact form that generates responses in a few hours compared to the live chatting you can do with a Type Zero rep. But Type Zero took an entire week to ship.
Website experience
Finally, we want to praise Naked Nutrition’s website, which provides more free resources than any other, including recipes, fitness guides, and more.
We want to give an honorable mention to RULE1 here, as well. In addition to having shipping speeds that matched Naked’s, the company included 11 free samples in its packaging, along with a pair of stickers and a rubber RULE1 bracelet. The samples included protein powders, BCAAs, mass gainers, and a weight management blend.
INNERBODY NEWSLETTER
Ready for the ultimate sleep upgrade?
Your privacy is important to us
How our top recommendations compare
The chart below offers a quick glimpse into how our top-rated amino acid supplements compare. These price comparisons do not account for subscription plans or bulk purchases, which can often earn significant savings. Also, note that the cost per month is based on one daily serving of a given product’s serving size. Some containers come with around 50 servings, so the monthly cost will be a lower number than the actual price of the container.
What are amino acids?
Amino acids are molecules commonly referred to as the building blocks of protein.2 Often, this brings to mind muscle-building, as protein is typically associated with strength training.3 But the body uses amino acids to form proteins essential for numerous bodily functions, including:
Developing cells
Repairing body tissues
Digesting food
Creating neurotransmitters and hormones
Promoting energy
Boosting immunity
Maintaining healthy hair, skin, and nails
There are three types of amino acids with respect to the human body, which we’ll discuss in-depth below. They are:
Essential amino acids (with BCAAs as an important subgroup)
Nonessential amino acids
Conditionally essential amino acids
Essential amino acids
Essential amino acids are those we have to attain from dietary and supplement sources because our bodies can’t produce them. Naturally, these are the kind that amino acid supplements focus on contributing. There are nine essential amino acids, including:
Histidine
Isoleucine
Leucine
Lysine
Methionine
Phenylalanine
Threonine
Tryptophan
Valine
We can naturally derive essential amino acids from protein-rich food sources. You’ll find essential amino acids in:
Poultry
Beef
Fish
Eggs
Soy
Dairy
Buckwheat
Quinoa
Nuts
Seeds
Beans
Tofu
Complete proteins (like the first eight items on the list above) contain all nine essential amino acids. On the other hand, incomplete proteins have some — but not all — essential amino acids.
Contrary to popular belief, vegetarians and vegans can easily get all of their essential amino acids from plant-based sources, albeit in lower concentrations than what meats contain. Amino acid supplementation can help ensure those with restricted diets still get all the protein-making compounds they need for optimal health.
BCAAs
While not formally a separate kind of amino acid, many over-the-counter amino acid supplements focus on BCAAs or branched-chain amino acids. These consist of three essential amino acids:
You’ll usually see these three amino acids in a 2:1:1 ratio (e.g., 1,000mg leucine, 500mg isoleucine, and 500mg valine).
BCAAs are popular among bodybuilders and athletes because they’ve been shown to support muscle growth and tissue regeneration and have also demonstrated the ability to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in clinical trials.4 Of course, muscle protein synthesis is a complex process that is in constant battle with muscle protein breakdown. BCAAs alone may not be sufficient to elevate protein synthesis to a rate high enough to overtake protein breakdown in the absence of the other essential amino acids. BCAA supplements can still play an important role in fitness and strength training, but you may need to time their use more strategically, which we’ll discuss below in our section on muscle protein synthesis.
Nonessential amino acids
Nonessential amino acids are still critical for health and wellness, but our bodies can produce enough of them independent of dietary sources. The nonessential amino acids are:
Alanine
Arginine
Asparagine
Aspartic acid
Cystine
Glutamic acid
Glutamine
Glycine
Ornithine
Proline
Serine
Tyrosine
These amino acids are mostly made from glucose and support tissue growth, immune function, red blood cell creation, and hormonal regulation, among other tasks. It’s rare to see any of these amino acids in amino acids supplements, which typically concentrate on essential amino acids. But glutamine makes an appearance in two of our top five supplements (Transparent Labs and Type Zero). Of the 11 traditional nonessential amino acids (which exclude citrulline and ornithine), glutamine is among the most thoroughly researched for several impressive benefits, including cognitive support and an ability to maintain and even repair intestinal linings.5
Conditionally essential amino acids
Significant stress or illness can cause our bodies to produce too few nonessential amino acids, which can result in numerous complications, especially around invasive surgeries. These nonessential amino acids then become “conditionally essential,” and they can include:14
Cysteine
Since these conditional amino acids are still important to keep our body functioning, it’s crucial to ensure that we maintain healthy levels of them. Unfortunately, few amino acid supplements include them, with the notable exception of glutamine. You’ll also find arginine in Type Zero’s Clean Amino Burn. If you’re going into surgery any time soon, be sure to talk with your doctor about supplementing for specific conditionally essential amino acids.
How do amino acid supplements work?
Amino acid supplements are designed to either ensure your body has sufficient essential amino acids to maintain its health or that it has enough amino acids to improve certain health parameters, including muscle growth and maintenance.
Amino acid sources mostly contain some or all of the essential amino acids. When you consume these (either in supplement form or in your daily meals), your body puts them to work for various tasks, from cognition to immunity. One of those tasks is muscle protein synthesis, a process that deserves significant attention, considering the interest in amino acid supplements among athletes and weightlifters.
How amino acids influence muscle protein synthesis
If you consume around 1,800 calories per day, and around 20% of those come from protein (the typical American diet), you could spend a few hours pumping iron in the gym without seeing many results. You may trick yourself into thinking you’re at least “toning” your muscles, but that’s not a real thing. People think they’re getting toned because they’re burning fat through strength training and revealing the shapes of the muscles they already had. Building muscle is a more complex process that requires a somewhat strict management of both calories and proteins.
At every moment of every day, your body is engaged in muscle protein turnover.6 It breaks down muscle tissue to create nonessential amino acids and supply other cells with energy. But it’s also constantly building new muscle tissue with essential amino acids you get from your diet. This turnover is never perfectly balanced. Immediately after a protein-rich meal, muscle protein synthesis occurs at a higher rate than breakdown. Strength training has also been shown to instigate this particular balance, which we often refer to as the anabolic state.
Once your body is done absorbing those new amino acids, the balance shifts in favor of muscle protein breakdown. This shift typically takes a few hours. You’ve entered the “catabolic state” when your body’s muscle protein breakdown occurs at a greater rate than protein synthesis. One of the reasons that bodybuilders and Hollywood superhero actors have to eat small, protein-rich meals every couple of hours is to avoid the catabolic state and maximize muscle protein synthesis.
But no one on our testing team has a personal chef or a major movie studio paying us millions of dollars to do nothing but get in shape (yet), and maybe you don’t either. And this is where amino acid supplements come in.
How and when to take an amino acid supplement
Since one person’s goals with an amino acid supplement may be different from another’s, it’s hard to prescribe one dosage or regimen over another. But let’s focus on exercise performance and strength training for a moment.
You may notice that you don’t get the same amount of each amino acid in a supplement. BCAAs usually make up the largest portion of a given dose. This is true in amino acid supplements designed for exercise performance and general health alike. That’s mainly because studies have shown BCAAs to be among the most important amino acids for protein synthesis in general and muscle protein synthesis in particular. But equally relevant studies have shown that in the absence of the other six essential amino acids, BCAAs might not be enough to instigate protein synthesis on their own.3 That’s why complete proteins are so important.
Insider Tip: If you’re using protein powder as part of your diet, it may not offer a complete protein profile. The brand should list its specific protein breakdown on the label, its website, or both. If neither gives you a breakdown and customer service can’t either, it’s time to switch brands.
Leucine, the BCAA that appears in twice the concentration of the other two BCAAs in most supplements, tends to get the party started by activating the mechanistic target of the rapamycin (mTOR) pathway.7 This pathway runs throughout the body and regulates everything from gene transcription to cellular apoptosis. It’s also a major regulator of growth via muscle protein synthesis. You can loosely think of it as the switch that turns muscle protein synthesis on, and you can imagine leucine is the hand that flips the switch.
Once that pathway is active, protein synthesis depends on all nine essential amino acids to maintain an anabolic state and actively build new muscle tissue. This not only builds muscle in the vicinity of strength training, but it can also prevent muscle loss from catabolism during and after intense cardiovascular workouts.6
Taking all of this information into account — the specific role amino acids play in regulating anabolic and catabolic states, their active times in the body during nutrient absorption, and the typical dietary habits of most Americans — we believe the ideal time to take an amino acid supplement is immediately before, during, or after a workout. If you’re someone who likes to eat a big meal right after working out, you’ll want to take your supplement before you exercise. If not, or if you tend to lose steam in the middle of a workout, it would be wise to take your supplement immediately prior to or during your workout (and to take one that contains some added electrolytes).
The only time we’d recommend an amino acid supplement immediately after a workout is if you don’t intend to consume much food for at least an hour afterward, and especially if fat loss is a primary fitness goal for you. Amino acid supplements contain very few calories compared to food sources or protein drinks, so you can use them to prevent muscle protein breakdown for a couple of hours after an intense workout while successfully managing your caloric intake to help burn fat.
If you’re more interested in a BCAA supplement than an EAA supplement, we’d recommend using it alongside a protein-rich meal to ensure you’re getting some of the most important essential amino acids (especially for meals that contain many incomplete proteins). You could also use a BCAA-laden pre-workout mix before hitting the gym, more as a way to stave off muscle loss for intense cardio than as a way to increase muscle building.
Are amino acid supplements a good choice for you?
Amino acid supplements, particularly BCAA supplements, have appealed to athletes and bodybuilders for years, and they can be an excellent component of a fitness plan. But some research indicates that essential amino acids may improve other health parameters, as well, including blood glucose management, immunity, and the inhibition of tumor growth.8 The potential for these benefits requires further study, but it’s promising that some of the research at this point has been so positive.
For otherwise healthy individuals, there isn’t much risk involved in amino acid supplementation, so anyone trying to lose fat, build muscle, or just maintain their health could benefit from it.
Who shouldn’t use amino acid supplements?
Unfortunately, some of the positive potential we see in amino acid studies implies other dangers. For example, because amino acid supplements can impact blood glucose levels, they may interfere with diabetes or thyroid medications. Some research even indicates that amino acid supplementation may be associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.15 If you're taking any ongoing medications or have a chronic medical condition, you should consult your doctor before beginning any new dietary supplement.
You also might not need a supplement if you already get sufficient dietary essential amino acids. And if you’ve found an economical and time-efficient way to eat like a bodybuilder every couple of hours, you likely get plenty of amino acids that way.
If your interest in amino acid supplements comes from a long-term inability to gain muscle after intense strength training, there may be other factors at play. Your amino acid intake can be well above sufficient for muscle growth in healthy individuals, but you may have low testosterone or a more severe condition that you’d want to address directly.
Amino acid supplements are inappropriate for children under 18 and pregnant or lactating individuals.
Are amino acid supplements safe?
Amino acid supplements are generally safe for non-pregnant, non-lactating adults. They produce few side effects, but those that can occur include:
Headaches
Diarrhea
Nausea
Flushing
Because amino acid supplements impact blood glucose levels, it’s essential to talk to your doctor before use if you take diabetes medications or have any chronic medical condition.15
And while this isn’t necessarily a safety concern, you should always investigate the source of your amino acids. BCAAs, in particular, have been sourced from things like human hair in recent years. These are typically supplements that come from unscrupulous sources, often selling their products for suspiciously low prices. For the most part, if a product is labeled as vegan or fermented, it most likely comes from corn, soy, or another vegetable source.
Of course, that leads to an allergy consideration. Those with soy or nut allergies should be careful when selecting an amino acid supplement. To that end, Naked Nutrition is among the finest sources of allergen-free supplements, and its EAAs are certified vegan, non-GMO, and free of gluten, soy, and dairy.
Some amino acid supplements contain erythritol, which has been in the news recently due to a prominent study linking it with a higher risk of cardiovascular events such as stroke.16 The study was large enough to be statistically significant, and the media have done a great job turning the findings into a doomsday notice for anyone who’s ever ingested the ingredient. But there were several shortcomings in the study that limit the applicability of its findings.
For starters, the study population was almost entirely over 60 and already at risk for cardiovascular events. Many had obesity or diabetes, and no consideration was given to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or habits such as smoking or alcohol consumption. This isn’t to discredit the study by any means, but it should calm fears of erythritol somewhat. It may be wise to avoid products containing large amounts of erythritol if you’re over 60, have high blood pressure or another cardiovascular risk factor, or have a history of cardiovascular disease and stroke in your family. This would be out of an abundance of caution at this point, and we’ll update our considerations as more data comes in.
Naked Nutrition EAAs
Best overall and cleanest ingredient profile
Pros
8g dose of EAAs with nearly 5g of BCAAs
No fillers, artificial flavors, or sweeteners
Mixes incredibly well into liquids
Vegan-friendly and non-GMO
Dairy-free, soy-free, and keto-friendly
Among the most cost-effective options available
Subscription membership takes 20% off the initial order and 10% off subsequent orders
Cons
Only one unflavored option (which tastes terrible in water but better in shakes)
No additional electrolytes or other potentially beneficial ingredients
Naked Nutrition is a company dedicated to transparency, providing its ingredients without fillers, added flavors, or proprietary blends. In Naked EAAs, you get a vegan powder with three potent branched-chain amino acids in effective doses. The other six essential amino acids are present in higher doses than we’ve seen in most comparable supplements. There are only ten ingredients present: nine essential amino acids and sunflower lecithin.
Here’s the complete list:
Leucine: 2,400mg
Isoleucine: 1,200mg
Valine: 1,200mg
Lysine: 1,200mg
Threonine: 1,200mg
Methionine: 900mg
Phenylalanine: 450mg
Histidine: 450mg
Tryptophan: 250mg
Of the three amino acid supplements on our list that offer all nine essential amino acids, these are the highest quantities of non-BCAA amino acids we could verify, and the BCAAs are dosed only a hair below those in RULE1’s Essential Amino 9, which has 5g of BCAAs to Naked’s 4.8g.
Taste and mixability
In testing, Naked Nutrition’s EAAs had the highest score for mixability in the group, but it also had the lowest score for taste. To be fair, none of our testers have ever found an unflavored amino acid supplement to be palatable. Without flavoring, this kind of supplement typically tastes the way burnt hair smells, though somehow also more bitter than that. The taste lingers, too. In our initial testing setup, we didn’t think we’d need a palate cleanser, but we started with Naked’s EAAs and immediately realized it would be unfair to the next supplement in the lineup for us not to provide crackers to testers between products.
On the mixing side, Naked’s EAAs all but disappeared into 11 ounces of cold water when stirred in a glass with a fork. There was no clumping and almost no clouding whatsoever. This is good news; if it mixes that well into cold water, it will mix easily into just about anything else. And you won’t want to mix an unflavored amino acid supplement into plain water. You’ll be mixing it into something with flavor — like a tart juice or a smoothie, for instance, or savory bone broth — and you won’t need to worry about the flavor of the supplement by itself.
Pricing
Each 1.1lb tub contains 50 servings, making Naked’s daily serving less than half the cost of most other brands. It’s still a little more expensive than Bulk Supplements’ EAA Powder, though. You can earn additional savings by enrolling in Naked Nutrition's subscription program, which takes 20% off your first shipment and 10% off subsequent shipments.
Single order
$39.99
$0.80
Subscription orders (cost after initial purchase)
$35.99
$0.72
Naked Nutrition provides free U.S. shipping on all orders over $99. For orders under $99, shipping starts at $7.00. The company also has a loyalty rewards program for frequent customers that builds up points you can redeem against future purchases. You can earn points by taking the following actions:
Join Naked’s rewards program
200 points
Follow the company on Instagram
25 points
Naked Nutrition purchases
3 points per $1.00 spent
Birthday bonus
500 points
Review a product
100 points