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Athletes' Choice

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I Tried Every Electrolyte Drink Sold in France and Read Every Label

By Thomas Digby · Olympic Champion 2024 · Co-founder of Kaiju

A litre of sweat costs you about 600mg of sodium. Eighteen products, bought at retail, mixed the way each pack tells you to, and taken out on the bike and the water — then read line by line. Three are certified for tested athletes. One has more sodium than the drink I ended up building — and I’ll show you which one.

  • Bought at retail
  • Trained on, not just read
  • Figures off the label
  • Sources under the table

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Athletes' Choice

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Tested by an Olympic champion. Dosed by performance nutritionists.

Thomas DigbyThomas DigbyOlympic Champion 2024 · Co-founder Rowed the men’s eight in Paris. Bought and trained on all eighteen products on this page, then set the brief for the one that was missing.
Gareth NicholasGareth NicholasPerformance nutritionist Set the sodium, potassium and magnesium doses against real sweat-loss data rather than taste.
Hélène de FranceHélène de FrancePerformance nutritionist · Olympic medallist Signed off the formulation for athletes who are subject to testing.

01 · Hydratis

The best-known name in France has the least sodium on the bench

Hydratis is the tube in every French pharmacy, and it is a good product doing a job it never hid. Read its own marketing and it talks about drinking enough water, headaches, feeling flat in the heat. Read its reviews and that is exactly what people bought it for.

Two tablets in 500ml gives you 116mg of sodium. A litre of sweat takes out around 600mg. So the sport dose replaces roughly a fifth of what one litre costs you, and the pack caps you at five tablets a day.

  • 116 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • 300 mgPotassium✓ Enough potassium
  • 65 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • 3,6 gSugar✕ 19 g to cover a litre
  • 0,99 €Per drink✕ Expensive per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

5,2 doses5,12 €19 g of sugar

That is ten tablets. The pack’s own daily maximum is five, which gets you to 290mg — under half a litre.

Built for your day, not for your session. Nothing wrong with that until you take it on a three-hour ride.

The best-known name in France has the least sodium on the bench

02 · Powerade

Twenty grams of sugar, and nobody buys it for the sodium

The blue bottle at every supermarket checkout. 500ml gives you 260mg of sodium and 20,5g of sugar — about five sugar cubes. Potassium and magnesium are not on the label at all, which does not mean zero, only that Coca-Cola does not publish them.

What is striking is the reviews. I read French buyer after French buyer praising the price and the taste, and not one evaluating it as a hydration product. They are right not to. It was built to be drunk cold at half-time.

  • 260 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • Not statedPotassium⚠️ Cannot be checked
  • Not statedMagnesium⚠️ Cannot be checked
  • 20,5 gSugar✕ 47 g to cover a litre
  • 1,35 €Per drink✕ Expensive per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

2,3 bottles3,12 €47 g of sugar

Twelve sugar cubes and 1,15 litres of fluid, to replace what one litre of sweat took out.

Good at half-time. Thin at kilometre 30, and you paid for it in sugar.

Twenty grams of sugar, and nobody buys it for the sodium

03 · Decathlon ISO+

The price everyone measures against — and the sweetness everyone mentions

ISO+ is the honest value benchmark of the French market and it deserves the reputation: 285mg sodium, 300mg potassium, 57mg magnesium for 0,76€ a bottle. Buyers say so unprompted — one review simply notes that competing products are at least 50% more expensive.

The complaint is just as consistent, and it is about the 17g of sugar. One reviewer describes emptying both bottles on the Étape du Tour because after three hours he could not drink it any more. That is the sugar, not the salt.

  • 285 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • 300 mgPotassium✓ Enough potassium
  • 57 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • 17 gSugar✕ 36 g to cover a litre
  • 0,76 €Per drink– Average per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

2,1 doses1,60 €36 g of sugar

Nine sugar cubes. Cheap, and the reason its own customers stop drinking it after three hours.

A good cheap fuelling drink. Judged on hydration, its own customers tell you what happens after three hours.

The price everyone measures against — and the sweetness everyone mentions

04 · Isostar Hydrate & Perform

Genuinely well salted, and buried in seven sugar cubes

This one surprised me. The French classic carries 440mg of sodium per 500ml — more than most of the specialist tablets, and the fourth-highest figure on the whole bench. Isostar have been quietly dosing this properly for years.

It arrives with 28g of sugar. Seven cubes, in one bottle, and 38g by the time you have covered a litre. As a fuelling drink that is the point and I have no argument with it. As hydration it is the whole problem: the sugar is not optional. You cannot buy the 440mg of sodium without it, it is far past the amount that helps water absorb, and it either duplicates the gel in your pocket or replaces it by accident. Isostar publishes no potassium figure at all, and prints salt rather than sodium, so the 440mg is converted from its 1,1g of salt.

  • 440 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • Not statedPotassium⚠️ Cannot be checked
  • 62 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • 28 gSugar✕ 38 g to cover a litre
  • 0,79 €Per drink✓ Cheap per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

1,4 doses1,08 €38 g of sugar

The cheapest way to cover a litre of anything on this bench — and ten sugar cubes to do it.

The best-salted supermarket drink in France. Also a dessert.

Genuinely well salted, and buried in seven sugar cubes

Halfway down the bench

Four products. One litre of sweat. A hundred and forty grams of sugar to replace it. None of it hydrates you.

Skip ahead to the options →

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05 · Decathlon électrolytes sans sucre

The cheapest drink on the bench, and it is a real product

I expected to dismiss this one. I could not. 252mg sodium, 100mg potassium, 56mg magnesium, no sugar, for 0,30€ a bottle — the cheapest prepared drink in the entire study, by a distance.

It is under-dosed against a litre of sweat, and the potassium is thin. Matching what a litre takes out means 2,4 tablets in the same bottle, not one. That is not how the pack tells you to use it, and it empties a twenty-tablet tube in about eight sessions instead of twenty.

And even at 2,4 tablets it is 0,71€ a litre-equivalent, which is still the cheapest sodium on this bench at 0,12€ per 100mg. That figure is real and I am not going to bury it. What the extra tablets cannot fix is what is inside the tablet: the potassium scales with the sodium and still only reaches about 235mg, and no dose makes an uncertified product certified.

  • 252 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • 100 mgPotassium✕ Not enough potassium
  • 56 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • 0 gSugar✓ No sugar
  • 0,30 €Per drink✓ Cheapest of the eighteen
To cover one litre of sweat

2,4 tablets0,71 €no sugar

The cheapest sodium in the study. Potassium scales with it and still only reaches 238mg.

If price is what decides it, buy this one — and take two. I would rather tell you that than have you find out.

The cheapest drink on the bench, and it is a real product

06 · SiS GO Hydro

Certified, cheap, and deliberately light

Science in Sport is one of only three products on this bench certified under Informed Sport, which means every batch is screened for banned substances. At 0,50€ a bottle it is the cheapest certified drink in France, and for a tested athlete on a budget that combination is hard to argue with.

The trade is the dose. Around 350mg of sodium per tablet in 500ml — about 60% of what a litre of sweat costs you. One French reviewer had already worked out the answer himself: use it every other bottle, more when it is hot.

  • ~350 mgSodium✕ Not enough sodium
  • 300 mgPotassium✓ Enough potassium
  • 56 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • <0,5 gSugar✓ No sugar
  • 0,50 €Per drink✓ Cheap per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

1,7 tablets0,86 €under 1 g of sugar

Certified, and at that dose the potassium comes up to about 514mg. Genuinely hard to fault.

The cheapest certified option in France. You will just need two bottles to cover one litre.

Certified, cheap, and deliberately light

07 · Precision F&H PH 1500

The most sodium on the bench, and it earns the name

This is the one I said would beat us, and it does. PH 1500 is named for its concentration — 1500mg of sodium per litre — so one sachet or tablet in a 500ml bottle gives you 750mg. That is the only product here that covers a litre of sweat and then some, it is Informed Sport certified, and it is on sale in France today. If you have read this far looking for the highest sodium figure, you have found it.

What it spends everything on is that one column. Potassium comes in at 125–130mg and magnesium at 10–12mg — near the bottom of this bench on both. The tablet carries about 1g of sugar at 1,02€; the sachet carries 15g at 1,87€, the second most expensive drink in the study. It is a sodium product, and it is an excellent one.

  • 750 mgSodium✓ Enough sodium
  • 125–130 mgPotassium✕ Not enough potassium
  • 10–12 mgMagnesium✕ Not enough magnesium
  • 1–15 gSugar⚠️ 1 g or 15 g by format
  • 1,02–1,87 €Per drink⚠️ Cheap or average by format
To cover one litre of sweat

0,8 of a serving0,82 € tablet · 1,50 € sachet0,8 g or 12 g of sugar

The only product here that covers a litre in less than one serving. Potassium still arrives at 100mg.

If sodium alone is what you want, this is the answer, and it is not the one I sell.

The most sodium on the bench, and it earns the name

08 · Kaiju Hydrate

The one I built

Second on sodium. First on everything it is carried with.

Kaiju is second on this bench and I am not going to dress that up. 593mg of sodium puts us behind PH 1500 and ahead of the other sixteen — and it is the highest figure of anything here with no sugar in it.

What no other product on the bench does is carry it together. 402mg of potassium. 81mg of magnesium. Zero sugar. Informed Sport certified and batch-tested. One product carries more potassium than that, by a single milligram, and three carry more magnesium — and every one of them is under 310mg of sodium. Take any one of the four away and there are competitors. Ask for all four at once, at a dose that covers a litre, and on this bench there is one row left.

I did not set out to build another one of these. I set out to find one I could use myself and hand to people I train with. Eighteen labels later there was no row that was all four, so we made it.

  • 593 mgSodium✓ Enough sodium
  • 402 mgPotassium✓ Enough potassium
  • 81 mgMagnesium✓ Enough magnesium
  • 0 gSugar✓ No sugar
  • 0,99 €Per drink✓ Cheap per litre
To cover one litre of sweat

1 stick0,99 €no sugar

One serving, nothing to stack, and 402mg of potassium arrives with it. Fifth cheapest of the eighteen on that basis — four are cheaper.

Not the most sodium. Not the cheapest. The only row on this page that passes every column it is judged on — and one of three carrying a certification.

Second on sodium. First on everything it is carried with.

All eighteen, side by side

The whole bench, one screen.

Per prepared drink, as each pack instructs — not per 100g and not per litre, which is where most comparisons go wrong. The last money column is what 100mg of sodium costs you, because a cheap drink that is weak is not actually cheap.

Every dose, off the label

ProductSodiumPotassiumMagnesiumSugarPer drinkPer 100mg NaTested
01 Precision F&H PH 1500sachet / tablet · 500 ml 750 mg 125–130 mg 10–12 mg 15 g / 1 g 1,87 / 1,02 € 0,25 / 0,14 € Certified
02 Kaiju Hydratestick · 500 ml 593 mg 402 mg 81 mg 0 g 0,99 € 0,17 € Certified
03 Precision F&H PH 1000sachet / tablet · 500 ml 500 mg 125–130 mg 10–12 mg 16 g / 2 g 1,87 / 1,02 € 0,37 / 0,20 € Certified
04 Isostar Hydrate & Performpowder 40 g · 500 ml 440 mg not published 62 mg 28 g 0,79 € 0,18 € —
05 Näak Ultra Energypowder · 500 ml 400 mg 200 mg 52 mg 30 g 3,50 € 0,88 € —
06 Meltonic Électrolytes biotablet · 500 ml 360 mg not published 56 mg 0,1 g 0,95 € 0,26 € —
07 SiS GO Hydrotablet · 500 ml ~350 mg 300 mg 56 mg <0,5 g 0,50 € 0,14 € Certified
08 Isostar Powertabs2 tablets · 500 ml 340 mg 92 mg 37 mg 17 g 1,60 € 0,47 € —
09 Nutripure HydraPure2 tablets · 500 ml 307 mg 403 mg 102 mg 1,3 g 0,93 € 0,30 € —
10 Baouw pastillestablet · 500 ml 300 mg 300 mg 56 mg ~0 g 0,94 € 0,31 € —
11 Decathlon ISO+powder 38 g · 500 ml 285 mg 300 mg 57 mg 17 g 0,76 € 0,27 € —
12 Overstim.s Hydrixirpowder 42 g · 600 ml 280 mg not published 174 mg 20 g 1,53 € 0,55 € —
13 Poweradeready to drink · 500 ml 260 mg not published not published 20,5 g 1,35 € 0,52 € —
14 Decathlon électrolytes sans sucretablet · 500 ml 252 mg 100 mg 56 mg 0 g 0,30 € 0,12 € —
15 HIGH5 ZEROtablet · 750 ml 250 mg 70 mg 56 mg 0 g 0,40 € 0,16 € —
16 Maurten Drink Mix 320sachet · 500 ml 248 mg not published not published 37 g 3,36 € 1,36 € —
17 Punch Power Electroboost2 tablets · 500 ml 120 mg 400 mg 113 mg not published 0,99 € 0,83 € —
18 Hydratis2 tablets · 500 ml 116 mg 300 mg 65 mg 3,6 g 0,99 € 0,85 € —

Figures as published by each manufacturer, or by a major French retailer where the manufacturer publishes none, checked 4 September 2026. Where a label prints salt rather than sodium we converted at salt ÷ 2,5. “Not published” means the brand does not print that figure — it does not mean zero. “Tested” means the product carries Informed Sport certification. Formulations and prices change: check the pack you are holding. LMNT and Skratch Labs are absent because neither ships to France; Gatorade has left French mainstream retail.

Take the one I use myself →

Four things decide it. One row gets all four.

One thing to be clear about before the verdicts, because it decides all of them: this page is about hydration, not fuelling. Every product here is judged on one job — replacing what a litre of sweat takes out of you. Several are good fuelling products and I say so. That is a different purchase, and most people reading this already make it separately, from a gel or a bar.

Sodium is the one you lose in bulk, and it decides whether a drink works at all. The other two decide whether it is finished. Reading eighteen labels, what stands out is not that products are badly dosed — it is how many of them simply stop after one column.

Sodium — about 600mg a litre

Eleven of the eighteen are under 350mg a serving. Fine for forty minutes. Sold to people riding for three hours. Only two products on the whole bench clear 500mg.

Potassium — the figure five brands do not print

Isostar, Meltonic, Overstim.s, Powerade and Maurten publish no potassium figure at all. Among those that do, 300mg is the standard. One product carries more than our 402mg — Nutripure, by one milligram, with 307mg of sodium.

Magnesium — the smallest loss, the biggest claim

Sweat carries milligrams of it, not hundreds, so this is not a replacement argument. It is on the label because it carries the authorised claim for muscle function and reducing fatigue. Three products beat our 81mg. None of the three clears 310mg of sodium.

Sugar — a fuelling decision you did not make

A little carbohydrate genuinely does help water cross the gut. What these products carry is far past that, and you cannot take the sodium without it. Covering a litre from Powerade is 47g of sugar — from your bottle, before you have eaten anything.

How to read the marks. ✓ meets the threshold, ✕ does not, ⚠️ means the manufacturer publishes no figure or it changes with the format — the one to pay attention to, because you cannot check it. The thresholds are published, not ours: a litre of sweat costs about 600mg of sodium, and sweat sodium varies from roughly 500 to 1,500mg a litre between people, so 500mg a serving is where we mark it enough. 300mg of potassium and 56mg of magnesium are the EU levels at which a drink may call itself a source of each — 15% of the reference intake. Sugar is judged on the amount you would drink to cover a litre. Price is banded against the other seventeen the same way: the six cheapest per litre are marked cheap, the six dearest expensive, the middle six average — – is that middle band. Not stated is not the same as zero.

That is the whole finding. Every product that beats us on potassium or magnesium is a tablet you would take instead of covering your sodium, not as well as. Punch Power carries 400mg of potassium and 113mg of magnesium on 120mg of sodium. Overstim.s carries the most magnesium here, 174mg, and does not publish a potassium figure. They are good at what they do. Neither replaces a litre of sweat.

Only two products on this bench carry more than 500mg of sodium. One of them carries 125mg of potassium. The other carries 402mg. And three of the eighteen carry any banned-substance certification at all — a single line that eliminates fifteen of them before dosing is even discussed.

Thomas Digby

Why I ended up making one.

I rowed the men’s eight in Paris in 2024. Most of what I know about these products I learned from drinking them, not from reading about them — through a decade of sessions where the last hour is the only hour that counts, and through the years before that when I was buying whatever was on the shelf and hoping.

The bench on this page is not a marketing exercise I invented afterwards. It is the shortlist I was working through for myself, and the problem with it was always the same: everything good at one thing gave something else away. Plenty of sodium, and a bottle of sugar with it. No sugar, and not enough sodium to matter. Cheap and sensible, and nothing certifying it for anyone who gets tested.

So the brief was narrow and slightly boring: dose it for real sweat loss, take the sugar out, certify it so people who get tested can use it, and add nothing that is only there to make the front of the sachet more exciting. Gareth Nicholas and Hélène de France set the doses. I set the requirement they had to meet, and I am the one who had to drink it. That is row 02 — not a breakthrough, an honest dose.

I sell one of the eighteen, so of course I chose which columns to print. I did not choose the numbers. Every figure comes off a label its own manufacturer publishes, sourced under the table — and every one of these products is on a shelf near you if you want to check.

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Questions, answered honestly

Seven questions.

Which product beat you?

Precision Fuel & Hydration PH 1500, on sodium: 750mg per 500ml bottle against our 593mg. It is Informed Sport certified and you can buy it in France today. What it carries with that sodium is 125–130mg of potassium against our 402mg, 10–12mg of magnesium against our 81mg, and either 1g of sugar at 1,02€ a bottle or 15g at 1,87€. If the only figure you care about is sodium, buy theirs.

Did you actually buy and use all eighteen?

Yes. Every one was bought at retail in France, mixed to the dose printed on its own pack, and taken into training — that is where the shortlist came from. The ranking on this page is not built on those sessions, though. It is built on the labels, because how a drink feels on one hot Tuesday is not something you can put in a column. The training decided what to look for. The figures decided the order.

Isn’t this rigged, since you sell one of them?

I picked the criteria, so yes, I picked ground we do well on. I did not pick the numbers — every one is published by the manufacturer and sourced under the table, including the one that beats us and the one that costs a third of our price. A comparison that ranked its author first on every column would deserve your suspicion.

Isn’t some sugar good for hydration?

A little is. Glucose and sodium are absorbed together in the gut, which is why oral rehydration solutions contain both, and at low concentrations carbohydrate does help water get in. The amounts on this bench are well past that point — 17 to 28g in a single 500ml bottle — and two things follow. You cannot take the sodium without the sugar, so the dose is not yours to choose. And past a certain sweetness people stop drinking, which is the one failure hydration cannot survive: one French reviewer describes emptying both bottles on the Étape du Tour because after three hours he could not face it. If you want carbohydrate, take it from a gel where you control the amount.

Why is sodium the figure that decides it?

Because it is the electrolyte you lose most of, by an order of magnitude — roughly 600mg per litre of sweat, against a couple of hundred milligrams of potassium and only milligrams of magnesium. A drink can be generous with the small ones and still miss the big one, and several on this bench do exactly that: Punch Power carries 400mg of potassium on 120mg of sodium. Potassium and magnesium are what make an electrolyte complete rather than a salt tablet. Sodium is what makes it work.

Isn’t 0,30€ a bottle better value than 0,99€?

Per bottle, plainly yes, and Decathlon’s zero-sugar tablet is a sensible purchase we are not going to talk you out of. Per 100mg of sodium it is 0,12€ against our 0,17€, so it is still cheaper — it is cheaper because it is weaker, not because it is a trick. What you do not get at that price is 402mg of potassium or a certification.

Can I just use salt and water?

Yes. 500ml of water, half a teaspoon of salt, a squeeze of lemon, a pinch of sugar — that is a functional electrolyte drink for a few cents. What you lose is precision and repeatability: you cannot taste 600mg, and you cannot reproduce it at kilometre 30 with cold hands. Table salt also gives you sodium and nothing else.

Is it safe if I get drug tested?

Yes. Informed Sport certified and batch-tested for banned substances. Three of the eighteen products on this page carry that certification — ours, Precision Fuel & Hydration, and Science in Sport. For the other fifteen we could find no published certification, which is not evidence of a problem, only an absence you should weigh if you compete.

Eighteen labels. Three are certified. One has no sugar in it.

Every number on this page is printed on a pack you can pick up in France. We would rather you checked than took our word for it — that is the whole reason we published the sources.

593mg sodium · 402mg potassium · 81mg magnesium · zero sugar · Informed Sport · £0.99 a drink

Second on sodium. The only row that is all four things at once.

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Food supplement. Not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Nutrition claims made per the EU Register of authorised health claims. The comparison was compiled by Thomas Digby, co-founder of Kaiju, from products bought at retail in France, prepared to the dose printed on each pack and used in training. The ranking is based on published label figures, not on that use. All comparison figures are taken from each manufacturer’s own published labelling, or from a major French retailer where the manufacturer publishes none, and were checked on 4 September 2026; where a label prints salt rather than sodium the figure is converted at salt ÷ 2,5. Comparisons are made on objectively verifiable and material characteristics of products meeting the same needs, per the French Code de la consommation and Directive 2006/114/EC. Formulations, pack sizes and prices change without notice — check the pack you are holding. All trade marks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products compared. Individual results vary.