By Sebastian Madlangbayan, founder of Cleonse: the world's cleanest 3-ingredient organic electrolyte.
A three-ingredient electrolyte drink is salt, sugar, and citrus in water. You can make it at home for a few cents a glass, and it works. What you're buying with a pre-made stick is measurement, mineral quality, and the fact that you'll actually drink it. Here's the honest version of both.
I sell the stick. I'm still going to give you the recipe.
The recipe
This is the one I used before Cleonse existed, and it's a scaled-down version of the World Health Organization's oral rehydration formula. Per 16 oz (473 ml) of water:
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt (about 575mg sodium)
- 1.5 tablespoons sugar (about 18g)
- Juice of half a lemon (about 1 tbsp)
Stir until dissolved. Drink cold.
That's it. It costs somewhere around 8 to 15 cents depending on your lemon.
A few notes on getting it right, because people mess this up in predictable ways:
Measure the salt properly. A quarter teaspoon of fine table salt is roughly 575mg sodium. A quarter teaspoon of coarse or flaky salt is far less, because the crystals pack differently — a quarter teaspoon of coarse grey salt might be 350mg. If you're using a coarse salt, either grind it or use a scale. Salt volume measurement is the single biggest source of error in DIY electrolyte drinks, and it's the one ingredient where being off by 40% actually matters.
Don't skip the sugar. I know the instinct. But sugar isn't there for flavor alone — sodium and glucose share a transporter in the small intestine, and the pairing is what makes oral rehydration work. If you make this with salt and lemon only, you get salty lemon water that's harder to drink and absorbs less efficiently. More on that mechanism in do electrolytes need sugar.
Use real citrus if you can. Bottled lemon juice works but tastes flat. The acid is doing real work — it cuts the salt perception dramatically. A drink at 500mg sodium with acid tastes like lemonade; the same drink without acid tastes like a mistake.
Cold matters more than you'd think. Salt perception drops at low temperature. The same drink at fridge temperature is noticeably more pleasant than at room temperature.
Variations worth trying
| Goal | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| Longer efforts (90+ min) | Bump sugar to 2 tbsp (~24g) |
| Heavy sweater / hot day | 1/3 tsp salt (~765mg sodium) |
| Add potassium | 1/8 tsp lite salt (potassium chloride) or 2 oz orange juice |
| Rest day / low effort | Drop sugar to 1 tsp, keep salt at 1/8 tsp |
| Kids | Half the salt, keep the sugar and citrus |
Where DIY genuinely wins
Let me not be coy. There are situations where making it yourself is straightforwardly the right call.
Cost. Pennies versus dollars. A 30-pack of Cleonse is $66, which is $2.20 a stick. My kitchen version is about a dime. If you're drinking one a day, that's a $700-a-year difference. That's not nothing, and if money is the binding constraint, make it at home. I mean that.
Control. You can dial sodium up for a hot August long run and down for an easy Tuesday. No product gives you that. If you've had a sweat test done and you know you lose 1,600mg per litre, you can build to that number exactly.
No supply chain. You already own salt and sugar. Nothing to reorder, nothing to run out of at 5am.
Total transparency. You put it in the glass. There is no label to read.
Where DIY falls down
Also honestly, and from a lot of personal experience:
You won't do it consistently. This is the real one. Making a drink from three components before a workout is a five-step process — get salt, measure salt, get sugar, measure sugar, cut and squeeze a lemon. It's fine on Sunday morning. It's not fine at 5:40am on a Tuesday when you're already late, and it's not fine at a tournament, and it's not fine in an airport. I made my own for about two years, and my actual compliance rate was maybe 40%. A hydration strategy you follow 40% of the time is worse than a slightly imperfect one you follow every day.
Measurement drift. Once you stop measuring and start eyeballing — and you will — your doses wander. Too much salt and it's undrinkable, so you unconsciously start under-salting, and within a month you're drinking sugar water with a pinch of salt in it.
Portability. You cannot carry salt, sugar and a lemon in a running vest. A stick pack fits in a shorts pocket.
Salt quality. This one is smaller but real. Standard table salt is refined sodium chloride, often with an anti-caking agent like sodium ferrocyanide or silicon dioxide, and iodine added. That's fine — it's food. But it's sodium and chloride and not much else. Unrefined salts retain the other minerals from the seawater or deposit they came from.
Taste, over time. Lemon-salt-sugar is fine. It is not delicious. After the fortieth glass you get bored, and bored means you stop drinking it, and not drinking it is the failure mode that matters.
What a measured stick actually buys you
Here's the comparison without the marketing:
| DIY (salt + sugar + lemon) | Cleonse stick | |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | 3 (salt, sugar, lemon) | 3 (organic lemon or strawberry powder, organic cane sugar, French grey sea salt) |
| Sodium per 16 oz | ~575mg, ±40% depending on your spoon | 500mg, exact every time |
| Trace minerals | Whatever's in your salt | 85+ from French grey sea salt |
| Sugar | ~18g white sugar | 24g organic cane sugar |
| Calories | ~70 | 100 |
| Additives | None | None |
| Organic | Depends what you buy | Organic fruit and organic cane sugar |
| Cost per serving | ~$0.10 | $2.20–$3.30 |
| Prep time | ~2 minutes | ~10 seconds |
| Portable | No | Yes |
| Consistency | Depends on you | Identical every stick |
The stick is 20 to 30 times the price. What you get is that the 500mg is actually 500mg, that the salt is French grey sea salt with 85+ trace minerals rather than refined sodium chloride, that the fruit is organic fruit powder rather than a lemon you may or may not have, and that it goes in your bag and comes out three days later still exactly right.
That's the trade. It's a convenience-and-quality premium on a formula you could approximate at home. I'd rather say that plainly than pretend Cleonse is doing something chemically magical.
Why the formula is three ingredients at all
Because that's what the problem needs.
An electrolyte drink has three jobs: replace sodium, provide the glucose that carries it across the gut wall, and taste good enough that you finish the glass. Salt does the first, sugar does the second, fruit does the third.
Everything else on a typical label is doing something other than hydration. Citric acid is a cheaper acid than fruit. Natural flavors are cheaper than actual fruit powder. Silicon dioxide keeps powder from clumping in a warehouse. Gums adjust mouthfeel. Dyes make the drink the color of the flavor name. Stevia replaces the sugar you removed to hit a marketing number. Preservatives extend shelf life. Every one of those has a business reason. None of them has a hydration reason.
Cleonse's label:
Organic Lemon Powder, Organic Cane Sugar, French Grey Sea Salt
Or with strawberry powder for the other flavor. Per 30g stick in 16 oz (473 ml) water: 500mg sodium, 85+ trace minerals, 100 calories, 26g carbohydrate, 24g sugar. No stevia, no artificial sweeteners, no natural flavors, no dyes, no preservatives, no gums, no fillers. Vegan, gluten-free.
If you want a broader look at how the category's labels compare, I went through them in what is the cleanest electrolyte.
How the DIY version compares to WHO oral rehydration solution
Worth knowing, because it's where the whole idea comes from.
The WHO's reduced-osmolarity oral rehydration salts formula is 75 mmol/L sodium and 75 mmol/L glucose, at a total osmolarity of 245 mOsm/L. In grams, one litre's worth of the sachet contains 2.6g sodium chloride, 2.9g trisodium citrate, 1.5g potassium chloride and 13.5g glucose.
That's about 1,725mg of sodium per litre and 13.5g of glucose per litre — a 1.35% carbohydrate solution. It's designed for clinical rehydration in people losing large volumes of fluid, and it's deliberately low in sugar to keep osmolarity down.
My kitchen recipe at 575mg sodium and 18g sugar per 473ml works out to roughly 1,215mg sodium and 38g sugar per litre. Cleonse is roughly 1,057mg sodium and 51g sugar per litre.
So neither is an ORS. Both sit between ORS and a conventional sports drink — more sodium than Gatorade, more carbohydrate than ORS. That's the right zone for exercise, where you want fuel as well as fluid, and it's the wrong zone for treating clinical dehydration. If someone is genuinely, medically dehydrated, they need actual ORS or a doctor, not a sports drink and not this.
My actual recommendation
Make it at home if: cost is the constraint, you're mostly hydrating at home, you like the ritual, or you want to tune sodium to a number you've measured.
Buy a stick if: you train away from your kitchen, you've tried DIY and stopped, you travel, you want the mineral profile of an unrefined salt without sourcing it yourself, or you've noticed that the version you actually drink beats the version you theoretically make.
Both are the same idea. One of them is in your pocket.
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Shop CleonseFrequently asked questions
What are the three ingredients in a homemade electrolyte drink? Salt, sugar, and citrus juice, in water. Per 16 oz: about 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt (~575mg sodium), 1.5 tablespoons sugar (~18g), and the juice of half a lemon. The salt supplies sodium, the sugar supplies glucose and helps carry the sodium across the gut wall, and the citrus makes it drinkable.
How much salt should I put in a homemade electrolyte drink? About 1/4 teaspoon of fine salt per 16 oz, which is roughly 500–600mg of sodium. Use a fine grain or a scale — coarse and flaky salts measure very differently by volume and can be 40% lower for the same spoon.
Is homemade electrolyte drink as good as store-bought? For the core function, yes. Salt, sugar and citrus is the same mechanism a good commercial powder uses. Where commercial products win is dose accuracy, mineral quality, portability, taste variety, and the simple fact that you'll actually drink one. Where DIY wins is cost and full control over sodium.
Can I make an electrolyte drink without sugar? You can, but it works less well and tastes worse. Glucose and sodium are absorbed together via a shared intestinal transporter, so removing the sugar removes part of the absorption mechanism and all of the fuel. For a rest day or a short easy session it's fine. For sustained training it isn't the better choice.
How much does homemade electrolyte drink cost? Roughly 8 to 15 cents per 16 oz, depending on the lemon. A commercial stick runs $1 to $3.30. Cleonse is $2.20 per stick at the 30-pack price of $66.
What salt is best for a homemade electrolyte drink? Any salt supplies sodium. Unrefined salts — French grey sea salt, Redmond Real Salt, Celtic — retain trace minerals from their source, which refined table salt does not. Just be aware that unrefined salts are usually coarser, so measure by weight rather than by spoon.
Keep reading
- What is the cleanest electrolyte? A no-BS ingredient guide
- Cleonse vs Skratch Labs: two real-sugar electrolytes compared
- Cleonse facts: the full ingredient and nutrition breakdown
If you'd rather not measure: Cleonse is three ingredients, 500mg sodium, no additives of any kind. $33 for 10 sticks, $66 for 30, $110 for 60, free shipping, 30-day guarantee. See the product.
Editor's note and sources
Cleonse figures are from our own label. WHO ORS composition and competitor pricing were checked against public sources in July 2026.
- WHO reduced-osmolarity oral rehydration solution composition (WikEM): https://wikem.org/wiki/Reduced-osmolarity_oral_rehydration_solution
- Oral rehydration therapy overview (Merck Manual Professional): https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/pediatrics/dehydration-and-fluid-therapy-in-children/oral-rehydration-therapy
- Sodium-glucose cotransport and fluid absorption, Scientific Reports 2020: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64818-3
- Skratch Labs Sport Hydration Drink Mix (pricing reference): https://www.skratchlabs.com/products/sport-hydration-drink-mix
- Redmond Life Re-Lyte Hydration (pricing reference): https://living.redmond.com/products/re-lyte-hydration
Nothing here is medical advice. Cleonse supports hydration; it does not treat, cure, or prevent any condition. Clinical dehydration needs a doctor and a proper oral rehydration solution, not a sports drink.