Cleonse vs Prime Hydration: Sodium vs Sucralose

By Sebastian Madlangbayan, founder of Cleonse: the world's cleanest 3-ingredient organic electrolyte.

Cleonse and Prime Hydration are built for different people. Cleonse is a three-ingredient sweat-replacement drink with 500mg of sodium and real cane sugar. Prime is a ready-to-drink, artificially sweetened beverage with high potassium, coconut water, and BCAAs, but very little sodium. If you sweat hard, sodium is what matters most.

I run an electrolyte company, so I have a dog in this fight. But I'll be straight with you about where Prime is genuinely good and where it falls short for actual sweat replacement. Prime is a massively popular drink, especially with younger people, and popularity doesn't make something bad. Let's just look at what's in the bottle.

What's actually in each one

Here's a stick of Cleonse mixed into 16 oz of water, next to a 16.9 oz (500 ml) bottle of Prime Hydration.

Cleonse is organic lemon or strawberry powder, organic cane sugar, and French grey sea salt. Three things. Prime is a formulated beverage: filtered water, coconut water, citric acid, the electrolyte and mineral blend, BCAAs, natural and artificial flavors, sucralose and acesulfame potassium for sweetness, and added vitamins. Neither uses high-fructose corn syrup, and both skip added sugar in Prime's case, so on those two points Prime is cleaner than an old-school soda-style sports drink.

The "835mg of electrolytes" number, explained honestly

Prime markets itself as having a big combined electrolyte number, often cited around 835mg. That figure is real, but it's worth understanding what it's made of, because this is exactly the kind of marketing math I refuse to use on my own labels.

That ~835mg is almost entirely potassium (about 700mg) and magnesium (about 124mg), with only about 10mg of sodium. So when you see "835mg of electrolytes," what you're mostly buying is potassium. That's not dishonest of Prime, exactly, but it can leave you thinking you're getting a big hydration hit for sweat when the one electrolyte you lose most in sweat, sodium, is barely present. I never combine minerals into one big number on my products for this reason. You can read more about how I think about labels in my guide to the cleanest electrolyte.

The sodium gap is enormous

This is the headline difference. Cleonse has 500mg of sodium per serving. Prime has about 10mg. That's roughly fifty times more sodium in Cleonse.

Sodium is the electrolyte your body loses the most of when you sweat. A typical person loses somewhere around 800 to 1,000mg of sodium per liter of sweat, and heavy, salty sweaters lose considerably more. So after a hot workout, a long match, or a day of physical work, 10mg of sodium simply isn't in the same universe as what you lost. If your reason for reaching for an electrolyte drink is real, sweaty exertion, this gap is the whole story.

Prime's high potassium is nice to have, but for most people potassium isn't the limiting factor in hydration, and you get plenty from food. Sodium is usually the one worth deliberately replacing around exercise.

Where Prime genuinely wins

I promised honesty. Here's where Prime beats Cleonse, fair and square.

First, convenience. Prime is a ready-to-drink bottle. You grab it and go, no mixing, no water needed. Cleonse is a powder you stir into 16 oz of water. If grab-and-go matters most to you, Prime's format is more convenient, full stop.

Second, potassium. Prime delivers around 700mg of potassium per bottle. Cleonse doesn't add potassium at all, so if that's a number you specifically want, Prime has it and Cleonse doesn't.

Third, the extras. Prime includes coconut water, BCAAs, and added vitamins. Whether you need those is debatable, but they're there, and Cleonse deliberately includes none of them.

Fourth, low sugar. At 2g of sugar and 20 calories, Prime is a low-calorie option. If minimizing sugar is your priority, Prime does that and Cleonse, at 24g, does not.

Where Cleonse wins

On the flip side, Cleonse is built around things Prime isn't. It has real sodium for real sweat, at fifty times Prime's level. It has just three ingredients you can pronounce, with no sucralose or acesulfame potassium. And it uses real organic cane sugar as training fuel rather than artificial sweeteners.

That sweetener point is the philosophical core. Prime tastes sweet because of sucralose and acesulfame potassium, two artificial sweeteners. Cleonse tastes sweet because of actual organic cane sugar. If you're someone who wants to avoid artificial sweeteners entirely, that's a real and simple distinction. The tradeoff is honest: you get real sugar and 100 calories with Cleonse, versus near-zero sugar and artificial sweeteners with Prime. Neither is objectively "right"; it depends on what you value. Our full label is on the facts page.

A note on who Prime is really for

Prime is marketed heavily toward a young, mainstream audience, and it's fundamentally a flavored beverage that happens to contain electrolytes and some extras. There's nothing wrong with that. As a tasty, low-sugar drink that's more interesting than water, it does its job. It just isn't optimized as a sweat-replacement electrolyte for a hard-training athlete, because the sodium isn't there.

Cleonse is built for the opposite person: someone who sweats hard and wants to replace sodium and fuel with the cleanest possible ingredient list. If that's you, and you don't mind mixing a powder and don't mind real sugar, Cleonse is the better tool for the job. If you mostly want a convenient, flavorful, low-sugar bottle, Prime makes sense.

Powder vs bottle: a practical difference

It's worth pausing on format, because it changes how each product fits your life. Prime is a pre-made bottle, which is convenient but also means you're paying to ship water around the country and you're locked into the exact formula in the bottle. A powder like Cleonse lets you control the concentration, carry a week of sticks in a jacket pocket, and mix it into whatever water you already have. For travel, gym bags, and stashing at your desk, powder sticks are hard to beat on convenience-per-ounce.

On the other hand, there are moments a sealed cold bottle just wins: grabbing something from a cooler mid-errand, handing a drink to a kid at a game, or not wanting to deal with mixing at all. That's a real advantage for Prime, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

If I were mapping them onto a week, I'd reach for a sodium-forward powder on hard, sweaty training days when replacing sweat is the goal, and I'd treat a bottle like Prime as more of a flavorful everyday drink for the times a low-sugar beverage sounds better than water. They're not really competing for the same moment once you see it that way.

Frequently asked questions

Does Prime Hydration have enough sodium for workouts?
Not really. At about 10mg per bottle, Prime's sodium is very low compared to what you lose in sweat. For heavy training, a higher-sodium drink like Cleonse at 500mg is better suited to replacing sweat losses.

Is Prime Hydration bad for you?
No. It's a low-sugar beverage with electrolytes, coconut water, and vitamins. It uses artificial sweeteners (sucralose and acesulfame potassium), which some people prefer to avoid, but it isn't harmful for most people in normal amounts.

Why does Cleonse have sugar when Prime barely does?
Cleonse uses 24g of real cane sugar as training fuel and to aid fluid absorption during exercise. Prime keeps sugar near zero using artificial sweeteners. It's a genuine tradeoff between real sugar and artificial sweeteners.

Which has more potassium?
Prime, by a lot. It has about 700mg of potassium per bottle. Cleonse doesn't add potassium, so its trace amount comes only from sea salt. If potassium is your priority, Prime wins there.

Is Prime's "835mg of electrolytes" a lot?
It's mostly potassium and magnesium, with very little sodium. So while the combined number sounds big, it isn't replacing much of the sodium you lose in sweat. That's why Cleonse lists sodium plainly instead of a combined figure.

Keep reading

• Electrolytes Without Artificial Sweeteners
• Cleonse vs Gatorade: What's Actually in the Yellow Powder
• How Much Sodium Do Athletes Actually Need?

Editor's note: Prime Hydration label figures (per 500 ml bottle: ~10mg sodium, ~700mg potassium, ~124mg magnesium, 20 calories, 2g sugar, sweetened with sucralose and acesulfame potassium, ~835mg combined "electrolytes" marketing figure, 10% coconut water, BCAAs) verified September 2026 via nutrition-data listings (myfooddata) and PrimeVsGatorade.com's ingredient breakdown. Cleonse figures reflect the current product label. This article is general information, not medical advice.