By Sebastian Madlangbayan, founder of Cleonse: the world's cleanest 3-ingredient organic electrolyte.
Most electrolyte powders are sweetened with sucralose, acesulfame potassium, stevia, or monk fruit. "No artificial sweeteners" on the front of a box usually means stevia inside it, because stevia is legally natural. Here's how to read the actual ingredient panel and what's left when you rule these out.
The claim that doesn't mean what you think
Walk down the hydration aisle and count the "No Artificial Sweeteners" flags. Almost every clean-label brand has one. Almost all of them are sweetened.
The reason is regulatory. Sucralose and acesulfame potassium are classed as artificial. Stevia and monk fruit are classed as natural, because they originate from plants. So a product sweetened with highly purified steviol glycosides — a multi-step extraction and crystallization process that produces a compound 200 to 350 times sweeter than sugar — can carry a "no artificial sweeteners" flag in complete good faith.
If your actual preference is "no high-intensity sweeteners," that front-of-box claim tells you nothing. You have to read the panel.
What you're looking for
There are four sweetener families in this category, and each has multiple label names.
Sucralose
Also appears as: Splenda, E955. Chlorinated sucrose derivative, ~600× sweeter than sugar. Standard in mainstream zero-sugar sports drinks. Almost always paired with acesulfame potassium, because the two together taste more sugar-like than either alone.
Acesulfame potassium
Also appears as: Ace-K, acesulfame K, E950. ~200× sweeter than sugar, slightly bitter alone, which is why it's a blending partner rather than a solo sweetener. Nearly always a co-traveler with sucralose.
Stevia
Also appears as: stevia leaf extract, organic stevia extract, steviol glycosides, Rebaudioside A, Reb A, Reb M, Reb D, Rebiana, Stevia rebaudiana. The most common sweetener in the clean-label segment. Six or more names on labels — this is the one people miss. Liquid I.V. writes "Rebiana (Stevia leaf extract)," which is honest. A label that says only "Rebaudioside A" is technically accurate and practically invisible.
Monk fruit
Also appears as: luo han guo, monk fruit extract, mogrosides. Usually a stevia partner rather than a solo act, because it's expensive. Cure and Just Ingredients both use stevia plus monk fruit.
The near-misses
Sugar alcohols — erythritol, xylitol, maltitol, sorbitol. Rarer in electrolyte powders than in protein products, but worth scanning for if you have GI sensitivity. Look for anything ending in "-itol." Allulose — a rare sugar, increasingly common, listed as allulose or D-psicose. "Natural flavors" — not a sweetener, but the other big catch-all. It's a legally defined category that can cover dozens of undisclosed compounds. If the reason you're reading labels is wanting to know what's in the drink, "natural flavors" is where the information stops.
The landscape, brand by brand
Current public labels, read July 2026. Ingredient lists quoted verbatim where available.
| Brand | Sucralose | Ace-K | Stevia | Monk fruit | Sugar | Ingredient count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleonse | No | No | No | No | Yes, organic cane | 3 |
| LMNT (flavored) | No | No | Yes | No | No | 6 |
| LMNT Raw | No | No | No | No | No | 3 |
| Redmond Re-Lyte (flavored) | No | No | Yes | No | No | 10 |
| Redmond Re-Lyte Unflavored | No | No | No | No | No | ~5 |
| Cure Hydration | No | No | Yes | Yes | No (4g from coconut water) | 10 |
| Just Ingredients | No | No | Yes | Yes | No added | 10 |
| Liquid I.V. | No | No | Yes ("Rebiana") | No | Yes, cane + dextrose | 14–15 |
| Nuun Sport | No | No | Yes | No | 1g dextrose | ~12 |
| Ultima Replenisher | No | No | Yes | No | No | ~12 |
| Skratch Labs Sport | No | No | No | No | Yes, cane + dextrose | 9 |
| Precision PH 1500 | No | No | No | No | Yes | ~7 |
| Gatorade Zero | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | 12 |
| Propel Zero | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | ~12 |
Read that table twice and the shape of the category becomes obvious.
The mainstream zero-sugar drinks use sucralose and ace-K. Gatorade Zero's orange powder label reads: "Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Salt, Monopotassium Phosphate, Modified Food Starch, Maltodextrin, Sucralose, Natural Flavor, Silicon Dioxide, Acesulfame Potassium, Yellow 6, Tocopherols (to Protect Flavor)." Propel Zero uses the same pair across all its flavors. If you're avoiding artificial sweeteners in the strict sense, these are the products the term was invented for.
The premium and clean-label brands use stevia. LMNT, Re-Lyte, Cure, Just Ingredients, Nuun, Ultima, Liquid I.V. — all of them. They've all successfully avoided the artificial category while still using a high-intensity sweetener.
The genuinely sweetener-free options are either unflavored or sugar-sweetened. LMNT Raw is "Salt (Sodium Chloride), Magnesium Malate, Potassium Chloride" and tastes like it. Re-Lyte Unflavored is the same idea. On the sugar side: Skratch, Precision, and Cleonse.
How to read a label in fifteen seconds
1. Ignore the front of the box entirely. Every claim on the front is marketing-legal, not informative. "No artificial sweeteners," "clean," "naturally sweetened," "no added sugar" — none of these tell you what's in it.
2. Read the ingredient list back to front. Ingredients are listed by weight descending, and high-intensity sweeteners are used at fractions of a percent, so they're always at or near the end. Start at the last ingredient and read backwards.
3. Scan for the four families. Sucralose. Acesulfame. Anything containing "stev" or "rebaud" or "rebiana." Anything containing "monk fruit" or "mogroside." That's four patterns and it takes seconds.
4. Check the Nutrition Facts panel against the ingredient list. This is the trick that catches everything. If the panel says 0g sugar but the product tastes sweet, something is sweetening it. Go find it. If it says 4g sugar and 0g added sugar, the sugar is coming from a fruit or coconut water ingredient — Cure works this way.
5. Count the ingredients. Not because more is inherently worse, but because a long list tells you the product is doing things other than hydration: coloring, texturizing, preserving, flow-agenting. Fourteen ingredients is not a scandal. It's just information about priorities.
6. Notice what "natural flavors" is hiding. A product listing "Natural Lemon Flavors" instead of lemon is telling you it chose a flavor system over the fruit. That's usually a cost and stability decision. It's legal and common. It also means you can't know what's in there.
What's actually left
If you exclude sucralose, acesulfame potassium, stevia and monk fruit, you're down to three real categories.
Unflavored salt blends
LMNT Raw — three ingredients, no sweetener, 1,000mg sodium. Redmond Re-Lyte Unflavored — no sweetener, 1,000mg sodium and 500mg potassium per serving, and at $45.99 for 75 servings it's about $0.61 a serving, the cheapest honest option in the category.
The trade is taste. These are salt water. Some people mix them into juice or coffee; some just drink them quickly. If you can do that, this is the cleanest and cheapest answer available and I'd tell you to buy it before I'd tell you to buy mine.
Sugar-sweetened sports drinks
Skratch Labs Sport Hydration — "Cane Sugar, Sodium Citrate, Dextrose, Mango Powder, Citric Acid, Calcium Citrate, Magnesium Carbonate, Potassium Citrate, Ascorbic Acid." Nine ingredients, 400mg sodium, 80 calories, ~19g sugar, about $1.20 a serving. Real fruit powder, real sugar, no high-intensity sweetener. A genuinely good product.
Precision Fuel & Hydration PH 1500 — "Sugar, Mineral Salts (Tri-Sodium Citrate, Potassium Chloride), Acidity Regulators (Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid), Natural Flavors, Calcium, Magnesium." 750mg sodium per sachet in 16 oz, 61 calories, 15g carbohydrate. The highest-sodium sugar-sweetened option, built for heavy sweaters.
Cleonse — "Organic Lemon Powder, Organic Cane Sugar, French Grey Sea Salt" (or organic strawberry powder). Three ingredients. 500mg sodium, 85+ trace minerals, 100 calories, 26g carbohydrate, 24g sugar per 30g stick in 16 oz. No natural flavors, no citric acid, no anti-caking agent — the fruit powder supplies the flavor and the acid, and there's nothing to prevent caking because there's nothing that cakes.
Make it yourself
Salt, sugar and lemon in water. I wrote out the full recipe and an honest cost comparison in the 3-ingredient electrolyte drink. It costs about a dime a glass and it works.
Is any of this actually harmful?
I want to be careful here, because this category is full of people scaring you into a purchase.
Sucralose, acesulfame potassium, stevia and monk fruit are all approved by the FDA and have all been through repeated safety reviews. At the intakes you'd get from an electrolyte packet, none of them has established harm in humans. Anyone telling you a stick of Gatorade Zero is poisoning you is selling something.
What's actually true and worth acting on:
- Some people taste stevia as bitter or metallic, and the perception is partly genetic. That's not fussiness; it's your receptors.
- Some people report GI upset with sugar alcohols and, less consistently, with high-intensity sweeteners. If eliminating one made you feel better, that's your data.
- Some people prefer to eat things they recognize. That's a values position, and it's a legitimate one. It doesn't need a scary study behind it.
- Aftertaste changes how much you drink. This is the one that has an actual performance consequence. Mid-workout, a lingering sweet finish makes people stop drinking. Under-drinking is a real hydration failure. A drink you finish beats a drink you tolerate.
Cleonse's label is short because I wanted to know what was in it, not because I think the alternatives are dangerous. Those are different arguments and I don't want to blur them.
Try The World's Cleanest Electrolyte™
Three ingredients. 500mg sodium. Nothing artificial. Free shipping and a 30-day guarantee.
Shop CleonseFrequently asked questions
Which electrolytes have no artificial sweeteners? Nearly all of the premium brands qualify under the legal definition — LMNT, Re-Lyte, Cure, Just Ingredients, Nuun, Ultima, Liquid I.V. and Cleonse all avoid sucralose and acesulfame potassium. But most of them use stevia, which is classified as natural. If you want no high-intensity sweetener at all, the options are Cleonse, Skratch Labs, Precision PH 1500, LMNT Raw, and Re-Lyte Unflavored.
Is stevia an artificial sweetener? No, not legally. Steviol glycosides are derived from the stevia plant and classified as natural, which is why "no artificial sweeteners" appears on stevia-sweetened products. It is still a high-intensity sweetener, 200 to 350 times sweeter than sugar and heavily processed from the leaf.
Does Gatorade Zero have artificial sweeteners? Yes. The Gatorade Zero powder label lists both sucralose and acesulfame potassium, along with Yellow 6 in the orange flavor. Propel Zero uses the same sucralose and acesulfame potassium pairing.
What is acesulfame potassium and why is it always with sucralose? Acesulfame potassium (Ace-K) is a high-intensity sweetener roughly 200 times sweeter than sugar with a slightly bitter edge on its own. Blended with sucralose, the two masks each other's off-notes and produce a more sugar-like profile than either alone, which is why they nearly always appear together.
How do I tell if an electrolyte drink has hidden sweeteners? Read the ingredient list from the end backwards, since sweeteners are used at tiny weights and sit near the bottom. Scan for sucralose, acesulfame, anything with "stev," "rebaud" or "rebiana," and anything with "monk fruit" or "mogroside." Then cross-check the Nutrition Facts panel: if sugar reads 0g and the product tastes sweet, something is sweetening it.
What does Cleonse use to sweeten? Organic cane sugar, and nothing else. 24g per 30g stick, alongside organic fruit powder and French grey sea salt. Three ingredients total, no stevia, no monk fruit, no sucralose, no acesulfame potassium, no sugar alcohols, no natural flavors, no dyes.
Keep reading
- What is the cleanest electrolyte? A no-BS ingredient guide
- Cleonse vs Gatorade: what's actually in the yellow powder
- Cleonse facts: the full ingredient and nutrition breakdown
Cleonse is three ingredients and no sweetener other than organic cane sugar. $33 for 10 sticks, $66 for 30, $110 for 60, free shipping, 30-day guarantee. See the product.
Editor's note and sources
Every competitor ingredient list here was read from a current public product listing in July 2026 and is quoted verbatim where the source published the full panel. Ingredient counts vary by flavor within a brand; formulas change without notice. Check the box you're holding. Cleonse figures are from our own label.
- LMNT ingredients by flavor: https://help.drinklmnt.com/en-US/what-are-the-ingredients-in-each-flavor-of-lmnt-494344
- Redmond Life Re-Lyte Hydration: https://living.redmond.com/products/re-lyte-hydration
- Cure Hydration Berry Pomegranate: https://www.curehydration.com/products/hydrating-electrolyte-mix-berry-pomegranate
- Just Ingredients Lemonade Electrolytes: https://justingredients.com/products/electrolytes-lemonade
- Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier Lemon Lime: https://www.liquid-iv.ca/products/liquid-iv-hydration-multiplier-lemon-lime
- Nuun Sport: https://nuunlife.com/products/nuun-sport
- Ultima Replenisher Lemonade (Vitacost listing): https://www.vitacost.com/ultima-replenisher-electrolyte-powder-lemonade
- Skratch Labs Sport Hydration Drink Mix: https://www.skratchlabs.com/products/sport-hydration-drink-mix
- Precision Fuel & Hydration PH 1500 (The Feed): https://thefeed.com/products/precision-fuel-and-hydration-powder-ph-1500
- Gatorade Zero powder label (H-E-B): https://www.heb.com/product-detail/gatorade-zero-sugar-orange-thirst-quencher-powder-packets/4528525
- Propel Zero sticks ingredients: https://www.powdermixdirect.com/pages/propel-zero-sticks-ingredients
Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here is a safety claim about any competitor's ingredients. Cleonse supports hydration; it does not treat, cure, or prevent any condition.