By Sebastian Madlangbayan, founder of Cleonse: the world's cleanest 3-ingredient organic electrolyte.
Stevia-free electrolyte powders are rare because the category went zero-sugar, and once you remove sugar you need something to make salt drinkable. Stevia is the default. As of July 2026, LMNT Raw, Re-Lyte Unflavored, Precision Fuel & Hydration, Skratch Labs and Cleonse are among the few that skip it.
I'll be straight with you: I built Cleonse partly because I couldn't drink stevia. So take my bias as read, and check every label yourself. I've linked the sources at the bottom.
Why stevia is everywhere
There's a simple chain of decisions behind it.
Electrolyte powders are, functionally, salt. A meaningful dose of sodium — 300mg to 1,000mg — tastes like salt water. Nobody drinks salt water voluntarily. So you have to make it palatable.
You have two ways to do that. You add sugar, or you add a high-intensity sweetener.
Around 2018 the category decided sugar was the enemy. Keto was mainstream, "added sugar" became the line on the Nutrition Facts panel everyone looked at first, and every new brand wanted to be the anti-Gatorade. Zero grams of sugar became the entry ticket.
That left high-intensity sweeteners. Sucralose and acesulfame potassium were already out of favor with the clean-label crowd. Monk fruit is expensive and has its own aftertaste. Stevia is cheap, plant-derived, shelf-stable, works at tiny inclusion rates, and — critically — reads well on a label. "Organic stevia leaf extract" sounds like a garden. "Rebaudioside A" sounds like a chemistry set, which is why most brands write the first version.
So the industry standard emerged: mineral salts, citric acid, natural flavors, stevia. Almost every brand you can name follows that template.
The labels: who uses stevia, who doesn't
Here's what current public labels say, verified in July 2026. Ingredient lists are quoted verbatim.
| Brand | Stevia? | Other sweetener | Sodium/serving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleonse | No | Organic cane sugar | 500mg |
| Redmond Re-Lyte (flavored) | Yes | — | 810mg |
| Redmond Re-Lyte (Unflavored) | No | None | 1,000mg |
| Cure Hydration | Yes | + monk fruit | 240mg |
| Just Ingredients | Yes | + monk fruit | Not published on page |
| LMNT (flavored) | Yes | — | 1,000mg |
| LMNT Raw (unflavored) | No | None | 1,000mg |
| Liquid I.V. | Yes ("Rebiana") | + cane sugar, dextrose | ~500mg |
| Nuun Sport | Yes | + dextrose | 300mg |
| Ultima Replenisher | Yes | — | 55mg |
| Skratch Labs Sport | No | Cane sugar, dextrose | 400mg |
| Precision Fuel & Hydration PH 1500 | No | Sugar | 750mg |
| Gatorade Zero | No | Sucralose + ace-K | 240mg |
Two things jump out of that table.
First, the "clean" brands are the stevia brands. Re-Lyte, Cure, Just Ingredients — the three most commonly recommended clean-label picks — all use it. Re-Lyte's flavored formula lists "Stevia Leaf Extract (Rebaudioside A)." Cure lists "Organic Stevia Extract" plus "Monk Fruit Extract." Just Ingredients Lemonade lists "Organic Stevia Leaf" and "Organic Monk Fruit Extract." All three are good companies with short, honest labels. They all use stevia.
Second, the stevia-free options split into two camps. Either you go unflavored — LMNT Raw is literally three ingredients (salt, magnesium malate, potassium chloride) and tastes like the ocean — or you go back to sugar, like Skratch, Precision, and Cleonse. There's almost nothing in between, because there isn't anything in between. If it's flavored and sweet and has no sugar, something is doing the sweetening.
Why people look for stevia-free in the first place
I get emails about this constantly, and the reasons cluster into four groups.
Taste. Some people taste stevia as bitter or metallic on the back end. This isn't imagination or fussiness — it's partly genetic. Steviol glycosides bind to bitter taste receptors as well as sweet ones, and how strongly you perceive that varies person to person. If you're one of the people who tastes it, you taste it in everything, and no amount of "you'll get used to it" helps.
The aftertaste lingers. Sucrose clears the palate in seconds. Steviol glycosides bind more slowly and release more slowly, which is why stevia sweetness arrives late and leaves late. Mid-workout, with a dry mouth, that lingering finish is the thing people describe as "I stopped wanting to drink it." Which is a real hydration problem, not a taste preference. A drink you don't finish doesn't hydrate you.
Gut tolerance. Some people report bloating or loose stools with stevia-sweetened drinks. The evidence here is mixed and often confounded — many stevia products also contain sugar alcohols, citric acid, or magnesium oxide, all of which have GI effects of their own. But if you've eliminated stevia and felt better, you don't need a study to tell you what to do.
Kids. Parents often want a hydration drink they can hand a seven-year-old without a novel sweetener in it. That's a values call, not a safety one — stevia is approved and widely regarded as safe at normal intakes — but it's a common reason people go looking.
What Cleonse does instead
Three ingredients:
Organic Lemon Powder (or Organic Strawberry Powder), Organic Cane Sugar, French Grey Sea Salt
That's the whole label. No stevia, no monk fruit, no sucralose, no acesulfame potassium, no natural flavors, no dyes, no preservatives, no gums, no anti-caking agents, no fillers. Vegan and gluten-free.
Per 30g stick, mixed into 16 oz (473 ml) of water:
- 500mg sodium
- 85+ trace minerals from French grey sea salt
- 100 calories
- 26g total carbohydrate, 24g sugar
The sugar is doing two jobs. It makes the salt drinkable — that's the obvious one. And it's fuel. Carbohydrate is what your muscles burn during sustained work, and sodium and glucose are absorbed together across the gut wall through a shared transporter, which is the mechanism the World Health Organization's oral rehydration formula is built on. I wrote about that in detail in do electrolytes need sugar.
I'm not going to pretend this is free. 24g of sugar is 24g of sugar. If you're drinking one on the couch, that's a real cost with no upside. Cleonse is built for people who are moving.
The honest comparison
Here's what I'd actually tell a friend.
If you want stevia-free and zero sugar, buy LMNT Raw or Re-Lyte Unflavored. They are genuinely three and four ingredients respectively, they have no sweetener of any kind, and they cost less per serving than most flavored products. The catch is that they taste like salt water, because that's what they are. Some people add them to juice or coffee. Some people just drink them fast and get on with their day. If you can do that, it's the cleanest, cheapest answer in the category and I'd rather you buy that than pretend otherwise.
If you want stevia-free with flavor and you're training, look at sugar-sweetened options. Skratch Sport Hydration (400mg sodium, 19g sugar), Precision PH 1500 (750mg sodium, 15g sugar), and Cleonse (500mg sodium, 24g sugar) all use real sugar and no high-intensity sweetener. The differences are ingredient count and sodium level. Skratch lists nine ingredients including ascorbic acid and dextrose. Precision lists sugar, mineral salts, acidity regulators, natural flavors, calcium and magnesium. Cleonse lists three.
If you want stevia-free, zero sugar, and flavor — that basically doesn't exist without artificial sweeteners. Gatorade Zero and Propel skip stevia, but only by using sucralose and acesulfame potassium instead. If your objection to stevia is "I don't want high-intensity sweeteners," those aren't an upgrade. More on that in the label-reading guide.
How to check a label yourself
Stevia hides behind at least six different names. Scan for all of them:
- Stevia leaf extract
- Organic stevia extract
- Steviol glycosides
- Rebaudioside A (or Reb A, Reb M, Reb D)
- Rebiana
- Stevia rebaudiana
Liquid I.V. writes "Rebiana (Stevia leaf extract)," which is the honest version. Some brands just write "Rebaudioside A" with no mention of stevia at all, and if you don't know the term you'll walk right past it.
Two more things worth knowing. Sweeteners appear near the end of the ingredient list because they're used in tiny amounts — position tells you nothing about whether it's there. And "no artificial sweeteners" on the front of a box is fully compatible with stevia inside it, because stevia is classified as natural. That claim is not the claim you think it is.
Try The World's Cleanest Electrolyte™
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Shop CleonseFrequently asked questions
Which electrolyte powders have no stevia? As of July 2026: Cleonse (organic cane sugar), LMNT Raw unflavored (no sweetener), Redmond Re-Lyte Unflavored (no sweetener), Skratch Labs Sport Hydration (cane sugar and dextrose), and Precision Fuel & Hydration PH 1500 (sugar). Gatorade Zero and Propel are also stevia-free but use sucralose and acesulfame potassium instead.
Does Re-Lyte have stevia? Yes. Redmond's flavored Re-Lyte Hydration lists "Stevia Leaf Extract (Rebaudioside A)" on its current label. The Unflavored version does not contain stevia and has no sweetener at all.
Does Cure Hydration have stevia? Yes. Cure's current label lists both "Organic Stevia Extract" and "Monk Fruit Extract." It's a well-formulated product with a short label, but it is not stevia-free.
Does Just Ingredients electrolytes have stevia? Yes. The Just Ingredients Lemonade label lists "Organic Stevia Leaf" and "Organic Monk Fruit Extract."
Is stevia bad for you? No. Steviol glycosides are approved by the FDA and reviewed as safe at typical intakes. The reasons people avoid it are taste, aftertaste, individual gut tolerance, and personal preference about novel sweeteners — not established harm. This article is about finding products that match a preference, not about a safety warning.
Why does Cleonse use sugar instead of stevia? Because Cleonse is built for training, and carbohydrate is fuel during sustained exercise. Sodium and glucose are also absorbed together, which is the basis of oral rehydration formulas. Using real cane sugar means the sweetener does a job beyond tasting sweet. For rest days or sedentary use, a zero-sugar product makes more sense.
Keep reading
- What is the cleanest electrolyte? A no-BS ingredient guide
- Cleonse vs Redmond Re-Lyte: salt vs salt
- Cleonse facts: the full ingredient and nutrition breakdown
Cleonse is three ingredients, 500mg sodium, no stevia in any flavor. Organic Lemonade, Organic Strawberry, or the Duo Assortment. $33 for 10 sticks, $66 for 30, $110 for 60, free shipping, 30-day guarantee. See the product.
Editor's note and sources
All competitor ingredient lists and nutrition figures in this article were read from current public product pages in July 2026. Formulas change; check the box you're holding. Cleonse figures are from our own label.
- Redmond Life — Re-Lyte Hydration product page: https://living.redmond.com/products/re-lyte-hydration
- Redmond Life — Re-Lyte Hydration 30ct Stick Packs: https://living.redmond.com/products/re-lyte-hydration-stick-packs-30-ct
- Cure Hydration — Berry Pomegranate: https://www.curehydration.com/products/hydrating-electrolyte-mix-berry-pomegranate
- Just Ingredients — Lemonade Electrolytes: https://justingredients.com/products/electrolytes-lemonade
- LMNT — ingredient list by flavor (help center): https://help.drinklmnt.com/en-US/what-are-the-ingredients-in-each-flavor-of-lmnt-494344
- Liquid I.V. — Hydration Multiplier Lemon Lime: https://www.liquid-iv.ca/products/liquid-iv-hydration-multiplier-lemon-lime
- Nuun — Nuun Sport: https://nuunlife.com/products/nuun-sport
- Ultima Replenisher Lemonade label (Vitacost): 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
Nothing here is medical advice. Cleonse supports hydration; it does not treat, cure, or prevent any condition.