Best Pre Workout Without Artificial Sweeteners: Our Top Pick for 2025

Whether you’re looking to lean out, build muscle, or just take your performance in a new direction, a pre-workout is a great supplement to add to your stack. They’re designed to boost strength, endurance, power, speed, recovery, and overall performance to help accelerate your training to new heights.

But the thing with most conventional pre-workout supplements you’ll find floating around shelves—and let’s be real, most workout supplements, in general—is that they’re loaded with crappy ingredients that don’t do your body or performance any favors.

You’re getting a bottle of water that tastes like a pack of Skittles, or an amino acid supplement that makes you think you’re eating a slice of birthday cake.

There’s no end to the flavors that infiltrate the health and fitness supplement industry, but the sheer amount of preservatives, additives, artificial colors, and sweeteners… well, you’ll need another hand to count those.

So, how do you get the performance results you’re looking for without doing damage?

Opt for clean and effective ingredients.

While it’s not a combination you’ll come by frequently, we’re giving you our top pick for the best pre-workout supplement that’s free of all things artificial. It’s minimal ingredients for maximum results.

We’re talking about Pre Lab Pro® —the cleanest and most effective pre-workout on the market that will take your training to places you never thought possible.

What’s The Point Of A Pre-Workout?

When it comes to pre-workouts, a lot of people are mixed in their opinions. Some athletes swear by the benefits, while others find they’re unnecessary. But in the grand scheme of things, a pre-workout isn’t just designed to pump up your energy levels. It’s so much more.

Pre-workout supplements are a combination of ingredients designed to increase energy and boost performance on all levels. That means strength, speed, power, stamina, and everything in between.

They’re a class of supplements intended to be taken before exercise and generally contain a mix of ingredients, including caffeine, creatine, beta-alanine, amino acids, and nitric oxide boosters that enhance performance ¹.

When the ingredients are taken together, they’re designed specifically to elicit a synergistic effect on acute exercise performance and post-exercise training adaptations compared to ingesting single ingredients alone.

But why take them in the first place? There’s a substantial body of evidence suggesting that pre-workouts may ¹:

• Enhance muscular endurance
• Increase force production
• Improve aerobic performance
• Boost power
• Enhance reaction time
• Improve body composition
• Boost energy expenditure
• Reduce fatigue

Simply put, when used appropriately, a good pre-workout can completely change the way you train and the results you see. But what you need to be mindful of is what kind of pre-workout you’re taking.

The vast majority of what you’ll find mega-doses caffeine and loads the formula with artificial ingredients, which means you’re getting short-term gains plus the sweet gift of long-term health risks.

But aside from the standard performance-enhancing ingredients you’ll find in pre-workouts, you’ll also find some nasty things that go by the name of artificial sweeteners… and the results they give you? Well, not so sweet after all.

Learn more about ingredients to avoid in a pre workout supplement

Altered gut microbiota

While most artificial sweeteners pass through the GI tract intact and undigested, they still elicit effects that can interfere with the balance of microbiota in the gut because they come into contact with them during travel ³.

And when homeostasis is disrupted, it leads to a condition whereby the bad guys can flourish and the good guys are suppressed, ultimately causing dysbiosis.

Poor gut health has been linked to a host of issues, including weight gain, glucose dysfunction, metabolic syndrome, autoimmunity, and even cancer.

One study found that rats given Sucralose for 12 weeks saw decreases in the total number of anaerobic and aerobic bacteria, bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, Bacteroides, and Clostridium ⁴. Several other studies show similar results with altered levels of various bacterial species ⁵.

Impaired glucose and insulin function

Many people with impaired glucose tolerance and diabetes choose to consume artificial sweeteners for the sugary taste without the side effects, but studies show that even artificial sweeteners can interfere with glucose regulation.

While the results largely depend on the type of sweetener, there’s a fair bit of evidence linking their consumption to increased blood sugar and insulin. One study found that women who consumed an artificially sweetened drink before a sugary drink had 14% higher blood sugar levels and 20% higher insulin levels compared to the group who drank water before the sugary drink ⁶.

Other studies show that consumption of artificial sweeteners can induce glucose intolerance by altering gut microbiota ⁷, leading researchers to conclude that there’s a decently strong link between artificial sweetener consumption, gut dysbiosis, and metabolic abnormalities.

Leads to weight gain

Whether you’re an athlete or not, no one wants to gain weight. It’s the sole reason why the weight loss industry has been booming for decades.

But the reality is that weight gain is one of the major side effects of high sugar intake, but it may also be the result of excessive consumption of artificial sweeteners. While artificial sweeteners were created to reduce the prevalence of obesity, studies show that they could be contributing to it ⁸.

The research remains largely mixed with some studies showing links while others disprove it, but there is a handful of research indicating that increasing intake of artificially sweetened diet soda is linked to escalating abdominal obesity, potentially through its role in triggering insulin release ⁹.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Chronic consumption of artificial sweeteners like what you’re pounding back before every training session has also been shown to ^{10, 11}:

• Inhibit synthesis and release of neurotransmitters
• Increase cortisol activity
• Increase generation of free radicals (oxidative stress)
• Increase risk of pregnancy complications and preterm delivery
• Increase risk of developing mood disorders

Simply put, what you’re consuming may taste like the penny candy you got at the corner store when you were younger, but your body isn’t loving it and it isn’t benefiting your performance in any way.

So, rather than playing Russian roulette with your health, opt for something that’s just as (if not more) effective than conventional pre-workout supplements with none of the nasty ingredient tags attached to it.

What you’ll find in Pre Lab Pro®:

Red Beetroot Powder

If you’re looking for a major pump without any potential side effects, beetroot powder is your gold. It’s a rich natural source of nitrate that drives nitric oxide production ¹². As a powerful vasodilator, nitric oxide opens up blood vessels for better blood flow and nutrient delivery to active muscles.

Along with that, you’re also getting a potent dose of betalain pigments, which are powerful antioxidants that mitigate the effects of oxidative damage to muscle cells to prevent post-exercise soreness and support a faster recovery.

With red beetroot powder in Pre Lab Pro®, you’re getting healthier and improved neuromuscular performance, less fatigue, better muscle energy, healthy cardiovascular performance, and sharper cognitive function.

Learn more about the benefits of beetroot powder.

Setria® Performance Blend

If you’re looking for a power duo for taking your workout to the next level, L-Glutathione and L-Citrulline are it—and that’s Setria® Performance Blend.

The combination of these two powerful ingredients boosts and sustains levels of nitric oxide for a pump that leaves you pushing harder and longer than you ever have before. If you want to maximize muscle growth, you need to maximize work capacity, and Setria does that.

It’s a research-backed 2-in-1 stack that’s shown to promote a NOx boost that extends into the post-workout window for better performance and a stronger recovery.

Along with boosting and maintaining lean muscle mass with resistance training, this blend sustains NOx levels in blood 2X longer than equivalent doses of L-Arginine or L-Citrulline alone. It's also clinically shown to reduce fatigue and accelerate recovery in resistance-trained athletes,

Setria® Performance Blend is the most powerful blend for a sustained nitric oxide boost for greater strength, power, speed, and endurance.

Natural caffeine

When it comes to stimulation, caffeine usually comes out on top.

But the problem with most pre-workout supplements is that they mega-dose caffeine, which leaves you anxious, jittery, and sets you up for a major crash post-workout.

Moderate-dose caffeine promotes sharper focus, better energy, alertness, and improved cognitive function for smarter stimulation stacked with boosters and balancers for maximum benefit and minimal side effects.

L-Tyrosine

Conventional pre-workout supplements are loaded with nasty ingredients and high-dose caffeine that can leave you feeling energized, jittery, wired, anxious, and overstimulated.

However, the addition of the amino acid L-Tyrosine throws a curveball at the pre-workout game. It’s a compound that supports the synthesis and recycling of the three catecholamines that are heavily affected by caffeine and high-intensity training—dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine ¹³.

By counteracting the side effects of stimulants, L-Tyrosine sharpens focus and maintains neurotransmitter levels to increase performance, stabilize mood, and prevent fatigue. Taken pre-workout, it also supports brain chemicals that drive athletic intensity and mental recovery.

Learn more about the benefits of L-Tyrosine

L-Theanine

There’s no denying that caffeine can elevate your workout. Chronic, high dose caffeine consumption, however, can be a total buzzkill for both your performance and recovery, depleting important chemicals required for optimal performance.

But that’s where L-theanine does its thing. It’s one of the most effective and powerful compounds for preventing stress-associated impairments in performance.

It helps to enhance the effects of caffeine for a calmer, cleaner stimulation that’s precision-tuned for peak performance by supporting important neurotransmitters like dopamine, GABA, glutamate, and serotonin for a calm, motivated state of mind to help you power through even the toughest workouts with confidence and ease ¹⁴.

Because caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant, L-theanine works in the brain to inhibit excitatory brain chemicals associated with high-dose caffeine intake and tones down an overstimulated central nervous system that can interfere with performance and recovery.

With this guy, you’re getting relaxed alertness, a stable mood, and cognitive clarity for calmer, cleaner stimulation.

Learn more about the benefits of L-Theanine

Why take Pre Lab Pro®?

In the end, this pre-workout is about more than just chasing the pump and boosting energy. With every scoop you’re getting:

• Moderate-dose caffeine plus synergistic L-Theanine & nootropics for jitter-free energy, focus, alertness, and motivation
• 2X turbocharge + afterburn blood flow surge for better strength, power, endurance, intensity, and mental clarity
• Support for hydration, stress resistance, and balance for better performance, accelerated recovery, and overall health
• Replenishment of caffeine-depleted brain chemicals for daily use with less burnout
• Promotion of balanced physiological responses to caffeine-induced stress
• Support for a healthier recovery and faster bounce-back after intense training
• Promotion of stronger homeostasis for a healthy inner balance to help you train like a beast

Shop Pre Lab Pro®