Best Beet Supplement

You probably already know that beets are an extremely healthy vegetable. But did you know that consuming beetroot could help your body regulate digestion,1 lower blood pressure,2 and even fight cancer?3

Many people take beet supplements to reap the benefits of beets without the time and mess of cooking or juicing them. With so many beet supplements on the market, you may wonder how to choose the right one. We’ve tried most of the top beetroot supplements on the market, and some products rise above others. And among the recommendable products, some will be particularly strong choices for different people. So, we’ve compiled the guide to help you make the right choice based on your needs and interests.

If you don’t have time to read the whole guide, take a look at our top recommendations below.

At Innerbody Research, we extensively test each health service or product we review. That includes beet supplements. Our testing team tried top beetroot supplements — both powdered drink mixes and capsules — to relay crucial information about taste, effectiveness, and the customer experience that other outlets can’t provide.

Alongside our personal experiences with beet supplements, our team devoted more than 300 hours to the study of beets’ nutritional potential, nitric oxide production, and cardiometabolic science. All told, we consumed over 100 scholarly journal articles on these relevant topics.

Like all health-related content on this website, this review was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy. We’ll remain focused on beet supplements and related nutritional topics to keep this article up to date.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

We’ve compared our top picks based on a simple set of criteria:

• Effectiveness
• Safety
• Cost
• Taste
• Convenience

Effectiveness had the most influence on our ultimate considerations, with safety and taste pulling up second place. Cost is important, but the price range among beet supplements isn’t especially wide. And convenience will matter to many, but it’s far from a deal breaker.

Let’s look at each criterion in more detail.

Effectiveness

Winner: HumanN SuperBeets Sport

Beet supplements are meant to increase nitric oxide production in the body, which can help various body processes like immunity, stamina, and circulation. Studies utilizing beet juice have illustrated these potential benefits, but juicing that many beets is a bit of a chore. Better to let a company juice them for you and dehydrate that juice to create a powder you can take via a capsule or by reintroducing to water.

The exact concentration of nitrates — the compound in beets responsible for vasodilation — will vary from company to company, and without complex testing, you’d have to take their word for it if they tell you the nitrate content per serving. But since beetroot studies have shown high rates of tolerability among healthy participants using doses around 15g, you’d be best served by seeking a beetroot powder that offers as much beetroot per serving as possible.5 Most powders offer 5g-8g per serving, but HumanN SuperBeets Sport delivers just under 10g. That’s much more likely to have an effect than lighter doses.

HumanN has subjected several of its products to clinical studies, each of which has come back with impressive results.4 The exact ethical practices and funding channels for these studies are a little suspect; even the results published in the American Journal of Physiology’s Heart and Circulatory Physiology sub-journal were clearly funded by HumanN. We’d ultimately like to see independent studies for these products, but those are not likely forthcoming.

Cost

Winner: Bulk Supplements

A beet supplement needs to be high quality and provide the most bang for your buck. The prices for supplements in this guide range from $12 to $40 for a one-month supply. But cost also goes beyond price to include considerations like money-back guarantees, subscribe & save options, and bulk discounts.

Bulk Supplements makes a point to offer supplements at a low cost without sacrificing things like third-party testing. For this reason, its Beet Root Powder is the cheapest on our list at $10.96 for a one-month supply of 3.5g servings. You can lower your cost by five percent more using discount code INNERBODY5 at checkout. Bulk Supplements also offers a subscribe & save option that provides a 5% discount on your order and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Also, unlike any other company in this guide, you can order up to 55lbs of its Beet Root Powder in one shipment, which gives you over 7,142 servings for $369.

That might be a little more beetroot than you need, but with those kinds of savings available, you could take more than the suggested serving size to get closer to what something like HumanN SuperBeets Sport offers. HumanN gives you 20 10.5g servings for $40. That means its $40 container has about 210g in it. Comparatively, a 250g bag of Bulk Supplements Organic Beet Root Powder costs just $15.

Safety

Winner: HumanN

For us to regard one product or company as safer than another, we typically like to see things like third-party testing, responsible ingredient sourcing and manufacturing practices, formulas that combine ingredients with intention, and doses that fall within a tolerable range for healthy adults. HumanN checks all of these boxes. Its SuperBeets Sport offers a high dose of beetroot powder, but it’s still well within the tolerable range we’ve seen in studies.

HumanN uses third parties to test its supplements for contaminants and to determine that its doses and formulas accurately match the nutrition labels. The company also produces its goods in cGMP-certified facilities, which are regulated by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. We also appreciate that HumanN allows its formulas to evolve toward high safety standards. Even as we were testing the product, the company added coconut water powder to its BeetElite supplement, renaming it SuperBeets Sport. That addition of coconut water helps improve hydration if you’re using the product for gains in exercise and athletic performance.6 Coconut water powder is also effective at protecting the kidneys and reducing the likelihood of kidney stones.7 For anyone also using protein powders, post-workout drinks, and other supplements throughout the day, adequate hydration is an important factor to consider.

Taste

Winner: HumanN

Our testing team laid out the best beetroot supplements we found and tested each one to compare flavor and mixability. Comparing effects on exercise performance is a bit too subjective without proper controls and procedures, but we know that higher doses are liable to be more effective than lower ones, so we focused much of our testing on taste and how well each product mixed into water.

While researching and ordering products, HumanN was still selling BeetElite instead of SuperBeets Sport. The company made the switch in the middle of our writing this piece. Still, it only added a small amount of coconut water powder to the party, which we've tasted both on its own and as part of other supplements. So, we’re confident that our assessment of HumanN’s BeetElite will align with your experience with SuperBeets Sport.

Now, few beet supplements are going to become everybody’s favorite beverage. Beets contain a lot of natural sugar, but they’re still vegetables. The beet flavor mixes better with some complementary flavors than others, and we’ve found that oversweetening a mix makes things worse.

BeetElite mixed very well with water. After just a few stirs with a fork, almost all of it had dissolved. Some of our testers saw a little clumping at the bottom of the glass, but a quick swirl reincorporated it into the mixture. Its black cherry flavor and stevia added just enough tartness and sweetness that they worked in conjunction with the beet flavor rather than trying to mask it. That gave this product the most pleasant taste, in our opinion.

Convenience

Winners: HumanN and Horbäach

We measure convenience in various ways. We think about website design, shipping logistics, customer support infrastructure, dosages, and more. This category was split because it’s hard to compare the convenience of one dose over another when one is a powder drink mix and the other is a capsule.

Horbäach makes it easy to keep a few doses of beetroot on you when you go to the gym or travel, and you don’t have to worry about mixing a drink or spilling beet juice anywhere (it stains). But on the other hand, the capsules are large, and anyone who has difficulty taking pills will not be comfortable consuming these.

Among drink mixes, HumanN offers the best customer service, with a fast, well-informed team running an easy-to-use chat support system. HumanN also offers the most flexibility in its subscription program, allowing you to combine subscriptions and bulk purchasing to save extra money and not have to worry about reordering when you’re running low.

To give you a sense of how our top picks compare, we’ve composed a little chart with some key information in it:

Beets are an impressive source of multiple nutrients. They provide vitamins, minerals, and other compounds that are essential to body functions, including:

• Fiber
• Copper
• Folate
• Potassium
• Vitamin C
• Iron

The veggie is also low in fat and calories but high in nitrates, which are converted to nitric oxide in the body. Healthy nitric oxide levels contribute to the successful function of many bodily systems and have been shown to lower blood pressure.

In addition to these benefits, beets can also help:

• Improve exercise endurance
• Reduce inflammation
• Aid digestion
• Increase immunity
• Support brain health and cognition
• Improve overall cardiovascular health
• Fight cancer

These claims may sound hard to believe, but scientific studies and research suggests many of them have merit. Keep in mind that some of this research has been conducted on animals and not on humans. Also, some studies include beet juice or raw beets, not beetroot extract that you’d find in a beet supplement. Either way, the studies below demonstrate that consistent intake of beets may enhance your body’s performance.

• A review of several studies, which were conducted to show the links between beetroot supplementation and exercise endurance, showed that beetroot juice improved stamina, performance, and fatigue rates in athletes.8
• One study showed that using oral capsules of beetroot extract reduced inflammation in patients with arthritis.9
• Another study showed that beet supplementation and exercise improve brain function and cognition.10
• Beetroot extracts have been shown to stop the production of prostate cancer cells.11 They’ve also been shown to delay the development of breast cancer cells.3

Beet supplements provide the body with several beneficial elements, but two components are at the heart of their efficacy: nitrates and betalains. Betalains are not as well absorbed as nitrates from beets and beet supplements, but they appear to be critical aspects of beet products’ potential to reduce inflammation and improve symptoms of painful disorders like arthritis.9

When you consume nitrates, your body converts them to nitric oxide, which dilates blood vessels and improves circulation. When your blood flows more easily, your muscles and organs receive nutrients and oxygen faster, making your body more energy efficient. This can aid in exercise performance and muscle recovery while lowering blood pressure.

Beetroot powder vs. capsules

Beet supplements have performed well in studies that looked at capsules or powders. Nitrates typically convert to nitric oxide (NO) in the digestive tract, and those make their way into the bloodstream through the stomach and intestines. But the process of converting nitrates to nitric oxide begins in the mouth, where saliva containing critically important, helpful bacteria instigates the conversion.

Because this process starts in the mouth, and because NO and nitrates can make their way into the bloodstream inside the stomach, we recommend beetroot powders over capsules. Depending on the makeup of the beetroot capsule, the powder inside of it may not be exposed to the digestive tract until it hits the stomach or even as late as its arrival in the intestines. That bypasses at least one important junction in the conversion process.

There are four main groups of people that can benefit the most from beet supplements:

• Athletes and those who exercise often
• Those with high blood pressure
• People who want to improve cognition
• Those who want to enhance overall health

Because beets help boost nitric oxide levels, athletes or those who take the gym seriously can benefit from supplementation. Heightened nitric oxide levels increase blood flow, giving you more stamina, enhancing your exercise performance, and speeding up recovery times between workouts.

Nitric oxide also expands blood vessels, letting your blood flow easier. This can help with hypertension because your heart can pump more efficiently. This 2018 review of studies showed that beetroot juice supplementation helps control blood pressure levels in people with and without high blood pressure.12

High nitric oxide levels also help blood flow more easily to the brain, eliminating “brain fog” and improving working memory and cognition. If you notice that your memory or concentration has recently worsened, beet supplements may be a good option for you. One study showed that a diet high in nitrates (including beet juice) stimulated blood flow to the frontal lobe — the area of the brain responsible for working memory, self-regulation, and multitasking.13

Because beets are low in calories and fat and provide many nutrients and vitamins, those interested in enhancing overall health can benefit from beet supplements without worrying about caloric intake. If you decide to use beet supplements, other areas of your health that might improve include:

• Inflammation
• Circulation
• Digestion
• Immunity

Beet supplements are generally safe for most people, but some components of beets may result in side effects. Beetroot is not suitable for most people sensitive to FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols). Specifically, beets are rich in fructans and galactooligosaccharides, which may cause or worsen digestive issues, such as bloating, diarrhea, or constipation. If you are prone to these issues or have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), you may want to steer clear of beet supplements, though small amounts of fresh, steamed, canned, or pickled beets (roughly 75g) should be safe.

Since beetroot is known to lower blood pressure, people with hypotension should avoid beet supplements unless directed to take them in lieu of blood pressure medication by a medical professional. To be safe, whether you have high or low blood pressure or are actively on blood pressure medication, it’s best to talk with your doctor before taking beet supplements.

Also, many beetroot supplements contain sugar, often naturally derived from the beets themselves. That makes them less suitable for certain diets, including keto. Many beet supplements also contain enough calories to break a fast, so intermittent fasters looking for a pre-workout to use before a bout of fasted exercise might need to look elsewhere. And because consuming beetroot may also impact blood sugar levels, people living with diabetes should monitor their intake.

Beets are also high in oxalates, which can contribute to kidney stones and gout.14 This is why HumanN recently added coconut water powder to its most potent beetroot supplement, SuperBets Sport.7 In addition to improving hydration, coconut water powder has been shown to protect renal health and guard against kidney stones. Check with your doctor before beginning any new supplement.

In general, beetroot supplements are safe and have few side effects. Beets, beet extracts, beet juice, and beet supplements have also been studied in many clinical trials to show their benefits to body systems. There are only a few issues you should look out for when starting a beet supplement.

Consult your doctor before beginning a beet supplement, especially if you live with:

• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Low blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Kidney stones
• Gout
• FODMAP sensitivity

While reported side effects of beet supplements are rare, the above conditions could worsen when taking a beet supplement or consuming beets in any form.

Another side effect of consuming beets is beeturia (when urine or feces turn red or pink). This happens because beets contain a natural pigment called betacyanin. Beeturia is a harmless side effect that typically occurs in 10-14% of the population.15

Make sure to follow the label instructions and stop taking the supplement if you experience any adverse effects.

Best overall and best tasting

HumanN is a company with a catalog centered on beets. It offers powders, gummies, and tablets, nearly all of which have beets as their main ingredients. There’s a drink mix that focuses on greens, some turmeric chews, and a couple of vitamin supplements, but the rest of the products are beet-forward.

HumanN SuperBeets Sport is an updated beetroot powder designed for athletes but suitable for just about any healthy adult. It used to be called BeetElite, but HumanN decided to add 500mg of coconut water powder per dose to improve hydration and renal health. BeetElite used to only be available at one price point, but SuperBeets Sport offers both subscription and bulk savings options, bringing it in line with much of the rest of HumanN’s catalog.

HumanN doesn’t clearly list its beetroot dose, but the total serving size per dose is 10.5g. We reached out to the company via its outstanding live chat feature, and a representative told us that the formula contains 500mg coconut water powder and a little less than 1g of ingredients other than beetroot, such as natural cherry flavor and magnesium ascorbate. That means it contains over 9g of beetroot powder, which is the highest dose per serving of any beet supplement in this guide. The next highest dose comes from Horbäach with its 8g dose, but that’s delivered via capsule, which is a less effective method for nitric oxide production.

A 4-week clinical trial using original SuperBeets (approximately half the dose of SuperBeets Sport) showed that it lowered participants’ blood pressure.4 HumanN claims that SuperBeets achieves these goals by including the equivalent of 40 teaspoons of fresh beets in every teaspoon of its highly concentrated beetroot crystals, though clear evidence of this is not available.

Another clinical study showed that athletes performing high-intensity workouts could exercise longer and complete more reps after consuming BeetElite than their performance without the supplement. But this study has yet to be published or peer-reviewed.

Taste and mixability

Our testing team tried HumanN’s product for ourselves just a few days before the company updated its formula to include coconut water powder, something that doesn’t meaningfully change flavor or mixability. Our testers universally found it to be one of the best-tasting beet supplements. Its black cherry flavor is a nice complement to the natural beet flavor. It doesn’t try to overpower the beet flavor with sweetness or other flavorings, just a bit of stevia and black cherry flavor. And the powder mixed into water about as well as any pure beetroot powder we’ve tried. It takes a little stirring but dissolves completely in the recommended amount of water.

Price

When you purchase SuperBeets Sport, you’ll choose between a one-time purchase or the Subscribe & Save option. If you decide to subscribe, you can take advantage of free shipping and cancel your subscription at any time. You can also choose to buy one, three, or six containers at a time to save up to 35% overall. Here’s how it breaks down:

HumanN offers a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is the most generous guarantee of the companies in our guide. Most others offer just 30 days, and some won’t take back products once they’ve been opened.

Best budget pick

We often look to Bulk Supplements for budget-friendly options, and its beet supplement is no exception. Bulk Supplements Beet Root Powder is our best budget pick because it provides a 29-serving bag of beetroot powder for only $10.96 — drastically less than any other beet supplement in this guide. And as you purchase larger amounts, the cost per gram drops dramatically.

You can order up to 25kg of it at a time, though it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which you’d need that much unless you planned to resell it or create enough naturally dyed paint to cover the exterior of a house. The great thing about these flexible sizes (there are seven sizes to choose from) is that they make it easy for you to determine your own dosage, whether higher or lower than the 3.5g serving size the company recommends. You’ll want to talk to a doctor to dial in the right dose safely. However, these bags don’t come with scoops, so you’ll have to measure out your doses with a scale of some kind if you want precision.

This product is manufactured in a cGMP-registered facility and undergoes third-party testing to ensure quality and safety. It is made of pure beetroot powder and is free from added sugar, soy, dairy, yeast, gluten, and additives.

Taste and mixability

Bulk Supplements doesn’t add anything to its beetroot powder, so the flavor is going to be a sticking point for some people unless they really like beets. Now, beets have the highest sugar content of any vegetable, so the resultant juice is sweet, but the beet flavor is still strong. The benefit of no added ingredients is that it allows the powder to mix very well into plain water. There is no clumping or sediment with the recommended dose in the suggested amount of water, but if you titrate up above 5g without adding more water, the drink starts to get a little thick.

Price

You can choose a one-time purchase or subscribe for a 5% discount. If you choose to subscribe, you can receive a new shipment every 30, 60, 90, or 120 days. Shipping is free on all orders over $59 placed within the contiguous U.S., and Bulk Supplements offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. The chart below breaks down the product amounts and prices.

And here’s how a gram-for-gram comparison goes between Bulk Supplements and our top overall pick HumanN SuperBeets Sport:

There is an important caveat to Bulk Supplements’ 30-day return policy. The company will take back opened products, but if you initiate a return on an opened product, you’ll only be eligible for a refund equal to the cost of the least amount available. So, if you buy a 1kg bag, use a bit of it, and return it, you can only get back the cost of the 100g bag. We’ve seen similar policies from other bulk suppliers, but they pale in comparison to more generous offerings like HumanN’s 90-day promise.

Best pre-workout

Force Factor Total Beets Pre-Workout is designed explicitly with exercise performance in mind. In addition to a 5g dose of beetroot powder, it contains a few additional ingredients found in other effective pre-workout mixes, including L-arginine and L-citrulline. L-Citrulline is such an effective workout supplement that we even have a guide dedicated to the best L-citrulline supplements.16

Here’s a look at the total ingredient list for ForceFactor Total Beets Pre-Workout:

• Vitamin C: 100mg
• Vitamin B1: 10mg
• Niacin: 20mg
• Vitamin B6: 2mg
• Vitamin B12: 200mcg
• Magnesium: 100mg
• Sodium (from pink Himalayan salt): 200mg
• Potassium: 100mg
• Beet powder: 5g
• L-Citrulline: 1.5g
• L-Arginine: 1g
• Green coffee extract: 250mg (for 245mg caffeine)
• Coconut water powder: 100mg
• Huperzia extract: 5mg

Taste and mixability

None of the added active ingredients in Total Beets Pre-Workout make much of a difference to the product’s flavor, but the natural and artificial flavors and the sucralose certainly do have an impact. You can get this product in watermelon or fruit punch flavors, and both have a slightly artificial taste compared to more natural options from HumanN and Bulk Supplements. The added ingredients also have a slight impact on mixability. This product doesn’t mix into water as cleanly as its competitors. However, you likely wouldn’t notice if you mixed it in a shaker bottle or added it to a smoothie.

Price

You can purchase Total Beets Pre-Workout both in stores and online, though not directly from the company. You’ll find it on sale at GNC, Walmart, Target, iHerb, The Vitamin Shoppe, and Amazon.

You’ll typically find it on sale for between $35 and $40, with subscription options available from some retailers, including GNC.

Best capsule form

Since most people looking into beet supplements are interested in their nitrate content and the related increase in nitric oxide production, we typically steer readers toward powdered beet supplements over capsules. That’s because the encapsulated beetroot powder can’t interact with critical salivary bacteria that are the first important step in converting nitrates to NO. If you want to maximize nitric oxide production from a beetroot supplement, especially to improve workout performance from acute administration, you’ll want to stick with a drink mix.

That said, there are several reasons someone might be interested in taking beetroot in capsule form.

Pricing

Horbäach sells its beetroot capsules in two concentrations: 1.5g and 8g. The price advantage of the 8g capsules is significant. Here’s how the two compare:

As you can see, the cost per capsule is virtually the same, but since the capsules in the 8g dose contain so much more beetroot, the cost-to-benefit ratio is far superior to the 1.5g dose.

Unlike its competitors, who either offer free shipping only with subscriptions or on purchase points typically higher than the cost of a single beetroot order, Horbäach provides free shipping on all orders. The company also has a reasonable money-back guarantee, second only to HumanN’s in its class. You can return an opened or unopened product to Horbäach for up to 30 days.

Depending on your specific goals, there may be several viable alternatives to beet supplements you can investigate if, for whatever reason, you don’t think beets are for you. Let’s take a quick look at a few alternative supplement categories to see what else is out there.