28 Energy Drinks Ranked, from Degrees Celsius to Black Rifle (2026)
The future is here, and B vitamins, red coloring, and taurine are used in these drinks. These are the best energy drinks for going from tired to fully energized.
The good news is that it's easier than ever to buy your favorite cans on Amazon, and the great news is that you don't need Crocs and Cookie Monster Jammies to do it. Throw in a nice little discount for buying in bulk and setting up auto-delivery, and they're basically paying you not to leave your house. The future is here and it uses B vitamins, red dye and taurine.
As a devoted coffee drinker, I feel like a misguided New Yorker movie critic when I see the neon boys of energy drinks usurping shelf space from my favorite varieties of Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew at my neighborhood Sheetz. Energy drinks are big business—they're expected to make nearly $20 billion in the U.S. by 2023—but I don't know a single person who drinks them regularly.
A good cup of coffee is hard to come by at odd hours and in the middle of nowhere. Energy drinks, on the other hand, are just as quiet. At any hour of the day, you can pick up an eye-catching can that boldly advertises its caffeine content, drop a few bucks, and shoot into space in just a few shots. Homebodies and junkies don't even need to leave their home to score great deals with fast electric shipping on their most popular brands, provided they're Amazon Prime members. I love value, convenience, and caffeine, so I finally gave in.
are you still thirsty Check out our other drink-related guides, including the best mushroom coffee and the best coffee subscription.
Updated March 2026: We have added new potions from Bloom, Melting Forest and Liquid Death. Removed some discontinued products. And updated links, tasting notes, and prices throughout.
1. Practical and essential energy drink
Although it's less carbonated than most energy drinks, Celsius has no bitter aftertaste and is amazing at masking the medicinal notes found in strong drinks. When it comes to caffeine-to-volume ratio, it's an absolute one, and no flavor I tried was objectively bad.
Celsius is popular for a reason, and it's no shocker to see fully stocked fridges right next to the cash register at an increasing number of gas stations. The can contains a lot of text that I will never read, but it is attractive and would be very attractive at extreme gaming or raunchy camps to discourage potential buyers who like to be seen in public with an energy drink. Like the Beatles or In-N-Out, it's an agreed upon choice.
Notes: A gentle drift of energy with very little jolts or butterflies in the stomach. It's a solid drink for a road trip or pre-workout. A bit of a drop in energy around 2pm, but a few jumping jacks got me back on track.
C4 Sports Fuel's marketing materials position it as the beverage of choice for the sports complex. Does the clinically studied C4 Carnosine Beta-Alanine compound help with swelling? Do yoga pants increase flexibility? WHO knows, and who cares! Halfway through the can I made my legs happy and swapped my aero seat for a walking pad. Two miles and 35 minutes later I was still zooming so I took my dog for a 2 mile run and by the end I felt like a million bucks. I crushed a gas station salad for lunch and for the first time in my life I felt like a healthy person.
Notes: With flavors like Frozen Bombsicle and Mango Foxtrot in the C4 arsenal, concerns about this NSF-certified drink tasting like saccharine gloop are valid, but Midnight Cherry was a pleasant surprise. A tart cherry flavor—think Dr. Brown turned #11—comes up front, leaving only a faint hint of diet aftertaste. Marketing be damned, you could add this to the rotation at Taco Bell and no one would know (or care) about the alleged powers once you get it.
Classic citrus flavor with minimal aftertaste and plenty of carbonation. The first sip recalls the all-night drives, the marathon Excel sessions for the computer science class I attended before leaving business school, and the countless "bomb" photos I consumed during this time. The gold standard for energy drinks is minimum social negative charge, maximum promotion.
Notes: The sugar high is sharp and abrasive, and the caffeine kicks in after the sugar wears off for sustained energy well into the afternoon.
The realm of low- or no-calorie energy drinks offers two options for sweeteners: a list of chemicals with confusing names, or seemingly natural options like stevia and monk fruit. The first camp has the lion's share of the market, but the second is superior and willing to pay a premium for an energy drink with as few ingredients as possible. Naked's entry in this field is our pick for the best Vevo options, more suited to yoga than gaming or deadlifting, and few other options in this field don't even come close in terms of taste and firepower. Naked has only six ingredients, the main ones being fermented sugar and monk fruit. While we loved Jocko Go when it first blazed the trail for monk fruit-based energy drinks, Naked's mild flavor trumps the tangy, astringent sweetness of the world's favorite ex-Navy health drink/human-sized clenched fist.
Notes: Tastes like homemade lemonade enhanced with just a bit of carbonation, with a barely noticeable "diet" finish that's much easier to get used to than Jocko Go. It packs more than twice the caffeine, making it effortless when you A/B the two. The can is plain and also lacks Agro branding, which we'll admit doesn't affect performance at all, but is still worth considering if you're worried about being seen sipping an energy drink at the office or gym.
I never thought I'd miss the taste of old sugar free energy drinks until I started this lifestyle. Monkfruit and Stevia certainly have their fans in the health and wellness space. But there's something about the futile pleasure of a citrusy fizzy sucralose bomb of a sugar-free Red Bull that feels different in this day and age. Gen Z's endearing rebranding of Diet Coke as "refrigerator smoke" leads me to believe that kids like a little risk, and I'm not convinced that a little hit of the S word every now and then will kill me faster than microplastics or the noise emanating from data centers across the state of Ohio.
Enter Bloom, which has all the aesthetics of a very popular health girl product online without any of the questionable flavors or supplements. Bloom's 180g of caffeine from green tea works for early afternoon naps, and the cute little crushable can is one of the least important items to be sipping at 8am on Zoom or on your commute to the office. While I tried it for a week, I still longed for my morning cup of coffee, but the combination of caffeine and B vitamins tricked my brain into accepting a healthy buzz that came in handy when a mountain of repeat customer relations work arrived in my inbox first thing Monday morning. It's a fun and friendly fizzy bomb that checks almost all the boxes you might want when looking for a low-calorie option that's easily found at almost any major chain store in the US.
Notes: The juicy orange flavor is dangerously close to the overpowering citrus sweetness of a Mountain Dew Kickstart—my personal favorite. For hangovers and morning indulgence—all with none of the high-fructose corn syrup and just one-sixth the calories in a 12-ounce serving. The last few sips left a dry, almost prickly sensation in the back of my throat, but Bloom's flavor profile is otherwise impeccable. Sucralose increases sweetness with moderate doses of ginseng, lychee, green tea, and apple cider vinegar. I did a double take when I saw the vinegar in the ingredient list because the sip doesn't have a bitter hour.
The manosphere is full of snake oil merchants and Joko Willink is no exception. As well as a masterclass in leadership, the ex-navy also uses Jocko Go, an energy drink sweetened with monk fruit that makes claims to 'balance energy', 'increase focus' and 'support memory'.
After a few sips of this fizzy concoction, I was overcome with the urge to start a podcast about crypto and male decline. Instead, I spiked the rest of the can with a shot of Smirnoff and threw it to the moon. I missed the memo when the "Bomb" drinks were released and the Borg were on their way, but I have a strong feeling that Mr. Willink's vitamin-rich riff on Turbo Fuel will be spinning in gallon jugs at state colleges across the land. It's hard to tell where the caffeine ends and the 100 mg of B vitamins (more than 4,000% of the daily recommendation!) begins, but either way this little black can cause problems.
Notes: It tastes like a mix of Sunny D and Stevia, which is an acquired taste for some.
Because of its brand name, lack of carbonation, and general vibes, Guayaki Yerba Mate is a caffeinated beverage that is somehow exempt from being considered an energy drink by polite society. Statistics on the GVC-inspired fizz can say it contains no corn syrup or exotic extracts – chemical or otherwise – and the lack of bubbles makes it dangerously palatable compared to other drinks.
It's the caffeine vehicle of choice for liberal arts grads who spend their weekends wandering farmer's markets with a hangover and a New York deli filled with vegan junk food. You might not be able to take a Mormon with one of these, but your "smart Californian" friend will happily settle for a Guayaki while you take her up on her offer to attend DD night.
Notes: The lack of bubbles is weird, but hearing one during a brief lull in Zoom meeting hell gave me the motivation to draft (then delete) a witty email to a "mutual partner" about how they should stop making Slack channels for everything. I finished the second half after work and was able to get some chores done quickly while still being able to crash by 10pm - a feat I never thought I'd enjoy until I was 40.
While Gorilla Mind isn't #1 on this list in terms of taste, value, or energy boost, it's now the new hero in the can with the most icons and extras. Esoteric compounds like N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine and Alpha-GPC boost focus and boost memory like a mad scientist who's dedicated his life to optimizing the brains of gamers and programmers across the land. It goes through the Amazon purchases and creates a query that groups them all by keyword.
Notes: The flavor is strongly orange with a creamy finish similar to the first Orange Julius milks. Or at least that's what I remember an Orange Julius was like before the location in my local mall closed and reopened as a weak Dairy Queen sub. It tastes like a little more than half the can, but the idea of making homemade Sparks (RIP) with this base is something I might look into before the upcoming Justice tour.
It's the soft, user-friendly "mother bear" of energy drinks. It tastes a little like fruit juice, a little like dew, and a little like game. The caffeine content is lower compared to similar brands that make the esports/incel aesthetic much harder, but the combination of smooth, juicy mouthfeel and familiar citrus flavor is amazing. That and a sandwich from the Gas Station Warming Bucket makes for a star-studded breakfast for an adventurer or a camper on safari in the American hinterland. This is a great mimosa base if you're on sale for toybranch bars.
Tips: The caffeine in Kickstart is more like a traditional can of Dew than a proper energy drink, but you trade the sugar for vitamins and a milder citrus flavor that even the most die-hard anti-dew crusaders can use if you add this to your cocktail.
The slogan of the last batch of lacquered cans is "zero sugar - zero taste". Nearly 40 cans into this experiment, I assumed that aftertaste vs. calories was the main paradox of the energy drink market, but I could be wrong. The jolt of energy from the 200 mg of caffeine in the can is a smooth flow of good vibes and increased focus that I found myself returning to nicely after finishing the taste test at Lucky. This energy drink is for people who think they hate energy drinks.
Notes: There's nothing incredibly memorable about Lucky's mild orange flavor, and that seems to be the whole point. Every third or fourth sip melts into a mysterious hue that reminds me of brushing my teeth the morning after crushing street meat at some odd hour after a bar crawl. It's completely random and I don't mind at all.
While I love the spicy orange taste of Celsius, the sweet smell it's known for isn't for everyone. The classic orange flavor offered by PHX hits the same notes at 60% ABV, making it more suitable for those who hate sweet drinks, but you still need something to cover the electrolytes and vitamins packed into this 12-ounce can.
Notes: I crushed one of these after a brewery-sponsored club event got a little too crowded for a Wednesday and was back to about 90% in less than an hour (I'm 41 and haven't felt "100" in decades). Cracking open the IV fluid packs on energy drinks seems a little tricky, so your best bet is to crack open a can of PHX and enjoy your hangover cure without the need for magic powders and supplemental elixirs.
Mild mango flavor in the front, pleasant sour lemonade. Mango can taste like a pine cone if done wrong, so this is noteworthy. No chemical taste. The perfect balance of magical caffeine and flavor. The flavor got a little boring three quarters of the way through the can, but I still finished it.
Notes: A nice little nudge that helped me focus on a boring spreadsheet for an hour straight. I hit a wall in an unnecessary meeting around 1pm, but I can't put all the blame on the drink.
The taste of this product is goop with a taste similar to a diet peach diluted with soda. The "diet taste" is very noticeable in the front, but it looks clean and nice. Just enough sweetness to trick your brain into thinking it's eating. If you don't hate diet drinks, you'll enjoy it. Bonus points for the vibey can, which would look great in a Kinfolk shoot or a flyer for a yoga studio.
Notes: No physical shake to speak of However, I found the urge to organize my Google Drive about 20 minutes after cracking. No crashes afterwards, just a mild productivity bump with no buzz.
Melting Forest first came on the scene with a mushroom coffee blend that had a mild, bitter taste that most old hippies who fear the modern coffee trend would love. The brand is back on the scene with a whole range of sparkling energy drinks, and they're every bit as exotic as Melting Forest's amazing brown mist. As for the energy boost, I didn't feel special when I was in desperate need of pants after a morning of back-and-forth calls. This is more of a 5 o'clock sip for me when I need something bubbly to replace a can of lager or pilsner. The taste is smooth and harmless, if a little weird, and the caffeine rush is a slow drip that won't overwhelm someone who drinks caffeinated beverages throughout the day. There's a time and a place for such a drink, so I add Melting Forest to the ever-expanding utility belt of elixirs, potions, and snake oils of decent drinkability and dubious efficacy.
Notes: The black cherry flavor was the most appealing of the handful of flavors available in the brand's packaging, which also includes orange cream, guava mango and strawberry lemonade. Less so if your main priority when pursuing sugar-free energy drinks is to avoid the unusual. The valley of flavors and chemical notes, and in the case of black cherry, the muted medicinal taste was familiar, if not a little off-putting. Cough syrup isn't a flavor I reach for when my brain is in a post-lunch slump, but I admire its honesty!
Very close to Red Bull, but without the sugar. Excellent carbonation, much better than red bull without sugar. A very strong sweet taste, like a jolly rancher stuck in your teeth. It had very little flavor, but it wasn't a deal breaker.
Notes: A very slight energy boost that didn't happen until about 90 minutes later, at which point I was tapping my foot and rapidly clicking the pen when calling Zoom. A few hours later I had an accident and by 2:00 PM I found myself a zombie.