For most of 2024 and into early 2025, anyone buying creatine monohydrate in bulk was effectively being handed a discount. Prices out of China, where the vast majority of global production is concentrated, fell steadily as manufacturing capacity expanded faster than demand could absorb it. By Q2 2025, spot market FOB prices had bottomed out around $2.50 per kilogram. Factories were offloading inventory, margins were gone, and some producers were operating at a loss.
By August 2025, prices had started moving back toward the $2.60–$3.20 range, and buyers who had grown accustomed to easy spot purchasing were finding production slots harder to secure. The reversal came from the supply side - factory consolidation, a 30% reduction in the available capacity of sodium sarcosinate, creatine's key upstream raw material, and new labour cost obligations on Chinese producers that added a permanent line item to the cost structure.
What makes a sustained price recovery more plausible is what's happening on the demand side. The global creatine supplement market is tracking toward $1.85 billion in 2026, up from $1.66 billion in 2025, with projections of around 11–12% compound annual growth through 2030. US consumption alone sits at an estimated four million kilograms per year.
That growth isn't coming only from the gym. Research into creatine's role in cognitive function, healthy aging, and sarcopenia prevention has expanded the addressable market well beyond athletes and bodybuilders. The European Food Safety Authority has formally recognised creatine's contribution to normal energy metabolism and muscle function, giving brands in regulated markets a basis for on-label health claims. Companies like Thorne and Momentous have already launched products specifically positioned around neurological performance and age-related muscle maintenance. Southeast Asia, India, and Latin America are adding volume from a low base.
The old creatine buyer was a gym member. The emerging one is harder to define and there are more of them.