Vegan, active and wondering about creatine? A small study has some answers.

Most of us didn’t go vegan to improve our jump height. We did it for the animals, the planet, our health, or some mix of the three. But if you train, you’ll know the moment. Someone at the gym asks if you supplement with creatine, and before you answer, they add, “You probably need it more than I do.”

They have a point. Your body makes some creatine itself, but a good portion usually arrives on the plate, and it comes from meat and fish. A vegan diet gives you almost none. Creatine helps your muscles refuel fast during short, hard efforts like a jump, a sprint or a heavy lift. Less coming in, in theory, means a smaller store to draw on. Research on vegetarians has pointed that way for years.

What’s been much harder to find is a well-run trial on actual vegans, tracking what happens to performance. A team at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid has just published one.

What they did

Twenty physically active vegans, aged 18 to 45, took part. They were split into two equal groups, each with five women and five men. One group took creatine monohydrate every day for four weeks, at 0.1 grams per kilo of bodyweight. For someone who weighs 60 kilos, that’s six grams. The other group took a placebo. Everyone kept eating a vegan diet with their normal calorie intake. The trial was triple-blind, which means the set-up was built to stop anyone’s expectations nudging the results.

Before and after, the team measured body composition, a handful of performance tests and some kidney markers in the blood.

What happened

The creatine group ended up with about 0.3 kilos more skeletal muscle than the placebo group, and about 1.4 kilos more water in the body. Their body fat dropped by about 1.4 kilos compared with the controls. Their blood levels of creatine and creatinine went up, which is what you’d expect when you’re taking creatine.

On the performance side, the improvements showed up in jumping. The creatine group did better in the countermovement jump, the one where you dip and spring up. In a repeated-jump test they also jumped higher and spent longer in the air.

Then there’s what didn’t change. Sprint times were the same, and so were the strength tests, which covered handgrip and an isometric mid-thigh pull.

Reading it properly

I’ll be straight about this, because it matters. The authors’ conclusion says creatine improved muscle strength and lower-body power. The results they report show a clear lift in explosive leg power and nothing in the strength tests. So the honest version is that jumping got better, and strength didn’t move in four weeks.

Then there’s the size. Ten people per group is a small study, and four weeks is a short one. The water gain deserves a mention too, because creatine pulls water into muscle cells. If you start taking it and the scale creeps up, that’s likely part of the story and not a sign something is wrong. A fat loss of 1.4 kilos in a month from a supplement on its own is a big claim, and I’d want to see it repeated before anyone builds a plan around it.

The authors are also upfront that longer studies are needed to confirm both effectiveness and safety. Creatinine rises with creatine, as the blood results here show, so if you have any kidney concerns, speak to your GP before starting. Finally, a couple of the authors declare links to food and supplement companies. That doesn’t make the work wrong. It’s just good practice to look at that line in any paper.

So what does it mean?

For anyone eating a vegan diet who trains, it adds weight to something many people already suspected. You’re not being dramatic in wondering about creatine. It’s a reasonable question, and the evidence is starting to catch up with it. Explosive, power-based training, such as jumps, plyometrics and Olympic lifts, is where this study saw the clearest gain.

It also shows something about how little research there is. Vegan athletes have been told for years what they probably need, often by people extrapolating from studies on meat-eaters. A trial with only vegans in it, even a small one, is how we get proper answers.

For brands that sell to vegan customers, the lesson is in how the paper was written. The authors reported what moved and what didn’t, and they asked for more research. That’s the tone to copy. Vegan customers are used to being underestimated, and they’re also used to being oversold to. Claiming that this study proves creatine builds strength in vegans would be wrong, and your audience will notice. Saying that early evidence suggests a boost to jumping power, and that more is on the way, is accurate and a lot more credible.

The takeaway

Four weeks of creatine, in a small group of active vegans, was linked to better jumping performance and a little more muscle, with no change in sprinting or strength tests. It’s promising, it’s early, and it’s the kind of study we need more of.

Read the study: López-Moreno M, et al. Does creatine supplementation improve strength and power in physically active individuals on a vegan diet? a randomized, triple-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Eur J Appl Physiol, 2026.

This post is educational and does not constitute medical advice.

We all rise together,

Rachael Jennings | Co-Founder + CBO, Jenerise

Worth knowing: Jenerise makes Jenerise Cr.01™, a third-party verified, precision-grade B2B creatine ingredient. This content is educational and entertaining but also drives awareness of our product.

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