The Best Energy Supplements in the UK, Honestly Ranked

The UK energy supplement aisle is mostly caffeine wearing different hats. That is not automatically a bad thing, caffeine works, but it is worth knowing what you are buying, because caffeine does not create energy. It blocks the receptor that tells you you are tired, and the bill arrives later with interest.

So this is a ranked list of UK energy supplements, written by a brand that makes one of them. Ours is first and we will show our working. Everything else is here because it is genuinely good at something, and we say where it beats us.

Formulations and prices change; every statement about another brand comes from their public product pages at the time of writing. Check the current label. The only numbers we can stand behind permanently are our own, because we publish the batch tests.

How we ranked them

1. Is it stimulant energy or metabolic energy? Both are legitimate. They are not interchangeable.
2. Are the nutrients that actually run energy metabolism in there? Iron, B12 and folate carry authorised claims for energy-yielding metabolism and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. Cordyceps does not, and cannot.
3. Is the Cordyceps legal and vegan? Most UK Cordyceps is on shakier novel-food ground than brands admit.
4. Can you see the batch tests without emailing anyone?

1. Grass & Co. ENERGY, Cordyceps, Holy Basil, Iron & B12

Best overall, and the one we make.

ENERGY is deliberately not a stimulant. Two vegan capsules give iron at 114% RI, folic acid at 250% RI and vitamin B12 at 200% RI, the three nutrients your cells genuinely use to turn food into energy, all carrying authorised claims for energy-yielding metabolism and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. On top of that, 6,400mg dry herb equivalent of 8:1 Cordyceps sinensis extract and holy basil.

The Cordyceps point matters and almost nobody explains it. Most Cordyceps on sale is either caterpillar-derived or in a form that sits awkwardly with UK novel food rules. We use Cordyceps sinensis mycelium, greenhouse-grown on natural substrates, the only vegan, novel-food-compliant Cordyceps available in the UK. The full story is in Cordyceps: the mushroom behind ENERGY.

Pros

• No caffeine, no sugar, no crash, no comedown.
• Authorised nutrient claims from iron, folate and B12, the label means something.
• Vegan, novel-food-compliant Cordyceps sinensis, not caterpillar-grown.
• Certificates of analysis published for every batch.
• Vegan Society registered; sourcing verified by Provenance.

Cons

• Nothing happens in twenty minutes. If you want a hit before the gym, buy caffeine, or our Liquid POWER.
• Contains iron, so do not stack it with another iron supplement without checking, and keep it away from children.
• Two capsules daily, consistently, for several weeks.
• If you are persistently exhausted, a blood test is a better first purchase than any of this.

See ENERGY capsules

2. Grass & Co. Liquid POWER

Best immediate lift, and also ours.

Voted Best Energy Drink 2025 by The Independent. 1,000mg Shiitake and holy basil with vitamins B6, B12 and C, plus natural caffeine for the part of the job caffeine is actually good at. Ginger and lime, low sugar. Our argument against the rest of the category is in the case against the energy drink.

Pros: works within the hour; no sugar spike; a drink you would choose on taste.

Cons: it does contain caffeine, so it is not for a stimulant taper; per-day cost is higher than capsules; not one for late afternoon if you sleep badly.

3. Bulk Complete Pre-Workout or similar

Best for training, and best on price.

If your need is performance in a specific 45-minute window, a properly dosed pre-workout with caffeine, beta-alanine and citrulline will beat everything else on this page at that job, and cost less doing it.

Pros: the right tool for training; transparent dosing; very low cost per serving.

Cons: heavy stimulant load; useless for all-day tiredness; not something to take daily indefinitely.

4. Active Iron / Spatone (iron-led)

Best if the problem is actually iron.

A meaningful share of persistent daytime tiredness in the UK, particularly among women and vegetarians, is low iron. If that is you, an iron supplement is the honest answer and a mushroom is not.

Pros: targets a genuine, common and testable deficiency; authorised claims; inexpensive.

Cons: only useful if you are low, and iron overload is not benign, test before you supplement; gastrointestinal side effects are common; no cognitive or adaptogenic element.

5. Real Mushrooms Cordyceps

Best single-ingredient cordyceps for the spec-readers.

A long-standing extract specialist that publishes beta-glucan figures and full certificates of analysis as a matter of course, and has been arguing against mycelium-on-grain for longer than most of this category has existed.

Pros: genuinely excellent testing transparency; verified extract ratios; no marketing fog.

Cons: single ingredient, so no authorised energy claim on the tub; US-based, so shipping and import handling add cost and time; check the species and growing method against the UK novel food position before you buy.

6. Berocca and the effervescent B-vitamin tablets

Best value if you just need the B vitamins.

Unfashionable and quietly effective for the narrow purpose of covering B vitamins and vitamin C. Cheap, everywhere, and honest about being what it is.

Pros: very low cost; authorised claims; the pharmacy has it.

Cons: no adaptogen or mushroom; sweeteners and flavourings; nothing for the underlying cause of fatigue.

What we would actually tell a friend

If you are tired at 3pm every day and reaching for a fourth coffee, stop buying stimulants and fix the metabolic side, that is what ours is for, and it takes weeks. If you need to lift heavy in an hour, use caffeine and stop pretending it is a wellness decision.

And if the tiredness is constant, heavy and new, get bloods done before you buy anything. Iron, B12, thyroid and vitamin D explain far more UK fatigue than any supplement on this page will fix. More on where a supplement genuinely fits in the fourth coffee problem.