Creatine Loading &
Maintenance Calculator
Enter your body weight and pick a protocol. Get your loading dose split into servings, your daily maintenance dose, and how long it takes to saturate muscle stores — with or without a loading phase.
Your inputs
Loading dose
Split into 4 × 6.1 g servings for 5–7 days, then drop to maintenance.
Loading (~0.3 g/kg/day split into 4 servings for 5–7 days) saturates muscle stores in about a week. Skipping the load and taking only the maintenance dose reaches the same saturation in roughly 3–4 weeks — the end state is identical, loading just gets you there faster.
Creatine monohydrate is the best-studied and most cost-effective form — there is no need for fancier variants. Consistency beats timing: taking it at the same convenient time every day matters far more than whether it is pre- or post-workout. Drink adequate water, especially during a loading phase.
How this works
Methodology reviewed July 2026Creatine monohydrate works by saturating the muscle's phosphocreatine stores. The tool gives a weight-based loading dose that saturates them in about a week, and a maintenance dose that holds them there — plus the trade-off if you skip the load and let a standard daily dose saturate you more slowly instead.
Loading: ≈ 0.3 g/kg/day, split into 4 doses, for 5–7 days
Maintenance: ≈ 0.03 g/kg/day (commonly 3–5 g/day)
Skip-load option: 3–5 g/day saturates in ~3–4 weeks
Body weight · Loading vs no-load preference
Loading dose and duration · Daily maintenance dose · Time-to-saturation
- Doses assume creatine monohydrate, the best-studied form.
- Response varies — people with lower baseline muscle creatine (e.g. some vegetarians) tend to gain more.
- Loading vs not only changes how fast you saturate, not the end point.
- Early scale-weight gain is largely water drawn into muscle, not fat.
- Creatine is among the most-studied supplements and is broadly safe in healthy adults; check with a clinician if you have kidney disease.
- Stay well hydrated, especially during loading.
This calculator is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Results are estimates based on published formulas and population averages — your individual values may differ. Nothing here is calculated on a server: everything runs in your browser and no data is stored or sent anywhere. Always consult a qualified clinician before making health, medication, or training decisions.