Also known as: trisodium citrate, E331, sodium citrate dihydrate
Sodium Citrate
·By Croix
What is sodium citrate?
Sodium citrate (specifically trisodium citrate, food additive E331) is the sodium salt of citric acid. By mass it's about 27% sodium, so 1 g of sodium citrate provides ~270 mg of sodium — meaningfully less than the same gram of table salt.
It tastes mildly salty rather than sharply briny, and contributes a subtle alkaline buffering effect in solution. That's why almost every commercial sports drink that bothers to be palatable at high sodium doses uses sodium citrate (often in combination with table salt) rather than sodium chloride alone.
How does it work in a sports drink?
From an absorption standpoint, sodium is sodium — once dissociated, the citrate counter-ion doesn't change how the SGLT1 transporter handles glucose absorption. The differences live above the gut: taste, acid-base impact, and per-particle osmolality.
Sodium citrate dissociates into 4 particles in solution (3 Na⁺ + 1 citrate³⁻), so it contributes more osmotic pressure per gram than salt. At the typical doses in a sports drink, this contributes a small but non-zero amount to the total osmolality budget.
How do I use it at home?
Use sodium citrate when your taste-tolerance ceiling for plain salt is the limiting factor on how much sodium you can fit in your bottle. A 50/50 blend of sodium citrate and salt (matched on sodium content, not mass) is what most palatable commercial mixes do.
To match 600 mg of sodium per bottle: ~1.5 g of salt, OR ~2.2 g of sodium citrate, OR roughly 0.75 g salt + 1.1 g sodium citrate.
Sodium citrate also has a small alkalising effect — relevant in pre-race buffering protocols at gram-doses well above what fits in a sports drink. For ordinary fueling, treat it as a flavor upgrade.
Dose & usage at a glance
- Sodium content
- ≈270 mg sodium per 1 g sodium citrate
- Sodium parity vs salt
- 1.5 g sodium citrate ≈ 1 g salt (by sodium content)
- Typical pairing
- 50/50 blend with table salt for taste
Where to buy it in bulk
We primarily recommend Nutricost-brand products (made in GMP-compliant, FDA-registered facilities, third-party tested), with NOW Foods or BulkSupplements as fallbacks for ingredients Nutricost doesn't stock. The list below shows every channel that carries the product — Nutricost direct, iHerb, and Amazon — sorted by unit price. Pack sizes vary across retailers, so the lowest $/g usually means the largest pack — pick whichever store and size fits your usage. Links are affiliate — the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. For ingredients none of the three brands carries (HBCD, table salt, sucrose) we describe the typical specialty- or grocery-store option and skip the affiliate link.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
- iHerb (Nutricost) — Nutricost Sodium Citrate, 32 oz (907 g) — via iHerb907g pack · $2.53 per 100 g$22.95Buy
- Amazon (Nutricost) — Nutricost Sodium Citrate Powder (1 lb) — via Amazon454g pack · $2.86 per 100 g$12.99Buy
- Nutricost — Nutricost Sodium Citrate Powder (1 lb)454g pack · $3.30 per 100 g$14.97Buy
DIY teardowns that use sodium citrate
- DIY Maurten 320: the same 1:0.8 formula for a fraction of the price
- DIY SiS Beta Fuel: the most copyable branded fuel on the shelf
2 teardowns— all walk through how sodium citratefits into the specific commercial product's formulation.