Best Protein Soda Flavors by Brand: Buy the Right Can First
Protein soda is a flavor lottery: the same brand can produce a category winner and a category loser from one formula base. Since most brands sell 12-packs of a single flavor, picking wrong costs you eleven bad cans. We compiled every flavor verdict from the two most thorough published tests, Tasting Table's 11-soda ranking (September 2025) and Sporked's 18-soda test (May 2026). These are their assessments, attributed, not ours; we note where we have no data.
Bucked Up (25g): Widest Spread, Choose Carefully
Start with: Orange Cream. Tasting Table's #2 of 11 overall, described as a real orange creamsicle with a creamy finish that shouldn't be possible in a clear liquid.
Decent: Banana Pineapple. Bottom half at Tasting Table but grew on the tester: natural-tasting pineapple, Laffy-Taffy banana.
Avoid first: Peach Mango. Dead last of 11, overwhelming lingering sweetness.
No published data we found: Cherry Limeade, Green Apple, Rainbow Candy, Frosted Lemonade, Berry Punch. (Tasting Table's "Clear Protein Soda" entries, Frosted Lemonade at #8 and Cherry Lime at #3, appear to be this same 25g clear-whey line; the branding on those cans differs from the Bucked Up label, so we list them cautiously rather than claim them.)
Check Bucked Up priceDon't Quit! (15g): Strong Classics, One Dud
Start with: Root Beer. Tasting Table's #1 protein soda outright: passes for regular sugar-free root beer, no fake-sweetener tail.
Also good: Orange (#4, "dead ringer" for classic orange soda) and Grape (#5 there, 6.5/10 at Sporked, carbonated Welch's).
Avoid first: Fruit Punch. #10 of 11, vague energy-drink flavor rather than punch.
Check Don't Quit! priceBarebells (10g): High Floor, Check the Caffeine
Start with: Wild Strawberry, 7.5/10 at Sporked ("strawberry milk but fizzy"), but note it carries 200mg caffeine per that review. For caffeine-free, Pineapple Sunrise at 7/10 is the pick.
No published data we found: Classic Cola, Sweet Cherry.
Check Barebells priceWaay (10g): The Citrus Ladder
Start with: Grapefruit. Sporked's best protein soda of all 18 tested, 8/10, bitterness doing the heavy lifting against the stevia.
Then: Lemon Raspberry (6.5/10, bright and tangy) and Orange (6/10, tolerable stevia showing).
Check Waay priceCostco 30g Cans
Genius Gourmet Blue Raspberry Lemonade: #7 of 11 at Tasting Table, candy-like, closer to an energy drink than a soda, but enjoyable post-workout. Protein Pop Plus: no published editorial taste test we could find yet; see our review for the collagen fine print.
The Pattern Worth Noticing
Across both tests, the flavors that win are either faithful recreations of classic sodas (root beer, orange, cola territory) or deliberately bitter citrus. The flavors that lose are sweet-on-sweet fruit combos where nothing masks the artificial sweetener. When you face a flavor with no published data, bet with that pattern.
Cheapest way to be sure: buy single cans at Walmart, Target, or GNC before committing to any 12-pack. Eleven leftover cans of a flavor you hate is the most expensive mistake in this category.