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In partnership with Live it Up. Editor’s Note: All opinions are our own. We only select and work with partners that meet our quality standards, so you can rest assured we only endorse products we believe in.
Sometimes it feels impossible to be both health-conscious and budget-conscious. With new vitamins and supplements added to the market every week, the pressure to add new products to my daily wellness routine can quickly snowball, overstuffing my medicine cabinet and majorly inflating my wellness budget. It can feel impossible to suss out which ones offer real health benefits vs. those that merely have effective marketing campaigns. After all, how many of these pills and powders do I actually end up using daily? How many of them do I actually need to maintain a healthy lifestyle?
One of the simplest and most cost-effective ways of getting your recommended daily dose of nutrients that I’ve found is a daily greens powder. Taken with water or added to beverages like smoothies, these greens alternatives are a convenient, nutrient-dense way to make sure you’re staying on top of your health, no matter what the rest of the day throws at you. AG1 and Live it Up Super Greens are two of the best greens powders on the market, both promising a convenient nutritional boost in a single scoop: no more million-step supplement routine.
But which of these greens alternatives are truly both high quality and high value? Is it really necessary to be spending as much as $79 a month on greens powders? Are all the ingredients in some popular greens alternatives actually beneficial for the average person, or are they overkill? To help take the guesswork out of choosing a greens alternative, I’ve taken a deep dive into AG1 and Live it Up Super Greens to determine which product delivers the most benefits while providing the best value per serving. Let’s get into it!
TL;DR
Live it Up Super Greens surprised us with its clean, organic formula and smooth taste – it’s our top pick for anyone who wants a simple, high-quality daily greens routine.
AG1 is known for its athlete-grade formula and celebrity following, but for most people, its 80+ ingredients and higher price tag feel unnecessary.
The Players
AG1 - If you spend any time on the internet, you’ve heard of AG1. Formerly known as Athletic Greens, their ads run on everything from podcasts to Instagram, where the brand itself has over 655,000 followers. With such an aggressive marketing scheme, not to mention their robust roster of celebrity endorsements, AG1 has become the face of greens powders. The “Daily Health Drink” contains over 83 ingredients that include multivitamins, pre- and pro-biotics, superfoods, and antioxidants.
Live it Up Super Greens - Live it Up Super Greens has been consistently recommended to me by some of my most health-conscious friends. Live it Up Super Greens is designed to be an everyday greens powder, combining a blend of superfoods, dairy-free probiotics, and digestive enzymes. They take a more balanced approach to their ingredients list than AG1, prioritizing effective doses of 20+ natural superfoods rather than including more ingredients at sub-optimal doses. Their greens alternative is all-natural, vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, low carb, and made from organic vegetables and all natural superfoods.
Ingredients & Potential Health Benefits
Winner: Live it Up Super Greens
AG1 - Originally formulated for athletes, AG1 consists of more than 83 ingredients, including artichoke leaf, reishi mushrooms, alfalfa, chlorella, and dozens more. The greens powder is not fully caffeine-free as it includes matcha leaf powder. It also features stevia as a sweetener, which some may want to avoid. While this many ingredients may be beneficial for high-level athletes with specific nutrient demands, dieticians have said they’re unnecessary for average consumers. As a rule, I’d always rather fewer ingredients at an effective dose than more ingredients in potentially ineffective amounts. Like an overly complicated skincare routine that does more harm than good, I’m wary of any daily wellness routine that involves synthetically-derived, overly-complicated formulas.
Live it Up Super Greens - Live it Up Super Greens prioritizes the nutrients the average person actually needs, (rather than padding its formula with unnecessary ingredients that the body may not even absorb). Their nutrients are all naturally derived from 20+ concentrated superfoods and organic vegetables like spirulina, wheatgrass, barley grass, kale, broccoli, and spinach. Even the ingredients added for flavor are sourced from whole foods: the greens powder is sweetened with naturally sweet monk fruit and peppermint leaf. Live it Up Super Greens is free from sugar, caffeine, nuts, GMOs, fillers, and artificial additives. With a naturally-derived formula made from whole foods, ingredient sourcing is absolutely key: the greens powder is made in the USA and carefully sources the best ingredients from the most reliable farm partners and global suppliers, using third-party testing to ensure their quality and purity.
Taste
Winner: Live it Up Super Greens
AG1 - Taste is an often overlooked factor when it comes to wellness products: consistent use is the most important factor in getting the full benefits of a greens powder, and if you don’t like the taste, you’ll be less likely to use it every day. After all, there’s no point in investing in an expensive greens powder if you don’t enjoy using it! I found the taste of all four flavors of AG1 to be dominated by stevia, which can be even sweeter than sugar. And I found it difficult to blend the powder smoothly to get rid of its gritty texture.
Live it Up Super Greens - Live it Up Super Greens comes in two flavors, Original and Wild Berries. Both were subtle and delicious both on their own and when blended into smoothies. The Original flavor is slightly minty from the peppermint leaf, which I especially liked in a morning drink. You can really taste that the greens powder is made from whole foods – there’s no synthetic taste that you get sometimes with vitamins or other supplements. The texture is consistently smooth and blendable – no powdery clumps like we got with AG1. I’d say that in terms of taste and texture, Live it Up Super Greens was a clear winner.
Price
Winner: Live it Up Super Greens
AG1 - A common complaint about AG1 is its high price point. At $99 a month (or $79/month for a subscription), AG1 comes in at a whopping $3.33 per serving (or $2.64 with a subscription). If you’re an Olympic athlete training for an event, that cost would obviously seem worth it. But if you’re an average consumer adding AG1 to your other daily food and wellness costs, $99 feels prohibitively steep. When I’ve tried AG1, I sometimes found myself skipping doses in order to make each bag last longer and save some money. Of course, this meant I wasn’t getting the full benefits of consistent use.
Live it Up Super Greens - On the other hand, Live it Up Super Greens is only $39.99 per month with a subscription, or only $1.33 per serving. Considering Live it Up’s commitment to sourcing premium, whole food ingredients, I think that’s a very reasonable price point for the product’s nutritional benefits. This is a category where Live it Up Super Greens is a clear winner. Rather than pack its formula with unnecessary ingredients to sell their product at a higher price, they’ve prioritized effective doses of fewer, naturally-derived ingredients so that people can afford to use their product every single day. Since switching over to Live it Up Super Greens, I’ve been able to comfortably afford using the greens powder every morning – and even have enough left over to experiment with adding other wellness products to my daily routine. In the end, I found Live it Up’s Super Greens subscription service to be extremely easy to sign up for, with a significantly better value per serving than AG1.
Convenience
Winner: Tie
AG1 - AG1 is very easy to buy through its website or through online retailers like Amazon. For $99 you also get a shaker and scoop. Compared to other greens alternatives routines involving multiple pills and powders, I found the single scoop system of AG1 to be very convenient. The powder is easy to dose using the included scoop.
Live it Up Super Greens - Similarly, Live it Up Super Greens makes getting your daily nutrient boost simple with its all-in-one formula. I found the subscription service simple to sign up for, and I like that you can easily adjust your delivery dates once signed up. You can also add a discounted Premium Storage Canister ($14.99 with subscription) and Premium Mixer ($19.99 with subscription) to your first subscription order, which are both made from high quality materials. In the end, I found AG1 and Live it Up Super Greens to be about equally easy to purchase online.
Overall Winner: Live it Up
Live it Up Super Greens is the ultimate winner in this greens alternative throwdown based on quality, taste, efficacy, and value. I didn’t find AG1’s lengthy ingredient list to be necessary for the average person, and its high price point is prohibitively expensive. I’m also wary of the fact that the AG1 formula includes some synthetically-derived vitamins and minerals — and only about 7 of its 83 ingredients are organic. Live it Up Super Greens, on the other hand, is made from high-quality whole foods, with nearly all of its veggies sourced organically. I ultimately preferred Live it Up Super Greens’s taste and texture. For the average user, Live it Up Super Greens delivers an optimal dose of daily nutrients at a reasonable cost.
