Creatine on its own improved sprint, jump, repeated-sprint and upper-body endurance results against placebo, while β-alanine gave non-significant or task-dependent effects and adding β-alanine to creatine gave no extra benefit, in a network meta-analysis of 52 randomised trials in healthy adult athletes (supplements taken 2 weeks or more; trials PEDro 6 or higher); agility and lower-body muscular endurance did not change, and the abstract reports no aerobic or endurance-event outcome

Bai and Xu asked whether taking creatine and β-alanine together does more than either alone, since the two act by different routes: creatine speeds phosphocreatine resynthesis and β-alanine raises muscle carnosine, which buffers acid.

They searched three databases to August 2025 for randomised trials of at least 2 weeks of creatine, β-alanine or both in healthy adult athletes and kept 52 trials scoring 6 or more on the PEDro scale.

In a random-effects network, creatine beat placebo for sprint (SMD −0.64; p = 0.04), jump (0.33; p = 0.002), repeated-sprint ability (−0.78; p = 0.01) and upper-body muscular endurance (0.43; p = 0.01), with P-scores of 0.90 or higher in these outcomes. β-Alanine produced non-significant or context-specific effects, the combination showed no synergy, and no supplement changed agility or lower-body muscular endurance.

Heterogeneity ran from 0 to 73% (I²), with no global inconsistency in the network and no substantive publication bias by the authors' account. The authors conclude that creatine alone gives the most consistent gains in high-intensity work and that adding β-alanine adds nothing.