Best Protein Soda Flavors by Brand: Buy the Right Can First

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.)

Read this first. Every verdict below was recorded when this brand was Don't Quit! at 15 grams a can. It rebranded to SkyPop in early 2026 and reformulated to 10 grams at the same time. The flavor names carried over, the recipe did not, and no published test of the new can exists that we could find. We are keeping the old results because they are the only data there is, and labelling them because they are not data about what you would be buying.

Start with: Root Beer. Tasting Table's #1 protein soda outright: passes for regular sugar-free root beer, no fake-sweetener tail. Note that Amazon lists Root Beer but is not currently shipping it; Orange is the flavor actually in stock there.

Also good: Orange (#4, "dead ringer" for classic orange soda) and Grape (#5 there, 6.5/10 at Sporked, carbonated Welch's). Both survived the rebrand and are still in the lineup.

Avoid first: Fruit Punch. #10 of 11, vague energy-drink flavor rather than punch.

No data at all: Ice Pop, Strawberry Cotton Candy and Peaches & Cream, the three flavors added at the rebrand. Nobody has tested them and neither have we.

Start with: Wild Strawberry, 7.5/10 at Sporked ("strawberry milk but fizzy"). Note that all four flavors carry 200mg of caffeine, per Barebells' own product pages and the front of every can. There is no caffeine-free option in this line. If you want caffeine-free, that is Waay or SkyPop, not Barebells.

No published data we found: Classic Cola, Sweet Cherry.

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).

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.