Gorilla Mode vs ABE vs Gold Standard: which is dosed best?
We scanned all three supplement facts panels and compared them dose by dose. They score within 14 points of each other and the reasons are completely different, and the ingredient that separates them is not the one anybody argues about.
Short answer: Gorilla Mode, 78. ABE 68, Gold Standard 64. The thing that separates them is citrulline, not caffeine, which barely varies across all three.
Three of the most bought pre-workouts, three labels, one comparison. Every number below was read off the supplement facts panel, at the serving the label states.
| Gorilla Mode | ABE Ultimate | ON Gold Standard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 78 | 68 | 64 |
| Dosing | 82 | 75 | 60 |
| Evidence | 85 | 80 | 75 |
| Serving | 1 scoop | 1 scoop (12.5g) | 11g |
| Citrulline | 5000mg pure | 4g as malate (2:1) | 750mg |
| Creatine | 2500mg | 3000mg | 3400mg |
| Beta-alanine | none | 2000mg | 1500mg |
| Caffeine | 200mg | 200mg | 175mg |
The thing people compare on barely differs
Caffeine. 200, 200 and 175mg.
That's the number on the front of every tub and the one every comparison video leads with, and across three products from three very different price points it varies by about a quarter of a cup of coffee.
So if you're choosing between these on stimulant content, you're choosing on the one axis where they're effectively the same product.
Citrulline is what separates them
This is the widest spread on the table and it's where the scores come from.
Gorilla Mode: 5000mg, and it's pure L-citrulline. That matters, because citrulline malate is roughly two parts citrulline to one part malic acid. ABE's 4g of citrulline malate (2:1) is therefore around 2.7g of actual citrulline, which is a real dose and not the 4g the label implies.
Gold Standard: 750mg. The research range for exercise performance runs roughly 3000mg to 6000mg. 750mg is a fifth of the bottom of that, and the app flagged it as underdosed on its own alert, which is most of why its dosing score sits at 60.
Three products, and the effective citrulline runs 5000, 2700 and 750. That's a sevenfold spread on the ingredient the whole category is built around, and it's invisible unless you do the malate arithmetic yourself.
Beta-alanine is underdosed in both that carry it
ABE has 2g. Gold Standard has 1.5g. Published research uses 3.2g to 6.4g daily to raise muscle carnosine, and the effect depends on saturating over weeks rather than on any single serving.
Gorilla Mode has none at all, which is worth reading as a choice rather than an omission. An ingredient that only works when you take enough of it every day for a month is a strange fit for a pre-workout, and leaving it out is more honest than a dusting of it.
That's the same pattern as beta-alanine spread thin across a pre-workout and an amino blend: the tingle arrives at any dose, and the tingle isn't the effect.
Where Gold Standard loses its points
Two ingredients came back with no credible human evidence at their dose:
INGREDIENTS
Lacks robust human evidence for acute performance enhancement at this dose.
Watermelon extract, for which published human trials on athletic performance are limited.
Below the 500mg to 2000mg range studied for cognitive support under acute stress.
Its creatine is genuinely the best of the three at 3.4g, and its caffeine is sensible. The score isn't saying the product is bad. It's saying that a meaningful share of the powder is doing nothing measurable.
The serving size trap, which only Gorilla Mode has
Every figure above is per the label serving, and Gorilla Mode's label serving is one scoop while the product is marketed on two.
At two scoops its citrulline is 10g, its creatine hits the standard 5g, and its caffeine becomes 400mg, which is a full day's recommended maximum in one drink. So its lead widens and its stimulant load stops being casual at the same moment.
The full breakdown of that one is here.
ABE and Gold Standard have no equivalent catch. What the panel says is what one serving contains.
So which one
On dosing alone, Gorilla Mode, and not narrowly. Pure citrulline at 5g, real tyrosine, real betaine, real alpha-GPC, and no ingredients that are only there to lengthen the label.
ABE is the closest thing to a middle. Its citrulline is genuinely dosed once you account for the malate, its creatine is fine, and its beta-alanine and taurine are the parts falling short.
Gold Standard has the best creatine of the three and the weakest everything else, and it's carrying two ingredients with no evidence behind them.
None of this is a recommendation, and price isn't in any of it. What it does say is that the difference between these three isn't the caffeine, and it isn't findable by reading any one of the three labels on its own.
Verdict does this part automatically. Photograph the supplement facts panel and it reads every dose off the label, compares each one against the amount used in published research, converts compound weights like citrulline malate to what you actually get, and adds the totals across everything you take. It reports the arithmetic and names the source of every figure. It doesn't tell you what to take.
