My Best Plant-Based Vegan Mass Gainer Review for 2024

by Greg Simon
Updated on March 22, 2024

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In this review article I share my product evaluations of what I currently think are the top vegan mass gainers available these days.

We’ll be going over their macros and amino acids profiles as well as their protein & carb sources, cost per serving, & more.

Table of Contents

Few true mass gainers for the vegan lifter/athlete

Q: Are there vegan mass gainers?

A: There are not very many vegan weight gain products on the market compared to how many vegan protein powders there are, or compared to how many non-vegan mass gainers there are for that matter either.

I’m a little surprised that more vegan fitness supplement companies haven’t stepped up their game in this regard and come up with a high-calorie**, high-carb weight gain product that is plant-based.

But there a few vegan gainers that are of good quality & that are readily available — whether on Amazon or on their own respective websites — and this is nice considering that ten years ago or so there were none.

** “high-calorie”

There’s no hard & fast rule that says how many calories per serving a supplement powder has to have in order to be considered (or marketed as) a mass gainer.

I’m arbitrarily going with 400 calories per serving as my bar to qualify for this product review article.

My experience with dozens & dozens of “regular” protein & meal replacement powders — vegan or not — tells me most of them are between 100 & 240 calories per serving or so.

And so 400 is up there where “real” meal calories start happening, and a mass gainer’s primary intended use anyways is to provide more meal-sized quality calories to the athlete/weightlifter.

Science resources included

As is my custom here on heydayDo, I will provide links to all of the relevant sports science and medical resources, clinical studies, & nutritional data used in this article.

What’s next

I want to cover a couple of program notes before we kick the individual product reviews into gear, so you’ll know how the article’s going to flow.

The cost analysis stuff for these mass gainers that I’m sharing is based on the prices I’m seeing today as I put this review together, so bear in mind you might see different numbers when you check them out.

Speaking of which — any product names in blue & product images are links to their respective Amazon product pages if you want to read buyer reviews, check current price, etc., and they open in a separate browser tab.

Naked Mass - Chocolate Vegan Weight Gainer -...

Iron Vegan Athlete's Gainer Chocolate, 10 lbs

GNC Earth Genius PurEdge Plant-Based Gainer -...

Last update on 2024-10-10 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Here are the main topics I’ll share details of for each of the four powders in this review:

Calories & macronutrients per serving
Ingredients used for the carbs & protein
Amino acids profile
Other ingredients
Cost per serving
Online buyer ratings
Available flavors

I’ll also provide a few head-to-head comparisons between the gainers using some of these categories to help you sort out which of them suit your particular needs better.

Big range of serving sizes & calories

Keep in mind that there is a pretty wide variation in the manufacturers’ suggested serving sizes amongst these four gainers, and so the amount of calories each provides varies too as you might expect.

And so to make product comparisons of these mass gainers’ macros or cost per serving relevant, I’m taking the liberty of providing alternative serving sizes for a couple of them, in addition to showing you what the manufacturer would have you consume.

(For example, I just don’t think it’s good for your digestive system — or kind to any of your friends & loved ones within 15 feet of you for the rest of the day — to drink a 1,280 calorie vegan mass gainer in one sitting.) 😉

Okie dokie, here’s who’s here today:

Top 4 vegan weight gainers

Naked Mass Vegan Weight Gainer

IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer

Vegun Nutrition VeganMass

GNC Earth Genius PurEdge Gainer

Vegan gainer online buyer reviews

About the numbers you’ll see here & also down in the individual product review section:

* All of them come from gathering all the online reviews I could find for each of these products, be it from Amazon, the manufacturer’s website, & the other online retailers selling that product as well.

* The ⭐ rating represents my calculation using all of those buyer reviews, and the % sign you see indicates the percentage of buyers who gave that particular product a 4 or 5-star rating.

Vegun Nutrition VeganMass 4.5⭐

Naked Mass Vegan Weight Gainer 4.4⭐

GNC Earth Genius PurEdge Gainer 4.4⭐

IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer 3.9⭐

These ratings are on the low side of what you see for the “Best Of” any kind of fitness supplement…so why is this?

I think the explanation is simple: mass gainers have a taste & texture that’s much different than your typical protein powders. And by “different” I defnitely don’t mean “better”.

So someone trying a mass gainer powder for the first time is in for a little surprise

Vegan gainers’ cost comparisons

Before we get crackin’ on this:Just a quick note that the prices of all protein powders have been changing a lot these days (mostly higher). So the prices I quote here may be different than the ones you come across.

There are a couple of ways to compare costs of these types of supplement products that go a little deeper than simply comparing their price tags.

One of these is cost per ounce, and another useful metric is cost per serving.

Vegan gainers cost per ounce

Amazon provides a cost/ounce for many food-oriented supplements they’re selling which is nice, and their numbers are accurate more often than not.

But if they don’t provide them or you just want to double-check their numbers, it’s easy enough to figure out since it’s pretty simple math.

I think cost per ounce can be more useful than cost per serving for many people, specifically those who are on top of their daily calories & macros.

Someone who dials in their diet’s macronutrient needs every day is much more likely to customize their own serving size for a supplement like protein powder or in this case, a mass gainer powder.

(For example, like when a manufacturer says to chuck in six scoops per serving when that person knows they only need two to round out their meal plan.)

Weighing our food is second nature to those of us who go on specific training cycles at certain periods during the year, like a caloric surplus muscle & weight gain cycle, or a caloric deficit, body fat “cutting” cycle.

So here are the costs per ounce of the four vegan gainers reviewed in this article using the prices I’m looking at today, ranked from the cheapest on up.

Note that IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer comes in both a 10 lb. & 5 lb. size:

Naked Mass Vegan Weight Gainer 51¢ /oz.

IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer 47¢ /oz.

IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer (small) 74¢ /oz.

Vegun Nutrition VeganMass 87¢ /oz.

GNC Earth Genius PurEdge Gainer 91¢ /oz.

Vegan gainers cost per serving

Cost per serving can be useful to help compare similar food-based fitness supplements too, you just might have to get a little creative.

On the one hand you may not care about exact calories or macros: you just need a “meal in between meals”.

And let’s say you’ve checked out the ingredients and are cool with what’s in the different products you’re comparing.

Now it comes down to cost pretty much (some might say “taste”, but a crappy tasting powder can almost always be repaired via additional ingredients of your liking).

So cost per serving could help you decide which one to go for, but here are a few things you’ll need to deal with when comparing say, these four vegan mass gainers.

One thing to consider is that none of their serving sizes are the same, which makes apples-to-apples co$t compari$on$ of cost per serving a little harder to line up.

Here’s how they rank, listed from largest to smallest by calories per serving:

Naked Mass Vegan Weight Gainer 1,280 calories

IronVegan Athlete’s Gainer 720

GNC Earth Genius PurEdge Gainer 570

Vegun Nutrition VeganMass 280

That’s a wide range for one thing, and for another I have an issue with the two gainers that have the largest & smallest serving sizes:

* Naked Mass’ 1280 calories is a ton of food for a real meal, let alone the calorie count for a “meal between meals” supplement powder.

* VeganMass’ 280 calories is not really even in mass gainer country — besides being below my supposed qualifying minimum of 400 calories — but there weren’t any other high-calorie vegan gainers to choose instead.

Cost per serving workaround

The easiest way to get an approximate apples-to-apples serving cost for these four powders is to:

cut Naked Mass’ serving in half to 640 calories;
double VeganMass’ serving size to 560 calories.

The upside of doing that for Naked Mass’ Vegan Gainer is that you:

won’t explode from pounding too many calories at once;
will get twice as many servings per container.

The weight-gaining logic of an additional 500+ calories per day

With those two portion adjustments, now our gainer servings are pretty similar: 640, 720, 570, & 560 calories.

This neighborhood (500-750 calories) makes sense if you’re:

working out regularly,
want to add lean muscle pounds,
& find yourself stuck at the same weight.

Why?

Well, because medical experts in weight management — including weight gain — agree that the way to healthily add lean muscle weight is to bump your caloric intake up anywhere from 300-500+ calories per day, and do it consuming quality calories only.

So if you can’t squeeze an additional 500+ calories’ worth of food per day in between your already spot-on diet (hint 😉) — whether due to a busy schedule or lack of room in your digestive tract — a 500+ calorie healthy gainer powder or post-workout homemade smoothie could work out well for you.

Here’s how the four vegan gainers rank in cost per serving, with their calories listed for reference so you can see they’re all in the same ballpark now: