Buoy Hydration Review 2026: 50mg of Sodium, and What That Means If You're Actually Dehydrated

Buoy (justaddbuoy.com, Buoy Hydration Inc) sells unflavoured liquid electrolyte drops you squeeze into any drink—water, coffee, tea, a smoothie—without changing its taste. The pitch is flexibility: no sugar, no sweeteners, no flavour, no stick packs, and a claimed 87-plus ionic trace minerals from ocean sources alongside a B-vitamin complex and antioxidants. It is a US direct-to-consumer supplement. We checked its formulation and pricing on July 29, 2026. This review contains affiliate links; the assessment is our own. It is informational only and not medical advice—and the single number that decides whether this product suits you is its sodium content.

Fifty Milligrams of Sodium

Hydration products work primarily through sodium. Sodium is what drives water retention and what you lose in sweat, vomiting and diarrhoea; the rest of an electrolyte formula is secondary to it. So the number that matters is sodium per serving, and here it is in context:

Buoy — 50mg of sodium per serving
Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier — 500mg per serving, ten times as much
LMNT — 1,000mg per stick pack, twenty times as much
World Health Organization oral rehydration solution — formulated at roughly 75 mmol of sodium per litre, which is around 1,700mg per litre, for actual clinical rehydration
For everyday scale: a slice of bread contains roughly 150mg of sodium—about three Buoy servings' worth

Buoy recommends 4 to 7 servings a day. Even at the top of that range you are taking in around 350mg of sodium—still a third of a single LMNT stick, spread across an entire day. If your reason for buying an electrolyte product is heavy sweating, heat exposure, a stomach bug, vomiting or diarrhoea, or the gastrointestinal side effects of a GLP-1 medication, this product cannot meet that need and you should not rely on it to. For genuine fluid and electrolyte losses, use an oral rehydration solution—the pharmacy sachets formulated to WHO ratios—or a high-sodium product, and seek medical advice if you cannot keep fluids down.

To Be Fair to Buoy

The company is not hiding this, and it deserves saying clearly. Buoy positions its drops for light, everyday hydration rather than for athletic replacement or clinical rehydration. It publishes its own comparison against LMNT on its blog and frames the difference in sodium as a deliberate choice rather than a shortcoming. LMNT is built for heavy sweating, fasting and heat; Buoy is built for someone who drinks water all day and wants minerals in it without flavour or sugar. That is a coherent product with a real customer. Plenty of people find flavoured electrolyte powders cloying, will not drink sweetened water, and dislike the sugar or sucralose in mainstream options. An unflavoured drop that disappears into coffee is a genuinely clever solution to that annoyance, and no competitor we know of does it as neatly. The problem is not the formulation. It is that "hydration" as a marketing category has trained people to buy these products for dehydration, and a buyer who reaches for Buoy during a heatwave or a norovirus is going to be badly underserved without ever knowing why.

Decide what you are actually buying before you compare prices. If the answer is "I want trace minerals and B vitamins in drinks I already consume, without flavour," Buoy is a reasonable and fairly-priced way to do that. If the answer is "I am dehydrated," you want sodium, and you want considerably more of it than this delivers.

The Trace Mineral Premise

Buoy's second selling point is breadth rather than dose: 87-plus ionic trace minerals from ocean sources, including boron, selenium, manganese, silica, copper and phosphorus, plus vitamins B1, B5 and B6 and antioxidants described as sourced from Australian wild foods. This is where we would apply the most scepticism. The claim that a wide spectrum of trace minerals in very small amounts confers health benefits is a longstanding wellness premise with a thin evidence base. Most of these minerals are required in microgram quantities and are already abundant in an ordinary diet; deficiency in selenium, copper or manganese is uncommon in people eating normally in developed countries, and supplementing them without a deficiency has not been shown to help. Some, notably selenium and copper, have upper limits where excess causes harm—so "more kinds of minerals" is not automatically better. The B vitamins are water-soluble and low-risk. The antioxidant claim is the vaguest element and the least supported: dietary antioxidant supplementation has repeatedly failed to deliver the outcomes its marketing promises in large trials. One practical note about ocean-sourced minerals specifically: marine-derived mineral concentrates are a category where heavy-metal testing genuinely matters. We could not verify Buoy's testing programme, because its website blocks automated access and returned a Cloudflare challenge to every request we made—so we are not able to tell you whether it publishes third-party or heavy-metal testing, in either direction.

If you buy this, ask the company directly for its third-party test results including heavy metals, and for the actual milligram or microgram amounts of the named minerals rather than the count of how many are present. "87+ minerals" is a marketing figure; the doses are the information.

What It Costs

We could not read pricing from Buoy's own store—its site returned a Cloudflare challenge to every automated request, and we do not publish figures we have not verified at source. The following comes from independent 2026 coverage citing the official product page, and you should confirm it at checkout:

Reported buy-once price of $39 for a 120-serving supply (three bottles), working out at about $0.33 per serving
Reported subscription price of $30.03 for the same supply, about $0.25 per serving
Buoy's recommended usage is 4 to 7 servings per day
At that usage on subscription, roughly $1.00 to $1.75 per day, or about $30 to $53 a month
No sugar, no sweeteners and no flavour, mixable into hot or cold drinks

Run the comparison on what you actually get. At the top of Buoy's recommended range you are paying around $1.75 a day for roughly 350mg of sodium plus trace minerals. A single high-sodium stick pack delivers 1,000mg for around the same money. If sodium is the point, that gap is decisive. If trace minerals and an unflavoured format are the point, the price is fair for a niche product—just be clear which one you are buying.

If You Are on a GLP-1, This Matters More

This site's readers are disproportionately taking semaglutide or tirzepatide, and hydration is a genuine issue on these medications—which makes the sodium question practical rather than academic. GLP-1 medications commonly cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and constipation, and they reduce overall intake substantially. That combination means both fluid and electrolyte losses, and reduced replacement of them through food. Dehydration on GLP-1 therapy is not a hypothetical: it is one of the mechanisms behind reported acute kidney injury in people who cannot keep fluids down, and persistent vomiting on these drugs is a reason to contact your prescriber rather than to manage at home. In that context, 50mg of sodium a serving is not a meaningful intervention. If you are vomiting or have diarrhoea, an oral rehydration solution is the correct product—it exists precisely for this, it is inexpensive, and it is available from any pharmacy. Where Buoy could reasonably fit a GLP-1 user is the opposite scenario: someone whose appetite has dropped, who is drinking plenty of plain water, tolerating it fine, and wants some minerals without a sweet flavour that nausea makes intolerable. That is a real use case, and the unflavoured format is an advantage for it.

Contact your prescriber if you have persistent vomiting or diarrhoea on a GLP-1 medication, cannot keep fluids down, are passing much less urine than usual, or feel dizzy on standing—these can indicate dehydration and, in serious cases, kidney injury. Do not attempt to manage significant fluid loss with a low-sodium electrolyte supplement. If you have kidney disease, heart failure, or are on a sodium-restricted or potassium-restricted diet, discuss any electrolyte product with your clinician before using it, because both directions of that balance carry risk.

How It Compares

The electrolyte market splits by sodium dose and by format, and the right choice depends entirely on which problem you have:

Buoy — 50mg sodium per serving, around $0.25-$0.33 per serving reported · unflavoured drops, no sugar or sweeteners, mixes into anything · 87+ trace minerals and B vitamins · for light everyday use, not replacement
Liquid I.V. — 500mg sodium per serving · flavoured powder, contains sweeteners · a middle option for moderate needs
LMNT — 1,000mg sodium per stick · flavoured, unsweetened or lightly sweetened depending on line · built for heavy sweating, heat and fasting
Pharmacy oral rehydration solution — formulated to WHO ratios at roughly 1,700mg sodium per litre with glucose to drive absorption · the correct product for vomiting, diarrhoea or genuine dehydration, and the cheapest of all
Plain water and salted food — free, and adequate for most people most of the time; the honest baseline that every product on this list has to beat

Almost nobody needs an electrolyte supplement for ordinary daily life—normal food supplies far more sodium than any of these products. The genuine use cases are heavy sweating, heat, illness with fluid loss, sharply reduced food intake, and specific medical conditions. Match the product to the case: ORS for illness, high-sodium for sweat and heat, and something like Buoy only for the mild, everyday scenario it is designed for.

Honest Pros and Cons

What we would tell a friend, in both directions:

Pro — genuinely unflavoured, so it goes into coffee, tea or a smoothie without ruining it; no competitor does this as cleanly
Pro — no sugar and no sweeteners, which is a real advantage if you avoid sucralose or dislike sweet water
Pro — liquid drops mean flexible dosing rather than a fixed stick pack, and no powder to carry
Pro — reported cost of about $0.25 per serving on subscription is not expensive for a niche format
Pro — the company publishes its own comparison against higher-sodium rivals rather than obscuring the difference
Pro — B vitamins are low-risk and the format is easy to actually use daily, which is where most supplements fail
Con — 50mg of sodium per serving is a tenth of Liquid I.V. and a twentieth of LMNT, and nutritionally trivial
Con — even at 7 servings a day, roughly 350mg of sodium is less than a third of one LMNT stick
Con — the 87-plus trace mineral premise has a thin evidence base, and more mineral types is not inherently better
Con — antioxidant claims are the weakest element and have repeatedly underperformed in large trials
Con — we could not verify prices, supplement facts or any third-party or heavy-metal testing from the company's own site, which blocks automated access
Con — marketed within a category most buyers associate with treating dehydration, which this product cannot do

Who Should Pick It—and Who Should Look Elsewhere

Buoy fits someone with no clinical need who simply wants minerals in their drinks: a person who dislikes flavoured or sweetened electrolyte powders, drinks a lot of water, coffee or tea, and would rather add two seconds of squeezing than carry stick packs. For that buyer the format is the product, and it is well executed at a fair reported price. Look elsewhere if you are dehydrated, ill, vomiting, sweating heavily, working in heat, or managing GLP-1 gastrointestinal side effects—an oral rehydration solution or a high-sodium product is the right tool, and cheap. Look elsewhere if you want to know exactly what you are ingesting, because we could not obtain the supplement facts from the company's own site. And if you are simply eating normally and not sweating unusually, you probably do not need any product on this page: ordinary food supplies far more sodium than any of them.

Common Questions

Quick answers to what buyers actually search:

How much sodium is in Buoy? — 50mg per serving. Liquid I.V. has 500mg and LMNT has 1,000mg per serving, so Buoy is a tenth and a twentieth of those respectively.
How much does Buoy cost? — Independent 2026 coverage citing the official page reports $39 buy-once for 120 servings (about $0.33 each) and $30.03 on subscription (about $0.25 each). We could not verify this at source because the site blocks automated access—confirm at checkout.
Is Buoy good for dehydration? — No. Genuine dehydration needs meaningful sodium, and 50mg a serving cannot provide it. Use a pharmacy oral rehydration solution formulated to WHO ratios, and seek medical advice if you cannot keep fluids down.
Buoy or LMNT? — Different products for different problems. LMNT at 1,000mg sodium is for heavy sweating, heat and fasting. Buoy is for light everyday mineral intake in an unflavoured format.
Do trace minerals actually help? — The premise that many trace minerals in small amounts confers benefit has a thin evidence base. Most are needed in microgram amounts and are common in ordinary diets, and a few, including selenium and copper, have upper limits where excess is harmful.
Can I use it on a GLP-1? — For mild everyday use with good fluid tolerance, reasonably. Not for managing vomiting or diarrhoea—those need an ORS and a call to your prescriber, since persistent vomiting on a GLP-1 can lead to dehydration and kidney injury.
Does it have sugar or sweeteners? — No. It is unflavoured with no sugar and no sweeteners, which is its main practical advantage.
Is it third-party tested? — We could not determine this. The site returned a Cloudflare challenge to every automated request, so we could verify neither testing nor supplement facts. Ask the company directly, particularly about heavy metals given the ocean-sourced minerals.
Do most people need an electrolyte supplement? — No. Ordinary food provides far more sodium than these products. The real use cases are heavy sweating, heat, illness with fluid loss, sharply reduced intake, and specific medical conditions.

The Bottom Line

Verdict: 5.8/10—a genuinely clever format built on a dose that cannot do what most buyers will assume it does. Buoy solves a real annoyance: if you will not drink sweetened, flavoured water, an unflavoured drop that vanishes into coffee or a smoothie is the neatest answer anyone has produced, and at a reported $0.25 a serving on subscription it is fairly priced for that. The company also publishes its own comparison against higher-sodium rivals rather than hiding the difference, which is more honest than the category norm. But hydration is driven by sodium, and 50mg a serving is a tenth of Liquid I.V. and a twentieth of LMNT—even at Buoy's own maximum of seven servings a day you reach roughly 350mg, under a third of one LMNT stick. The 87-plus trace mineral premise rests on thin evidence, the antioxidant claim on thinner, and we could verify neither the supplement facts nor any heavy-metal testing because the site blocks automated access. Buy it if you want minerals in drinks you already enjoy and have no clinical need. If you are ill, sweating hard, in heat, or struggling with GLP-1 side effects, buy oral rehydration sachets instead—they cost less and they work. This review is informational only and not medical advice; contact your clinician about persistent vomiting, diarrhoea or signs of dehydration, and before using electrolyte products if you have kidney or heart disease. Prices and formulation details checked July 29, 2026 and subject to change.

Sources & References

Buoy — Official Site
Buoy — hydration drops product page and published Buoy vs LMNT comparison (site blocked automated access; figures below via independent coverage)
Independent 2026 reviews citing Buoy's official pricing and 120-serving supply
Comparative electrolyte sodium content: Buoy 50mg, Liquid I.V. 500mg, LMNT 1,000mg per serving
World Health Organization — oral rehydration solution formulation and sodium concentration
FDA and clinical guidance on GLP-1 gastrointestinal adverse effects, dehydration and acute kidney injury
Published trials on antioxidant supplementation outcomes, and upper intake limits for selenium and copper