A cutting stack is designed to be taken during the “cutting” phase of a bodybuilding program, where you attempt to drop as much body fat as possible while retaining your muscle mass.
The traditional bodybuilding strategy is to alternate bulking and cutting to achieve a better physique.
Cutting stacks draw inspiration from anabolic steroid cycling routines that manipulate levels of testosterone, human growth hormone, and other anabolic hormones, and strive to achieve similar hormonal effects using naturally-occurring supplements.
If you want to decrease your body fat percentage while maintaining the muscle mass you work so hard to build, look no further than a cutting stack.
We’ve ranked the best options for supplemental cutting stacks on the market.
Our advisory panel and our research team rank the best health products and supplements based on performance, label accuracy, and the efficacy of the ingredients in the products.
- Best overall: CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
- Animal Cuts
- Best for women: LeanBean
- Genius Burn
- Best for having more energy: Vintage Burn
Research
Rankings
Last updated: November 1, 2022
Cutting stacks considered: 23
Hours of research: 42
Experts reviewed: 7
Scientific papers referenced: 15
| IMAGE | PRODUCT | |
|---|---|---|
Best Overall  | 1. CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
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 | 2. Animal Cuts
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Best for women  | 3. LeanBean
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 | 4. Genius Burn
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Best for having more energy  | 5. Vintage Burn
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Best stimulant-free cutting stack  | 6. Iron Brothers Thermo Burn Stimulant Free
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 | 7. Cellucor C4 Ultimate Shred
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 | 8. Modern Man V3
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 | 9. Nobi Nutrition Women’s Fat Burner
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 | 10. Jacked Factory Burn XT
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1. CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
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CrazyBulk Cutting Stack consists of a four-supplement combo that boosts muscle synthesis, increases fat oxidation, aids your energy levels, and keeps your cortisol down.
Don’t let the names of each supplement fool you—this supplement is an all-natural steroid alternative that is great for cutting phases of bodybuilding.
Each supplement packs a punch, and the company recommends cycling on and off for a four-week period. Thanks to the diversity of its ingredients and their efficacy, it’s our number one pick.
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2. Animal Cuts
Animal Cuts hits you with a powerful combo of stimulants, diuretics, nootropics, and cortisol inhibitors to increase your body’s metabolic rate and its fat oxidation rate.
On top of that, the diuretic ingredients like dandelion root and celery seed decrease your body’s water retention, making Animal Cuts a favorite among bodybuilders, powerlifters, and combat sport competitors, all of whom need to make weight classes.
The herbal ingredients which inhibit cortisol and boost cognitive performance, like ashwagandha and bacopa monnieri, are a nice touch, as they help keep you focused and sharp even when on pretty aggressive caloric restriction.
3. LeanBean
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LeanBean is a fat cutting supplement that’s specifically formulated for the metabolic needs of women.
It leans harder into promoting fat oxidation as opposed to boosting testosterone or accelerating muscle hypertrophy, which makes it particularly well-suited for women who are serious about slimming down.
4. Genius Burn
Genius Burn is a next-generation fat burner and nootropic that can help you feel more focused and have higher energy levels, all while increasing your body’s fat burning rate.
It has some advanced compounds not found in many other supplements, like capsicum and gymnema sylvestre. If you want your cutting stack to focus primarily on burning fat and boosting energy, Genius Burn is the way to go.
5. Vintage Burn
Vintage Burn features a combo of appetite suppressants, thermogenics, and fat oxidizers. In these easy to take capsules, you’ll find green tea extract, green coffee bean extract, caffeine, bacopa monnieri, and garcinia cambogia, to name the primary ingredients.
While it has less of a focus on maintaining muscle mass per se (you may need to pair it with a BCAA supplement), Vintage Burn is still a solid choice if you are looking for a reliable fat burner during a cut.
6. Iron Brothers Thermo Burn Stimulant Free
Iron Brothers Thermo Burn comes in two varieties, one of which has caffeine, yohimbe, and other stimulants to boost fat oxidation, and one of which is stimulant-free. Both are solid cutting stack supplements, but the stimulant-free version is great for people who are caffeine-sensitive but still want the benefits of a cutting supplement.
The stimulant-free version features chromium, acetyl-L-carnitine, olive extract, forskolin, and cayenne pepper as its primary active ingredients.
While some users will be turned off by the synthetic coloring agents used to give the capsules their distinctive black and yellow appearance, this stimulant-free cutting stack fills an important niche in the market.
7. Cellucor C4 Ultimate Shred
Cellucor C4 Ultimate Shred fills a pretty specific niche: pre-workout supplements focused on amping up mid-workout fat oxidation.
It’s a good component of a larger cutting stack, but since it’s only focused on accelerating mid-workout fat oxidation, you may want other supplements in combination with C4 for a comprehensive cutting stack.
8. Modern Man V3
Modern Man is a supplement that aims to boost androgen levels in men by supporting testosterone and growth hormone synthesis and upkeep in the body.
It’s a great supplement overall for men, but it ranks lower as a cutting stack component because it lacks some of the direct fat oxidation boosters you’d see in other supplements. It does provide some caffeine and theacrine for a higher metabolic rate, though.
9. Nobi Nutrition Women’s Fat Burner
When it comes to cutting stacks, there’s not much on the market for women specifically. However, Nobi Nutrition makes a pretty nice supplement for female athletes trying to cut weight.
This supplement is stimulant-free, and focuses its strategy on providing your body with ketone derivatives that encourage your body to burn more fat without relying on caffeine, green tea extract, or other direct simulants. Its narrow focus lands it farther down in the rankings, but for women looking to cut weight and maintain muscle, it’s worth a look.
10. Jacked Factory Burn XT
Burn XT is a high-powered fat burner that focuses on ramping up your body’s metabolism to oxidize more fat. It does so with a blend of green tea extract, caffeine, theacrine, theobromine, cayenne, and theanine.
Burn XT packs a real punch, but the high caffeine content is likely to put off a lot of people.
Category winners
Best cutting stack overall: CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
CrazyBulk Cutting Stack takes our top spot overall thanks to the comprehensive cutting support provided by the four different supplements included in this cutting stack. From compounds to boost muscle growth to stimulants to encourage fat oxidation, CrazyBulk does a very impressive job covering all of its bases.
Best cutting stack for athletes: CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
CrazyBulk is specifically formulated for athletes and bodybuilders, with ingredients that support muscle synthesis, muscle repair, testosterone support, and fat oxidation. The broad range of targets make it a strong choice for athletes in the market for a cutting stack.
Best cutting stack for women: LeanBean
LeanBean is designed specifically for women looking to cut down on their body fat content, and it uses a range of powerful ingredients towards this goal, including garcinia cambogia, green coffee bean extract, and glucomannan. It boosts fat burning without being too heavy on stimulants, making it perfectly suited for women looking to shed body fat.
Best stimulant-free cutting stack: Iron Brothers Thermo Burn
Iron Brothers gets a thermogenic effect out of ingredients like chromium, forskolin, and cayenne pepper, which are designed to accelerate fat oxidation without relying on stimulants like caffeine. If you know you’re caffeine-sensitive but still want a cutting stack, the combo of ingredients in Iron Brothers is a great choice.
Best cutting stack for having more energy: Old School Vintage Burn
Is your cut leaving you feeling fatigued and listless? Vintage Burn uses ingredients that boost fat oxidation and raise your energy levels, like green tea extract, green coffee bean extract, and bacopa extract. These naturally-sourced compounds accelerate your metabolism and help you feel invigorated instead of exhausted.
Best cutting stack to support testosterone levels: CrazyBulk Cutting Stack
Cutting body fat while sustaining high testosterone is tricky business. For this purpose we recommend the cutting stack from CrazyBulk because of its inclusion of Testo-Max, a custom-formulated supplement for testosterone support. Testo-Max includes magnesium, zinc, nettle leaf, ginseng, and fenugreek as core ingredients for boosting testosterone, which combine with the fat-burning properties of the rest of the supplement stack.
Who should buy a cutting stack?
Anyone who wants to drop fat and stay strong is a good candidate for a cutting stack, but they’re best suited if you fall into one of the following groups:
Bodybuilders in a cutting phase. Cutting stacks fit naturally into just about any standard bodybuilding routine. If you are on a program that alternates between bulking (possibly with a bulking stack supplement) and cutting, you can add in a cutting stack during your cutting phases without much of a problem.
Cutting stacks fit naturally into this routine by amping up several different biological processes that contribute to burning more body fat and maintaining muscle mass. Cutting stacks often incorporate stimulants like caffeine or green tea extract, which ramp up your body’s natural fat oxidation, and also tend to include branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) and other compounds to sustain muscular strength.
Athletes in sports with weight classes. Athletes looking to gain functional strength while keeping off excess weight are also excellent candidates for the kinds of training programs that cutting stacks are designed for.
If you’re trying to stay as strong as possible while hitting a target weight, a cutting stack can make a big difference.
People who want to build strength without bulking up. Cutting stacks are great for people whose primary goal is building muscle mass but who don’t want the excess body fat that comes along with following a pure bulking program and relying on mass gainer for maximizing body weight as much as possible.
People who have low energy when on a cutting diet. A cutting stack can help you maintain the high energy levels you need to get in the kinds of workouts that are necessary for maintaining muscle mass and muscle strength.
One of the primary problems that cutting stacks can rectify is the low energy levels and general lethargic feelings that tend to accompany weight loss.
Due to the lack of calories, your body tends to reign in your energy levels and, if unchecked, promote a state of catabolism (the process of muscular breakdown)—what you want is to retain an anabolic (muscle-building) state as much as possible even as you drop body fat.
Cutting stacks, combined with a serious training routine, can help you do that.
How we ranked
We formulated our rankings based on some of the key physiological targets necessary for sustaining a successful cutting cycle.
Strong fat-burning capabilities. We noted which cutting supplements on the market had supplemental ingredients that are associated with increasing baseline metabolic rate or increasing your body’s rate of fat oxidation.
Judicious use of stimulants. Stimulants like caffeine, guarana, and yerba mate are potent fat burners, but not everyone wants them in their cutting stack (some people are quite sensitive to their negative side effects).
Nevertheless, stimulants can nevertheless be powerful components for boosting metabolism and dropping body fat.
To this end, our top rated cutting stacks tended to have stimulants in them, but we made sure to retain some stimulant-free cutting stack supplements for further analysis as we formulated our rankings.
Testosterone and growth hormone support. Next up, we considered how well each cutting stack supplement supported high levels of testosterone and human growth hormone,which are absolutely essential if your goal is to maintain a hormonal environment in your body that is conducive to retaining muscle mass.
We dropped from consideration any cutting stack supplements that didn’t have at least one ingredient that would contribute to a positive, anabolic hormonal profile.
Energizing herbal ingredients. The low energy availability that your body finds itself in when you are in the middle of a cutting phase means that your body is encouraged to go into catabolism, breaking down tissue like your muscles.
Countering these catabolic effects with energy-boosting herbal extracts is one of the differentiating factors between cutting stacks and more general-purpose weight loss supplements.
Extra perks like more focus and concentration. On top of metabolism and hormone levels, we also evaluated the degree to which each cutting stack supplement provided any additional benefits, like nootropics to sustain better focus and help ward off mental fog, or cortisol-blocking supplements to further enhance your hormone profile during your cutting phase.
While these additional perks helped us fine-tune the rankings, they were nice-to-haves, not the central focus.
No risky or ineffective ingredients. Finally, we screened out cutting stack supplements that contained too much in the way of risky or ineffective ingredients.
Like with other weight loss supplements, there are some supplemental ingredients that are known to be associated with higher risks of side effects, or that have been proven to just not be very effective. These supplements were dropped.
We ordered the remaining supplements based on their metabolic effects, hormonal and energy effects, and any additional benefits, leaving us with our final rankings of the top cutting stacks available on the market.
FAQ
Q: What are the most important supplements to take while cutting?
A: When doing a cutting cycle, you should focus on three broad categories of supplement ingredients: fat burners, strength maintainers, and hormone boosters.
Fat burners include caffeine, green tea extract, and garcinia cambogia; these ingredients accelerate the rate at which your body oxidizes fat and elevate your overall metabolic rate. These are beneficial effects because they increase the amount of energy, and fat specifically, that you burn at rest.
Strength maintainers are compounds that help you sustain your muscular strength during a cut, like branched chain amino acids (BCAAs).
Hormone boosters encourage your body to retain muscle mass and shed body fat.
Providing your body with precursors or necessary vitamins and minerals to synthesize these hormones may help you keep high levels of anabolic hormones, even during a cut.
Q: What cutting supplements help for your abs?
A: It’s not possible to cut fat specifically from just one area—getting shredded abs has to be part of an overall cutting strategy to reduce your body fat percentage.
So, in this sense, the best cutting supplements for your abs are also the best cutting supplements for the rest of your body.
Increasing fat oxidation, sustaining healthy levels of anabolic hormones, and providing your muscles with building blocks for muscle proteins are key for sustaining a solid whole-body cut.
Q: Can you take a pre-workout supplement while cutting?
A: We don’t recommend taking pre-workout supplements while cutting, primarily because most high-quality cutting stacks share many of the same ingredients as pre-workout supplements. These ingredients may include caffeine, green tea extract, and other stimulants.
Given the known side effects of excessive amounts of caffeine (detailed above), it’s best not to push your limits by taking a pre-workout supplement and a cutting stack.
If you know that your pre-workout supplement is stimulant-free, or conversely if your cutting stack is stimulant-free, you can more confidently take both a pre-workout and a cutting stack, but even then it’s wise to check the ingredients list to make sure you’re not overloading on any particular individual supplement ingredient.
Q: What supplements help you maintain muscle while you are in a cutting phase?
A: To maintain muscle mass while cutting, the two goals you should focus on are ensuring that your testosterone and human growth hormone levels are high, and that your muscles have the right building blocks to repair damage that you do to them during training.
Testosterone boosters are a core component of a cutting stack, and though it’s less common, several of the top cutting stack supplements include BCAAs or other sources of amino acids to support muscle synthesis.
BCAAs in particular are worth adding to your cutting stack if your primary cutting supplement does not include them.
Q: How do cutting supplements work?
A: Cutting stacks work by boosting your metabolism and boosting androgen hormone levels.
Boosts to your metabolic rate increase your fat oxidation. This is the target of cutting stack ingredients like caffeine, green tea extract, and theobromine.
Cutting stacks also target your testosterone and human growth hormone levels.
These anabolic hormones help your body continue to maintain your muscle mass and muscular strength.
Testosterone in particular also has the ability to boost fat oxidation.
Cutting supplements don’t contain these hormones themselves, but do contain vitamins, minerals, and natural extracts that some research has shown to boost levels of testosterone or human growth hormone.
Related articles
- Testosterone boosters
- Natural steroid alternatives
- DHEA
- Estrogen blocker
- Pre-workout supplement
- Fat burners for men
- Mass gainer
- BCAAs
- Fat burners for women
Recap
A cutting stack is a combination of supplements that make it easier to maintain muscle mass and strength while you are cutting fat.
If you want to drop your body fat percentage and hang on to as much muscle mass as possible, a cutting stack can help you accomplish that goal.
Cutting stacks aim to increase your metabolic rate, decrease feelings of hunger, reduce water retention, and ultimately leave you looking leaner and more defined.
For BodyNutrition’s #1 cutting stack recommendation, click here.
