SUMMARY Methane hydrate is an ice‐like nonstoichiometric compound that forms when methane reacts with water at high pressures and low temperatures. It has a lot of practical applications such as separation processes, natural gas storage transportation, and carbon dioxide sequestration. Especially, the industrial use of hydrates requires large amounts of gas to be formed quickly into hydrates. Porous media significantly influence the rate of hydrate formation by reducing the chemical barrier, where zeolites are microporous minerals. This paper deals with natural and synthetic (5A and 13A) zeolites for hydrate formation and gas storage capacity. The results show that methane hydrates are formed much faster in the three zeolite solutions tested compared with their formation in distilled water at low subcooling temperatures (<7 K). It was also observed that the gas consumption was the greatest in the 0.01 wt.% zeolite 13X solution of distilled water. Its gas consumption was 5.1 times that of distilled water at 0.5 K subcooling. Zeolite 13X demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing and expediting methane hydrate formation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.