Guides
Tea vs Coffee Caffeine
A standard 8 oz (240 ml) cup of drip coffee contains roughly 80–120 mg of caffeine. The strongest tea in our dataset — matcha, where you consume the whole leaf — is 50–80 mg per bowl. Most teas fall well below that. If you are switching from coffee to tea for caffeine reasons, the honest answer is: tea usually has less per cup, and matcha is the only style that comes close.
The comparison, one basis
Retailer caffeine charts are hard to compare because each defines "a cup" differently. The figures below all assume the listed serving for each tea — grams of leaf, milliliters of water, steep time — which you can check on every tea page. Coffee figure: a typical 8 oz drip brew at ~10 g of ground coffee.
Highest-caffeine teas in the dataset, ranked by the top of their stated range.
Why the numbers vary so much
- You eat matcha. Whisked powder means 100% of the leaf's caffeine ends up in the cup. Brewed leaves are strained out, keeping some caffeine behind.
- Shade growing boosts caffeine. Gyokuro and tencha (matcha's source) are shaded for weeks before harvest, raising caffeine and theanine.
- Water temperature and time matter. Hotter water and longer steeps extract more caffeine. Cold brew extracts less.
- Bud-heavy teas run stronger. Teas made from buds (silver needle, mecha) carry more caffeine than leaf-only teas.
Practical guidance
- Cutting caffeine? Our 29 green teas skew 10–45 mg per cup — most land under a third of a coffee.
- Need a real lift without coffee? A matcha bowl (50–80 mg) or a strong gyokuro.
- Avoid caffeine entirely after mid-afternoon? Choose hojicha (roasted, low caffeine) or shu pu-erh.
See the full ranked table in our tea caffeine chart, or browse and filter all teas by caffeine level in the explore page.