Charts
Tea caffeine chart
A cup of black tea carries around 50 mg of caffeine, green tea around 30 mg, and a mug of brewed coffee about 95 mg. The tables below give milligrams per cup for all 6 tea types and for the strongest and gentlest individual teas in a database of 176 — 42 of which contain no caffeine at all.
Caffeine by tea type — milligrams per prepared cup
| Tea type | Typical | Range | Teas |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green tea40 teas | 30 mgper cup | 0–70 mg | |
| White tea15 teas | 20 mgper cup | 15–28 mg |
|
| Oolong tea29 teas | 39 mgper cup | 25–45 mg | |
| Pu-erh tea16 teas | 35 mgper cup | 28–45 mg |
|
| Black tea33 teas | 50 mgper cup | 45–75 mg |
|
| Herbal tea43 teas | 0 mgper cup | 0–85 mg |
|
| Brewed coffee240 ml | 95 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
| Espresso30 ml | 63 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
| Instant coffee240 ml | 62 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
| Cola355 ml | 34 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
| Energy drink250 ml | 80 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
| Decaf coffee240 ml | 2 mgper cup | Reference drinks (not tea — external values) | |
teafinity.app
The strongest and the gentlest
The fifteen most caffeinated teas in the database and the ten lightest that still contain caffeine.
| Tea | Tea type | Caffeine (mg per cup) |
|---|---|---|
| Yerba Mate | Herbal tea | 85 mg |
| Scottish Breakfast | Black tea | 75 mg |
| Matcha | Green tea | 70 mg |
| Irish Breakfast | Black tea | 70 mg |
| Assam | Black tea | 65 mg |
| Gyokuro | Green tea | 65 mg |
| English Breakfast | Black tea | 60 mg |
| Turkish Tea (Rize) | Black tea | 60 mg |
| Yaupon | Herbal tea | 60 mg |
| Kenyan Black | Black tea | 58 mg |
| Earl Grey | Black tea | 55 mg |
| Russian Caravan | Black tea | 52 mg |
| Java Black | Black tea | 52 mg |
| Chai Black Tea | Black tea | 50 mg |
| Orange Pekoe | Black tea | 50 mg |
| Tea | Tea type | Caffeine (mg per cup) |
|---|---|---|
| Kukicha | Green tea | 10 mg |
| Jasmine Silver Needle | White tea | 15 mg |
| Silver Needle (Bai Hao Yin Zhen) | White tea | 15 mg |
| Hojicha | Green tea | 15 mg |
| Bancha | Green tea | 15 mg |
| Yunnan Snow Buds | White tea | 16 mg |
| White Earl Grey | White tea | 18 mg |
| Moonlight White | White tea | 18 mg |
| White Hair | White tea | 19 mg |
| White Peony (Bai Mudan) | White tea | 20 mg |
teafinity.app
Tea versus coffee, honestly
Dry tea leaf contains more caffeine by weight than a coffee bean, and this fact is quoted constantly to suggest tea is the stronger drink. It is not, because nobody drinks dry leaf. A mug of tea is brewed from roughly 3 g of leaf and a mug of coffee from roughly 10 g of grounds, extracted hotter and more aggressively. The result is the number that matters: the reference values put a 240 ml cup of brewed coffee near 95 mg, while the median tea in this database lands at 32 mg — comfortably under half.
That is also why "switch to tea" works as caffeine management. You are not eliminating caffeine; you are halving the dose per cup and, because tea is drunk slowly and in smaller vessels, spreading it across a longer window. Several people describe the effect as steadier rather than weaker, and the usual explanation offered is L-theanine, an amino acid abundant in shaded green teas that modulates how the caffeine feels.
What actually moves the number
Four things change the caffeine in your cup far more than the tea's category does. Dose is the largest: doubling the leaf roughly doubles the caffeine, which is why a Gong Fu session with 5 g in a small pot delivers more caffeine in total than one Western mug, spread across many small cups. Water temperature is second — caffeine is markedly more soluble in hot water, so the same green tea brewed at 100 °C (212 °F) yields more caffeine than at 80 °C (175 °F). Time is third, and cultivar and leaf age fourth: young buds and shaded leaves carry more caffeine than mature leaves, which is why gyokuro and matcha sit at the top of the green tea column while a bud-free roasted bancha sits near the bottom.
This is why any chart that gives one number per tea type — including the ranges in the first table here — is an approximation of a prepared cup, not a measurement of your cup. The per-tea rows are the more useful ones, and the app applies your actual leaf quantity to them.
The zero-caffeine column is real, with two exceptions
42 of the 176 teas in this database contain no caffeine whatsoever. Almost all of them are herbal infusions: chamomile, rooibos, peppermint, hibiscus, lemongrass, fruit blends and roots are not Camellia sinensis and never contained caffeine in the first place. If you need a genuinely caffeine-free evening drink, that column is the answer, and no amount of steeping will change it in either direction.
There are two loud exceptions in the herbal category. Yerba mate and yaupon are naturally caffeinated plants, and in this database they carry 85 mg and 60 mg per cup respectively — mate is the single most caffeinated drink in the entire library, above every black tea. "Herbal tea" is a shelf label, not a pharmacological one, so check the plant rather than the category.
Decaffeinated tea and the 30-second rinse myth
A widely repeated tip claims you can decaffeinate any tea at home by discarding a 30-second first steep. The published measurements do not support it. Caffeine is highly water-soluble but a short rinse removes only a modest fraction of the total, while stripping much of the aroma you paid for — the trade is bad in both directions. If caffeine is a medical concern, commercially decaffeinated tea or a genuinely caffeine-free tisane is the honest option.
What the same research does confirm is that caffeine is front-loaded: the first infusion of a leaf carries substantially more than the second, and by the third the numbers fall sharply. For a Gong Fu drinker that is useful information — the late infusions of a long session are genuinely gentler than the early ones.
Timing your last cup
Caffeine's half-life in a healthy adult is commonly cited at around five to six hours, which means roughly half the caffeine from a 4 p.m. cup is still circulating at 10 p.m. If tea is affecting your sleep, the practical rule is to work backwards: pick your bedtime, subtract six hours, and switch to the zero-caffeine column after that. Because tea doses are small, one gentle white or a low-caffeine roasted tea inside that window is usually harmless where a coffee would not be.
Sensitivity varies enormously — genetics, tolerance and medication all shift the curve — so treat the number as a starting point and adjust from your own experience. The point of the table is that you can make that decision with milligrams in front of you instead of guessing from a category name.
Bags, blends and matcha behave differently
Three preparations sit awkwardly on any per-cup caffeine table. A tea bag holds a fixed, usually small dose of finely broken leaf that extracts almost completely in three minutes, so a bag is consistent but not comparable to the loose-leaf doses in this database. A blend takes its caffeine from whatever base it was built on — a flavoured black tea tracks the black tea column, a fruit blend with a token green tea addition does not. And matcha is not steeped at all: you drink the whole leaf, so you get essentially all of its caffeine rather than the fraction water pulls out, which is why it sits near the top of the green column despite a gentle preparation temperature.
The practical version: if the number matters to you, weigh the leaf. Milligrams per cup follow milligrams per gram multiplied by the grams you actually used, and that is the one lever you fully control.
Use it, don't just read it
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