What Drinks Have Caffeine? Every Common One, Ranked

Nearly everything you drink that is not water, juice or milk has caffeine in it, and the amounts are further apart than you would guess. A can of Coke has a third of a coffee. A can of Monster has almost two. A chai latte has half. A mug of hot chocolate has a twentieth. Here they are on one scale, each from a USDA measurement or the maker's own label, so you can add up your day.

How much caffeine is in each drink?

Here is every common drink per serving as you actually buy it. Ranges are where the source gives a range.

The pattern worth remembering: the drinks you sip hot are not the strong ones per millilitre, the cans are not the weak ones, and size decides almost everything. A 500 mL can of anything is two coffee cups of liquid.

Which family is your drink in?

Every drink here comes from one of four sources of caffeine, and the source tells you roughly where you are before you read a label.

Added caffeine is the family where the label is the only truth. A cola or an energy drink has exactly what the recipe puts in, so two drinks that taste alike can sit 100 mg apart, and the can tells you which.

Which drinks have none?

Rooibos, white hot chocolate, carob, chamomile and peppermint, and the caffeine-free colas. Decaf is close but not zero. ^{[7] [1]}

If you want the ritual without the caffeine, you have a swap inside every family: rooibos chai for chai, white hot chocolate for cocoa, decaf for coffee, Caffeine-Free Coke Zero for Coke Zero. You lose almost nothing in taste and you drop to a few milligrams or none.

How much is too much?

The FDA and Health Canada put your ceiling at 400 mg a day from every source together, and Health Canada lowers it to 300 mg if you are pregnant. ^{[9] [8]}

Use the chart to add your day up. A coffee at breakfast, a chai latte at lunch and a Coke Zero in the afternoon is about 185 mg, under half the ceiling. Swap the Coke Zero for a Monster and you are at 310 mg, with one coffee's worth of room left. Where the caffeine lands in your day matters as much as the total: the evening can is the one that keeps you up.

What to do

• Cutting back? Start with the biggest line on your chart, which is usually the energy drink or the second coffee, not the tea.
• Want the taste without the caffeine? Every family has a zero: rooibos chai, white hot chocolate, decaf, caffeine-free cola.
• Reading a label? Colas and energy drinks print the figure; coffee, tea and cocoa do not, so use the USDA rows above.
• Counting for pregnancy? 300 mg a day. One coffee and one chai latte is about 150 mg; add anything else and check the chart first.

The short version

Coffee, tea, chai, cocoa, cola and energy drinks all carry caffeine, from 5 mg in a mug of hot chocolate to 95 mg in a cup of coffee and 160 mg in a can of Monster. Rooibos, white hot chocolate, decaf and the caffeine-free colas are your zeros. Add your day against 400 mg and keep the big cans out of the evening.