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Caffeine: how much is in your cup, and how much is too much

Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant in the world, and the most misunderstood on a label — because a milligram number means nothing without the serving it belongs to, and because the same cup affects different people very differently. A kopi at 8 in the morning is a different dose from a 500 ml energy drink at 4 in the afternoon, and a slow metaboliser can still be carrying half of either at midnight. This page gives the amounts with the serving size stated every time, the limits as the regulators state them, and the evidence for the benefits and the risks weighed honestly — with real examples from this site's own panelled pages. Caffeine is neither a health food nor a poison. It is dose-dependent and person-dependent, and this page is written that way. It is information, not medical advice for any individual — and anyone who is pregnant, has a heart condition, or takes medication should talk to their doctor about caffeine rather than deciding from a guide.

Why this page exists

Three things it is for:

• Amounts that mean something. "A cup of coffee has about 95 mg" is the figure everyone quotes, and it is nearly useless — a kopi, an espresso shot, a Venti and a 3-in-1 sachet are different doses, and instant coffee varies fivefold by brand. Every figure on this page carries its serving size.
• The same dose, different people. How fast you clear caffeine is mostly one liver enzyme, CYP1A2, and it varies several-fold between people — and with smoking, the pill and pregnancy. That is why your colleague can drink coffee after dinner and you cannot.
• Caffeine that does not say "coffee". Cola, chocolate, matcha, bubble tea, Panadol Extra and a frozen açaí pack with guarana in it — none of them is a coffee, and all of them count toward the same daily total.

What caffeine is, and how it works

Caffeine is a stimulant that occurs naturally in coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa beans, kola nuts, guarana seeds and yerba mate, and is also made synthetically for soft drinks, energy drinks and medicines. It works by blocking adenosine receptors in the brain. Adenosine is the chemical that builds up across the day and makes you feel sleepy; caffeine fits into the same receptors and stops the tiredness signal landing. It does not remove the tiredness — the adenosine keeps accumulating behind the block — which is why the crash comes when the caffeine wears off, and why a second cup feels like it is doing less than the first.

After you swallow it, caffeine is absorbed quickly, reaching peak blood levels in about 30 to 60 minutes. Your liver then breaks it down, almost entirely with a single enzyme, CYP1A2, into paraxanthine, theobromine and theophylline, which leave in your urine. The speed is described by the half-life — the time for half of a dose to be cleared. In healthy adults the average is about 5 hours, but the range is wide: about 1.5 to 9.5 hours across the population, and 1.3 to 13.5 hours in one study of women given the same drinks. That spread is mostly CYP1A2 — common genetic variants split people into fast and slow metabolisers — and it is pushed around by circumstances: smoking speeds clearance up (roughly halving the half-life, to about 3 hours), while estrogen-containing oral contraceptives slow it down (about 7.9 hours against 5.4 hours in one study) and pregnancy slows it progressively, to a half-life of up to about 15 hours in the third trimester. Quitting smoking is a caffeine event in itself: clearance falls by about a third within days, so the same coffee suddenly lasts much longer.

Tolerance and withdrawal are real, and short-lived. With regular use the brain adapts by making more adenosine receptors, so you need more caffeine for the same effect — and feel dreadful without it. Caffeine withdrawal is a recognised diagnosis (DSM-5): symptoms typically start 12 to 24 hours after the last dose, peak around 24 to 48 hours, and resolve over 2 to 9 days. The hallmark is headache, with fatigue, drowsiness, irritability, low mood and difficulty concentrating. Even a relatively modest daily intake — one strong cup — can trigger withdrawal in susceptible people. It is not dangerous, which is a genuine contrast with alcohol or benzodiazepine withdrawal, but it is the reason "I need coffee to function" is pharmacology, not a personality trait — and it is also why much of the alertness boost habitual drinkers feel in the morning is, in part, the reversal of overnight withdrawal rather than a gain above baseline.

How much caffeine is in what

Every figure below carries its serving size, because a "cup" is not a standard unit. The table is sorted by caffeine per serving, lowest to highest, and you can click the column headers to re-sort it. Where the figure is a range, the range is the point — coffee and tea vary by bean, leaf, brew and cup size, while canned drinks are fixed by the manufacturer. Where no verified figure exists for a panelled product, this page says so rather than borrowing a figure from a different product.

Sources for the table: EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (2015), Scientific Opinion on the safety of caffeine, EFSA Journal 2015;13(5):4102 (reference table of typical caffeine per serving); Rachel Wong, dietitian, National University Hospital, caffeine-in-beverages table in The Straits Times, 25 August 2024 ("Brewing trouble"); Nestlé Milo Australia FAQ; USDA FoodData Central averages for chocolate and cocoa; CNA Lifestyle, KK Women's and Children's Hospital dietitian Anthea Zee (October 2025) for matcha; manufacturer figures for Red Bull and Monster (32 mg per 100 ml); Coca-Cola for its own can. Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest. Rows with no verified figure always sort last.

Two things the table hides if you only read the numbers. First, robusta is stronger than arabica. Robusta beans carry about 1.7–2% caffeine by weight against about 1–1.2% for arabica, and robusta is often used in local kopi (NUH dietitian table) — which is one reason a small hawker kopi can carry 80–120 mg while a similar-sized cup of arabica filter coffee carries about 90 mg. Second, the biggest number on the page is a serving size, not a strength. A Venti brewed coffee at 415 mg is not a stronger coffee — it is a bigger cup. The same is true of energy drinks: Red Bull and Monster are both 32 mg per 100 ml, so the Monster can contains twice the caffeine only because the can is twice the volume.

On this site: the coffees are Nescafé Classic and Gold Blend (pure instant), Nescafé Original 3-in-1 and Gold premixes, Nescafé Singapore Kopi-O Gao Siew Dai, and Maxim Stick Black — see instant coffee; Pokka Premium Milk Coffee, Cappuccino and Mocha 500 ml bottles, Pokka Wang Kopi, and the Nescafé ready-to-drink Intense Cappuccino 180 ml can — see ready-to-drink coffee; Pokka Jasmine Green Tea, Oolong, Ice Lemon Tea, Fuze Tea and Ayataka — see bottled tea; Monster Original, Absolute Zero and Ultra Sunrise, and Red Bull Original and Sugar Free — see energy drinks; Coca-Cola Classic, Less Sugar, Zero Sugar, Light and Vanilla — see soft drinks and cola; Milo Regular, 3-in-1 and the UHT packet and bottle drinks — see malted chocolate drinks; and the milk-tea and bubble-tea kits — see milk tea and bubble tea drinks. One honest limit: none of the FairPrice ingredient sections retrieved for the panelled energy drinks states a caffeine amount in mg — the 80 mg and 160 mg figures above are the manufacturers' figures for their standard cans, not figures printed on the Singapore packs retrieved in this pass, and the site's energy-drinks page says so. The same applies to the ready-to-drink coffees: no mg figure was retrieved for any panelled Pokka or Nescafé bottle, so none is given here.

Nespresso pods by colour — Original line

Nespresso does not publish a caffeine figure for each capsule on its US or Singapore sites. The figures below come from Nespresso Taiwan's site, as compiled by independent coffee sites (yourdreamcoffee.com, coffeeabout.com, coffeevibe.org, agreatcoffee.com). Treat them as estimates, not official Singapore figures. Two things the colours do not tell you: colour identifies the coffee, not the dose — a purple pod and a gold pod can carry the same caffeine — and intensity is flavour boldness, not caffeine. A red dot on a capsule means decaf. And caffeine is per capsule, not per ml: Ristretto is 25 ml, Espresso 40 ml, Lungo 110 ml — a Lungo is more water, not weaker coffee.

Sources: Nespresso Taiwan's per-capsule figures, as compiled by yourdreamcoffee.com, coffeeabout.com, coffeevibe.org and agreatcoffee.com; capsule colours from Nespresso's own colour coding as shown in retailer and owner photographs (super-espresso.com colour guide; coffeepodh.com). Where the compilations disagree, the table uses the Taiwan-derived figure and the disagreement is stated in the Notes column — the Roma, Arpeggio, Volluto, Capriccio, Ristretto and Kazaar figures each have a competing value in circulation. Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest.

Takeaway: the mildest-tasting pod on the table (Volluto, intensity 4) carries about the same caffeine as Arpeggio (intensity 9), and Kazaar carries about double a standard pod — intensity does not track caffeine. Most Original pods sit in a narrow band of about 60–75 mg, roughly a small kopi's worth; only the high-intensity ristretto and lungo blends (India, Napoli, Cape Town Envivo, Kazaar) break out of it.

Vertuo is a different system, and a bigger cup. Vertuo pods are larger and carry more — roughly 120–230 mg per serving depending on cup size, with the Alto size at the top end (about 195–230 mg), from the same Taiwan-derived compilations. Original and Vertuo pods are not interchangeable, and a Vertuo Alto is not comparable to an Original espresso — it is a much larger drink.

Coke vs Pepsi — is it the same caffeine?

Short answer: no, not the same — Pepsi has slightly more. The table is per 355 ml (12 oz) can, from the manufacturers' own figures (The Coca-Cola Company; PepsiCo Product Facts). These are US manufacturer figures; Singapore recipes can differ slightly, and Singapore cans are 330 ml, not 355 ml — so a Singapore can would carry slightly less than the figures below if the recipe matches (about 32 mg for Coca-Cola Classic, about 35 mg for Pepsi, by simple scaling). Pepsi is on sale in Singapore but is not panelled on this site's soft-drinks page — no verbatim Singapore list was verified for it in the 5–6 November 2026 pass — so the Pepsi figures here are manufacturer figures, not Singapore-pack figures. Coca-Cola Classic is panelled on the site's soft-drinks page and is already in the main table above at 30–40 mg per 330 ml can.

Sources: The Coca-Cola Company (34 mg Coca-Cola Classic and Zero Sugar, 46 mg Diet Coke per 355 ml can); PepsiCo Product Facts (38 mg Pepsi, 34 mg Diet Pepsi per 355 ml can). Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest.

Takeaway: the 4 mg gap between Classic Coke (34 mg) and Pepsi (38 mg) is real but trivial — about a tenth of a kopi. The bigger gap is inside the Coke line itself: Diet Coke at 46 mg carries about a third more caffeine than Classic Coke, so "diet" does not mean less of everything.

Red Bull vs Thai Red Bull vs Monster

Three products, two stories. Red Bull (the Austrian blue-silver can) and Monster are the same concentration — 32 mg per 100 ml — so the Monster can carries twice the caffeine only because it is twice the volume. Thai Red Bull, Krating Daeng, is a different product from a different company: the Thai original that the Austrian Red Bull was based on, sold in Singapore in 150 ml glass bottles (FairPrice lists Kratingdaeng 6 × 150 ml, Thailand origin, sold by Yen I). It is non-carbonated and syrupy, unlike the carbonated Austrian can, and it is not a counterfeit. This site's energy-drinks page already records that Kratingdaeng and Austrian Red Bull are separate products whose lists must not be copied across.

Sources: manufacturer figures for Red Bull and Monster (32 mg per 100 ml); Krating Daeng 50 mg per 150 ml bottle as the most-cited figure across energy-drink references (reizeclub.com, energydrinkhub.com, beastlyenergy.com, kviworldwide.com). Red Bull and Monster are panelled on this site's energy-drinks page — see energy drinks. Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest.

Takeaway: Red Bull vs Monster is a can-size story, not a strength story — both are 32 mg per 100 ml. Thai Red Bull's reputation as "stronger" does not survive the per-serving numbers for the 150 ml bottle (50 mg, against 80 mg for a 250 ml Red Bull), though the per-100-ml figures disagree across sources, so the last word belongs to the bottle's own label.

Tea — different types, different caffeine

"Tea" is not one drink. Caffeine tracks with the leaf, the amount of leaf, steep time and water temperature — and the genuinely caffeine-free ones are the herbal infusions, not green tea. Every true tea — black, green, white, oolong, pu-er, matcha, gyokuro — comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, so they all contain caffeine. The herbal infusions below do not come from that plant at all, which is why they are zero rather than low.

Sources: CNA Lifestyle, KK Women's and Children's Hospital dietitian Anthea Zee (October 2025) for chrysanthemum, bottled tea, decaffeinated tea, jasmine green tea, sencha, oolong and pu-er; Japan Standard Tables of Food Composition (MEXT, 8th revised edition, 2023 supplement) for sencha, hojicha and gyokuro per 100 g of infusion; Ayakdaş & Ağagündüz, Foods 2025;14(13):2313 for white tea; EFSA 2015 for black tea (main table above). Teh (hawker milk tea, 20–50 mg per 240 ml cup) and bubble tea / milk tea (about 40 mg, range 40–100 mg) are in the main table above. Bottled tea serving note: CNA/KKH gives 5–40 mg per 240 ml cup; the NUH dietitian table gives the same 5–40 mg range per 500 ml bottle — the range is what the sources agree on, not the serving. Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest.

Two things the table hides if you only read the numbers. First, the brewing method drives the number as much as the tea type. Green tea, sencha, is about 30 mg in a 240 ml cup brewed the ordinary way (1 teaspoon of leaf, 2–3 minutes), but the Japan Standard Tables give 20 mg per 100 g of infusion under their laboratory method — 10 g of leaf in 430 ml of water — which is a much stronger brew, and would be about 48 mg in a 240 ml cup brewed that way. Hojicha is the same story: 20 mg per 100 g of infusion (15 g leaf in 650 ml water at 90 °C, 30 seconds), about 48 mg in a 240 ml cup brewed that way. The per-100-g figures are in the table so the method stays attached to the number. Second, gyokuro is the strongest tea on this page, and it is also the smallest cup. Its 160 mg per 100 g comes from 10 g of leaf in just 60 ml of water at 60 °C for 2.5 minutes — about 96 mg in that 60 ml serving. A gyokuro cup carries as much caffeine as a coffee, in a thimbleful.

Tea bags vs loose leaf — not the same, and for black tea the bag can carry more. Per gram of the same leaf the caffeine is the same; what changes the cup is leaf cut, amount used and steep time. A 2025 study (Ayakdaş & Ağagündüz, Foods 2025;14(13):2313) measured it directly: black tea brewed 10 minutes at 100 °C gave about 39 mg of caffeine per 200 ml cup from a tea bag, against about 24 mg from loose leaf — the same 2 g of tea in both cases. For green and white tea the same study found no significant difference between bag and loose leaf. The mechanism is the leaf cut: bags hold smaller broken leaf (fannings and dust) with more surface area, so the caffeine releases faster; bags are also used once, while loose leaf is often re-steeped across several cups, spreading the caffeine out. The counterpoint: an older study (Jaganyi & Mdletshe, 2000) found the bag material itself slows extraction by about 29% — so the bag's faster release from small particles and the bag material's slowing effect pull in opposite directions, and the net result depends on the tea and the brew. And yes, two tea bags in the same cup roughly doubles the caffeine — you are doubling the leaf (a standard bag is about 2 g, and the 2025 study used 2 g per 200 ml, so two bags is about 4 g in the same water). It is approximately double rather than exactly double, because extraction is not complete in a normal 3–5 minute steep — and the second bag also doubles the tannins, so the cup gets more bitter as well as stronger. No bag-vs-loose figure is stated here for any tea type the study did not measure.

Does a longer brew mean more caffeine? Yes — but with diminishing returns. Longer brewing times significantly raised caffeine in the 2025 study above, and the CNA/KKH dietitians note that a longer steep and hotter water both raise extraction. Caffeine is highly water-soluble and comes out fastest early in the steep, so the jump from 1 minute to 3 minutes is bigger than from 3 to 10 — the extra minutes add more tannins (bitterness) than caffeine. The same principle holds for coffee: longer contact time extracts more, which is why a French press or a cold brew carries more caffeine than a fast pour-over from the same beans. If you want less caffeine without changing the tea, shorten the steep and use cooler water; re-steeping the same leaves also gives less caffeine in the later cups, because the first steep takes most of it.

Takeaway: the strongest teas (gyokuro, matcha) carry as much caffeine as a coffee, while the herbal infusions carry none — and "green tea" is not a caffeine-free category.

Safe limits — and what they mean in cups and cans

The reference point most regulators use is the European Food Safety Authority's 2015 scientific opinion on the safety of caffeine, still the standard reference. Its conclusions, for healthy people:

EFSA 2015; the US FDA cites 400 mg a day for most adults as an amount not generally associated with negative effects; Health Canada's recommended maximums are 400 mg a day for adults, 300 mg for people who are pregnant, planning to be or breastfeeding, and 2.5 mg per kg a day for children and adolescents; the American Academy of Pediatrics advises 100 mg a day as the limit for 12- to 18-year-olds. Singapore's HealthHub advises keeping caffeine moderate, preferably no more than 400 mg a day — "not more than three cups of kopi from the neighbourhood coffee shop or hawker centre".

What 400 mg looks like in a day: about four kopi at 100 mg each, or five Red Bulls, or two 500 ml Monsters (320 mg) plus a kopi, or one café Grande (330 mg) plus a cola. What 200 mg looks like in pregnancy: about two kopi, or one Monster plus a cola — which is why the pregnancy section below matters: a single large energy drink plus an ordinary coffee can already pass it. And for a 30 kg child, EFSA's 3 mg per kg is 90 mg a day — barely more than one Red Bull, and one large iced strawberry matcha (up to about 120 mg) exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics' 100 mg limit for 12- to 18-year-olds on its own.

Two cautions about the numbers themselves. First, the 400 mg figure is for healthy adults: EFSA's conclusions do not apply to people with a disease condition, people taking medicines that interact with caffeine, or people with a genetic predisposition that makes them unusually sensitive — those groups need individual advice, and this page cannot give it. Second, the limits are safety limits, not recommendations. Nothing in the evidence says you should drink 400 mg a day; it says that amount raises no safety concern for a healthy adult.

Benefits and risks, weighed honestly

Each entry says how strong the evidence is, and where it is observational only.

Alertness and performance — the strongest evidence

The best-established effect of caffeine is also the most ordinary: it improves alertness, reaction time and vigilance for several hours after a dose, particularly when you are sleep-deprived. This is shown in controlled trials, not just in population data. It also improves physical performance — the International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand concludes that caffeine improves performance in trained and untrained people, by raising adrenaline and reducing perceived exertion. One honest qualification: in a 2013 study of habitual caffeine drinkers ("faster but not smarter", Rogers et al., Psychopharmacology), caffeine sped reaction time but did not improve higher cognition, and the alertness gains appeared mainly in habitual users reversing overnight withdrawal — so part of what your morning coffee does is return you to baseline, not lift you above it.

The long-term associations — real, and not proof

Large population studies consistently link moderate coffee drinking with lower risk of several diseases. The biggest overview, the 2017 umbrella review by Poole and colleagues in the BMJ (201 meta-analyses of observational studies), found coffee was "more often associated with benefit than harm", with the largest risk reductions at three to four cups a day. The most consistent findings: type 2 diabetes — a 2014 meta-analysis of 28 prospective studies with over 1.1 million participants (Ding et al., Diabetes Care) found each additional cup a day associated with about 9% lower risk; Parkinson's disease — risk reductions of 25–40% for regular coffee drinkers across multiple meta-analyses, and decaf does not show the same association, which points at caffeine specifically; and liver disease and all-cause mortality, with the same 3–4 cups pattern. The honest caveat, stated by the BMJ review itself: this is observational evidence, and randomised trials are needed to show whether coffee itself causes these effects. Coffee drinkers may differ from non-drinkers in other ways — exercise, diet, baseline health — and coffee contains chlorogenic acids and other compounds besides caffeine, so the associations are for coffee, not for caffeine in an energy drink or a cola, where the sugar and the rest of the drink travel with it.

Sleep — the cost you do not feel

Caffeine's clearest harm is also the one people notice least. In a 2013 randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (Drake et al., Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine), twelve healthy sleepers took 400 mg of caffeine at bedtime, 3 hours before bed, or 6 hours before bed. Every timing significantly disturbed sleep against placebo — and at 6 hours, the objective sleep recording showed total sleep cut by about an hour and deep slow-wave sleep suppressed, while the participants' own ratings said they had slept fine. The 6-hour figure is where the common advice to stop caffeine at least 6 hours before bed comes from, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine cites this trial for it. But 6 hours is a floor, not a guarantee: a 2023 dose-response meta-analysis of 24 studies (Gardiner et al.) put the cutoff at which a standard 107 mg cup's sleep impact drops to near zero at about 8.8 hours before bed, and about 13.2 hours for a 217 mg pre-workout dose. For a slow metaboliser, an afternoon cup is an evening dose. The practical rule: stop caffeine by early afternoon, and earlier still if an afternoon cup has ever cost you a night.

Anxiety and blood pressure

Caffeine can raise blood pressure for a few hours after a dose, and can increase jitteriness, restlessness and anxiety — especially in sensitive people, and at doses above about 300 mg a day the risk of anxiety symptoms rises. People with an anxiety disorder, a heart condition or high blood pressure should talk to their doctor about caffeine rather than deciding from a guide, and that is not a hedge: EFSA's 2015 review looked at blood pressure, sleep and anxiety precisely because the effects are real at ordinary doses, even though the same review found no safety concern for healthy adults within the limits above.

Pregnancy — the limit is conservative, and the evidence is debated

Caffeine crosses the placenta, and the fetus has not developed the liver enzyme (CYP1A2) needed to metabolise it — while the mother's own clearance slows dramatically as pregnancy goes on, with the half-life reaching up to about 15 hours in the third trimester. So the fetus is exposed to a given dose for much longer than the mother's half-life would suggest. The guidance is consistent across organisations — ACOG, WHO and EFSA all put the limit at 200 mg a day — but the evidence behind it is genuinely debated, and this page says so. At high intakes the associations are clearest: a 2008 study of 663 pregnant women (Weng et al., American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology) found women consuming 200 mg or more a day had double the miscarriage risk of non-consumers (12.5% against 6.3%), and multiple large prospective studies link intakes above 300–400 mg a day with increased miscarriage and low birth weight. At moderate intakes (100–200 mg a day) most large studies do not show consistent, statistically significant associations — but a 2020 systematic review in BMC Medicine (over 50 studies) found a dose-response with risks increasing even below 200 mg a day, and some researchers argue no absolutely safe threshold has been established. The 200 mg limit is best read as a conservative level at which the weight of evidence suggests risk is low — not a level at which harm has been proven, and not a guarantee of zero risk. No randomised trial can settle it, because pregnant women cannot ethically be randomised to high caffeine. Anyone pregnant should discuss caffeine with their doctor, not with a shopping guide.

Energy drinks — a different issue from a morning coffee

An energy drink is not coffee in a can. Three things make it a separate subject. First, the dose arrives all at once. A 500 ml Monster is 160 mg of caffeine in a single can, drunk quickly — close to EFSA's 200 mg single-dose figure in one serving, and two cans pass the whole day's 400 mg. Second, the sugar travels with it. The sugar-sweetened versions carry about 11 g of sugar per 100 ml (Red Bull Classic, seller description) — a 250 ml can is about 27 g of sugar — and the site's energy-drinks page panels Monster Original at 50 kcal per 100 ml against 3 kcal for the zero-sugar versions. The sugar-free versions avoid the sugar but not the caffeine: a zero-sugar Monster is still 160 mg in a 500 ml can. Third, they are marketed to young people. The NUH/Straits Times article (August 2024) describes energy drinks appealing to Gen Zs "looking for quick, effective ways to power through their busy schedules", with students drinking two cups of coffee and two cans of energy drink a day, and young people mixing energy drinks with coffee or alcohol "to get an extra buzz", believing it helps them stay alert or "high" for longer. The combination with alcohol is the specific danger: caffeine masks alcohol's drowsiness without lowering blood alcohol — the "wide-awake drunk" — so people drink more, stay out longer, and take more risks. The US FDA ruled in 2010 that adding caffeine to pre-mixed alcoholic beverages was unsafe, and manufacturers reformulated; mixing them yourself in a glass is the same combination without the label. In the EU, drinks over 150 mg of caffeine per litre must carry the warning "High caffeine content. Not recommended for children and pregnant or breastfeeding women". Singapore has no equivalent warning requirement and no maximum caffeine limit in beverages — the Ministry of Health has said the Food Regulations impose no maximum limit on caffeine added to beverages, and has discussed monitoring overseas moves such as youth sales restrictions, but no restriction exists here. EFSA's 2015 review also looked at the other "energy blend" ingredients and found that taurine (4,000 mg per litre) and glucuronolactone (2,400 mg per litre) at commercial concentrations do not affect the safety of a 200 mg caffeine dose — the caffeine is the active ingredient, and the rest of the blend is not the part that matters.

Hidden caffeine — where it hides, and how to count it

Caffeine counts toward the same daily total whatever it arrives in. These are the places shoppers miss, with the figure where one is verified and "not verified" where it is not.

Panadol Extra — a medicine, not a food

Each Panadol Extra caplet contains 65 mg of caffeine alongside 500 mg of paracetamol (Watsons Singapore listing; Panadol's own product pages and Summary of Product Characteristics). A standard dose of two caplets is 130 mg — about a third of the 400 mg daily limit — and the leaflet itself warns to avoid excessive caffeine from coffee, tea and canned drinks while taking it. This is a counting point, not a food example: it is a real way people overshoot the limit while also drinking coffee, and it is the reason the worked example in the practical checks below includes a headache tablet.

Chocolate — small, and not zero

Cocoa contains caffeine, so chocolate does too — in small amounts. USDA FoodData Central averages: dark chocolate 70–85% about 80 mg per 100 g, about 20 mg in a 25 g serving; milk chocolate about 20 mg per 100 g, about 5 mg per 25 g; white chocolate essentially 0; unsweetened cocoa powder about 12 mg per tablespoon; a cup of hot cocoa about 5–10 mg. One bar will not move your total much, but three squares of dark chocolate after dinner are about 20 mg you probably did not count. Keep caffeine distinct from theobromine: theobromine is the dominant stimulant in cocoa, at 5–10 times the caffeine, but it is not caffeine — it is a different compound with a milder, longer effect, and it is not what the 400 mg limit counts.

Matcha — more than green tea, because you eat the leaf

Matcha is ground whole tea leaf, so it carries more caffeine than steeped green tea, where the leaves are removed. CNA Lifestyle (KK Women's and Children's Hospital dietitian Anthea Zee, October 2025): a standard matcha drink uses about 2 g of matcha powder, about 70 mg of caffeine; an iced strawberry matcha can reach about 120 mg per serving; matcha ice cream carries 10–20 mg per half cup. Steeped green tea is about 30 mg per 240 ml cup by comparison. The adolescent angle matters here: the American Academy of Pediatrics limit is 100 mg a day for 12- to 18-year-olds, so one large strawberry matcha can exceed it on its own — and matcha is marketed to exactly that age group.

Tea, steeped — and the one that has none

Same CNA piece: bottled tea 5–40 mg per 240 ml cup; jasmine green tea 20–40 mg; oolong 30–50 mg; pu-er 30–70 mg; decaffeinated tea up to 12 mg per cup. And the contrast that catches people out: chrysanthemum tea has 0 mg — it is not made from the tea plant at all, so not every drink called "tea" has caffeine. The same applies on this site's pages: the kombucha page notes residual caffeine from the tea base in most kombuchas, while Fizzicle's Hibiscus Jun and Calmboocha are stated caffeine-free by the brand.

Bubble tea and milk tea — the caffeine is real, the sugar is bigger

This site's bubble-tea page panels kit drinks at about 40 mg of caffeine per drink (retailer description), and a Singapore hypertension specialist (Kaizen Medical, Dr Adrian Mondry) gives milk tea and bubble tea as 40–100 mg. The NUH dietitian's point stands: bubble tea uses tea as its base, so it contains caffeine, but less than coffee — and the pearls, syrup and sugar add calories and weight-gain risk on top, which is the bigger load in the cup. The milk-tea page panels Pokka Milk Tea, Lipton Milk Tea and the instant 3-in-1 milk teas — see milk tea.

Supplements and pre-workout — caffeine under plant names

The US National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements, warns that many weight-loss, energy and pre-workout supplements contain caffeine under plant names — guarana, kola (cola) nut, yerba mate, green coffee bean extract, green tea extract — and some labels do not declare a caffeine amount at all, only the herbs. A pre-workout scoop is often the largest single hidden dose: the pre-workout dose in the 2023 Gardiner sleep meta-analysis was 217 mg. Supplements are not a category on this site, so no product is named here — the point is label-reading: if the label lists guarana, kola nut or green coffee bean extract and no caffeine amount, you cannot know the dose from the label, and that is itself the warning.

Guarana — the caffeine that does not say "caffeine"

Guarana seeds carry roughly 4–7% caffeine by weight, against about 1–2% for coffee beans (Clifford and Ramirez-Martinez 1990, as cited in the literature) — about twice the caffeine of the bean, gram for gram. Monster lists guarana seed extract alongside caffeine in its Singapore lists, which is why the can's total caffeine figure is the one to use: a drink listing both caffeine and guarana may contain caffeine from both sources. And the example that prompted this section, from Stephen himself, read off the pack on 11 November 2026: the Sambazon açaí 4-pack (frozen açaí smoothie packs, sold in Singapore supermarkets) lists guarana in its ingredients — and the word "caffeine" does not appear on the pack. Sambazon is not yet panelled on any category page (frozen fruit is queued category 141, not yet built), so this is an example, not a panel — and no mg figure is stated for it, because none was verified. It is the cleanest illustration on this site of the point: a non-energy-drink product carrying caffeine that a shopper would miss unless they know guarana is a caffeine source.

Also on this site's pages

Cola — Coca-Cola Classic lists caffeine last on the Singapore brand site — see soft drinks and cola. Energy bars and protein drinks — the energy-bars page lists Quest Coffee Milkshake in seen-but-not-verified (no Singapore pack list retrieved, so no figure is quoted), and the protein-drinks page notes protea's clear whey tea drinks use tea as the base, which brings caffeine with it. Kombucha — residual caffeine from the tea base, except the two Fizzicle lines the brand states are caffeine-free. Milo — 2.2–4.8 mg per 20 g serve, from the cocoa (see the table). Caffeine shampoo is deliberately not included here: it is topical, not dietary intake, and does not count toward the daily total.

Decaf, briefly

Decaffeination happens before roasting, on green coffee beans, and there are four commercial methods: Swiss Water (water and activated carbon filters — no chemical solvents), supercritical CO₂ (pressurised carbon dioxide — no chemical solvents), ethyl acetate (often called "sugarcane" or "natural" decaf — a solvent that occurs naturally in fruit), and methylene chloride (the traditional "European" method — a synthetic solvent, with the US FDA allowing residues up to 10 parts per million; roasting at over 200 °C drives off nearly all of it, since the solvent boils at about 40 °C). None of them removes everything: the US standard requires at least 97% of the caffeine to be removed, and the FDA puts brewed decaf at 2 to 15 mg per 8 oz cup, against about 95 mg for regular. Europe defines decaffeinated coffee extract as no more than 0.3% caffeine in the dry matter. So "decaf" means low, not zero — ten cups of decaf can add up to a cup of regular coffee, and if you are tracking a daily limit for medical, pregnancy or sleep reasons, count decaf as low, not zero.

Singapore context

Kopi and teh. The kopitiam order is a code: kopi is coffee with condensed milk; kopi-o is black coffee with sugar; kopi-C is coffee with evaporated milk and sugar; kosong means no sugar; peng means iced. Teh follows the same code with tea. The condensed-and-evaporated-milk page explains the difference that matters here: sweetened condensed milk is concentrated milk with a large amount of sugar added, evaporated milk is concentrated milk with about 60% of the water removed and no added sugar — so kopi and kopi-C are different drinks, and kopi-o kosong is the only one of the four with no sugar and no milk. The caffeine is the same either way: a 240 ml kopi carries 80–120 mg (NUH table), and the robusta beans often used in local kopi carry about 1.7–2% caffeine against 1–1.2% for arabica.

Nutri-Grade does not grade caffeine. Singapore's mandatory front-of-pack grading for drinks grades sugar and saturated fat per 100 ml only — Grade A is 1 g of sugar or less per 100 ml (and no sweetener), B is more than 1 g up to 5 g, C more than 5 g up to 10 g, D more than 10 g. Caffeine is not in the calculation at all. So a sugar-sweetened energy drink is grade D on sugar — Coca-Cola Classic is grade D at 10.6 g of sugar per 100 ml (Singapore brand site panel) — while a zero-sugar energy drink can be grade B on sugar grounds (0 g sugar, sweeteners present so not A) while still carrying 160 mg of caffeine in a 500 ml can. The grade tells you about sugar, not stimulation, and a good grade is not a low-caffeine drink. The idea of a Nutri-Grade for caffeine was raised in the NUH/Straits Times piece — Health Minister Ong Ye Kung was quoted on it — but no such grading exists, and countries vary on whether manufacturers must even disclose whether the caffeine used is natural or synthetic.

What Singapore does and does not require. Singapore's Food Regulations impose no maximum limit on caffeine added to beverages (Ministry of Health, parliamentary reply), and there is no youth sales restriction on energy drinks — the Ministry has discussed monitoring overseas moves, but nothing is in force. Caffeine must be listed as an ingredient on the pack, and most energy-drink cans print the caffeine in mg on the can itself — but it is not on the nutrition panel, and the site's own energy-drinks page found no mg amounts in the FairPrice ingredient sections retrieved for the panelled products. The exact regulation number for the labelling requirement was not verified in this pass and is not quoted here — the Food Regulations themselves are the authoritative source, and this is a pre-publish check.

Practical checks

Three checks, in order:

1. Add up a day, not a cup. Take a normal day and add every source, including the ones that are not drinks. A worked example, using only figures from this page: a kopi in the morning (about 100 mg) + a Red Bull in the afternoon (80 mg) + a cola with lunch (about 35 mg) + two Panadol Extra for a headache (130 mg) = about 345 mg — close to the 400 mg limit without a second coffee, and over the 200 mg pregnancy limit before lunch. The point is not that 345 mg is dangerous for a healthy adult — it is within the limit — but that four ordinary items, none of them extreme, add up to nearly all of it. Count the medicines and the chocolate too.
2. Check the can, not the panel. Caffeine in mg is printed on most energy-drink cans, but it is not on the nutrition panel, and for kopi, teh and bubble tea it is not printed anywhere — the hawker stall has no label at all. The ingredient list names caffeine but gives no amount, so a list that says "caffeine" tells you it is there and nothing about how much. If the can or pack you hold does not state a mg figure, you cannot tell from the label — use the ranges in the table above, and treat the top of the range as the planning figure.
3. Check the clock. Six hours before bed is the floor (Drake 2013), and about 8–9 hours for a standard cup is the fuller figure (Gardiner 2023) — longer for a large dose, and longer still if you are a slow metaboliser, on the pill, or pregnant. If an afternoon cup has ever cost you a night, the cutoff that fits you is earlier than the one that fits the average. And if you want to cut down, taper rather than stopping cold: withdrawal starts within 12–24 hours and peaks at 24–48 hours, so a sudden stop on a Monday is a headache by Tuesday.

Pages where these checks are most useful: instant coffee, ready-to-drink coffee, bottled tea, energy drinks, soft drinks and cola, malted chocolate drinks, chocolate bars, milk tea, bubble tea drinks, condensed and evaporated milk (for the kopi code), energy bars, protein drinks and kombucha, plus the sugar and salt guide (Nutri-Grade thresholds and the fructose in sweetened caffeinated drinks) and the gout and purines guide (coffee and gout, and the same "association is not proof" point).

What this page is not

• Not a verdict on any drink, and not a ranking. The table is ordered by caffeine per serving, which is a fact about the drink — not a grade. A high-caffeine drink is not a bad drink and a low-caffeine drink is not a good one; the same 160 mg is a problem at 4 pm and unremarkable at 8 am.
• Not medical advice. If you are pregnant, have a heart condition, high blood pressure, an anxiety disorder, or take medication that interacts with caffeine, the decision belongs with your doctor, not with a shopping guide. Do not stop or change medication on the basis of this page.
• Not a complete list of caffeinated products. It covers the drinks and foods with verifiable figures that recur on this site's Singapore pages. A product you meet that is not here has not been judged — it has not been covered yet. In particular, no mg figure is given for any panelled ready-to-drink coffee, because none was retrieved — that gap is stated on the page, not filled in.