Coffee vs. Tea Caffeine: What Is the Difference?

Coffee typically contains more caffeine per serving than brewed black or green tea, but bean dose, tea type, steep time and serving size create real variation.
Brewed coffee in a warm still-life setting
Quick take

Coffee typically contains more caffeine per serving than brewed black or green tea, but bean dose, tea type, steep time and serving size create real variation.

Quick take: Health Canada lists brewed coffee at about 135 mg of caffeine per 237 mL serving and brewed black or green tea at about 30 to 50 mg for the same volume. Those are averages, not universal values.

Why coffee usually has more caffeine per cup

Coffee brewing typically uses a relatively large mass of roasted seed material compared with the amount of tea leaf used for a cup. Coffee species also accumulate caffeine differently from tea plants. The result is that a normal brewed coffee usually lands higher than a normal brewed black or green tea serving.

Why tea still varies

Tea type, leaf amount, water temperature and steep time all affect extraction. A strong black tea steeped for a long time can contain more caffeine than a lightly brewed green tea.

Herbal infusions are a separate category. Many contain no tea plant at all and may contain little or no caffeine unless another caffeinated ingredient is present.

Why this is useful for Urban Calm

Urban Calm sells both coffee and loose-leaf tea, so the Learning Centre can help customers choose based on the beverage they actually want rather than treating caffeine as a good-or-bad label.

Coffee is the higher-caffeine default. Tea can offer a lower-caffeine route depending on the blend. The exact product still matters.

The useful takeaway

Coffee and tea both contain caffeine, but typical brewed coffee starts higher. Use serving size and the actual product instead of assuming every tea is low and every coffee is identical.

For more context, see How Much Caffeine Is in Coffee?.

Source

Health Canada: Caffeine in Foods

Explore the drinks behind the comparison

Shop Urban Calm Specialty Coffee or explore our loose leaf teas.

How we build our guides

Urban Calm combines published mushroom research, ingredient documentation, specialty-coffee standards and traceable origin information to make the whole cup easier to understand. We distinguish traditional use from emerging human research and update guides as the category evolves.

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Ready to compare the coffee behind the guide?

See all four Urban Calm mushroom coffee roasts, or use the blend finder if you want help narrowing the choice.

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