At four of the five biggest UK coffee chains, a medium americano has more caffeine than a 500 ml can of Monster, and two to four times what is in a Red Bull. The energy drink has the branding. The coffee has the dose.
Most people have the ranking backwards, and it matters, because the drink you are not counting is usually the one pushing your daily total past where you think it sits.
Contents
- The numbers, side by side
- Why the ranking surprises people
- The 150 mg line and the 2027 ban
- What this means for your daily total
- The part that actually matters
The numbers, side by side
Sorted by caffeine, coffee and energy drinks mixed together. Look at how they interleave.
| Drink | Caffeine | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Costa Americano, large | 400 mg | Coffee |
| Costa Americano, medium | 325 mg | Coffee |
| Pret filter coffee, 355 ml | 271 mg | Coffee |
| Starbucks cold brew, Grande | 265 mg | Coffee |
| Greggs Americano, 382 ml | 257 mg | Coffee |
| Costa Flat White | 241 mg | Coffee |
| Costa Americano, small | 200 mg | Coffee |
| Caffè Nero Americano, 355 ml | 191 mg | Coffee |
| Pret Americano, 355 ml | 180 mg | Coffee |
| Monster Energy, 500 ml can | 160 mg | Energy drink |
| Prime Energy, UK can | 140 mg | Energy drink |
| Mug of instant coffee | about 100 mg | Coffee |
| Starbucks Americano, Tall | 89 mg | Coffee |
| Red Bull, 250 ml can | 80 mg | Energy drink |
| Coca-Cola, 330 ml can | 34 mg | Soft drink |
Costa and Starbucks figures come from their own UK caffeine guides for 2026. Pret, Caffè Nero and Greggs don't publish caffeine figures, so we used the ones they gave Which? in August 2026. Monster, Prime and Coca-Cola are from Which? (2023), and Red Bull from Red Bull's UK site. Coffee in a real cup still varies with the beans and the barista, so every number here is an estimate. We went through the chains drink by drink in how much caffeine is in high street coffee.
Why the ranking surprises people
Three things are going on.
Marketing. Energy drinks are sold on caffeine. It is on the front of the can, it is the entire proposition, and the packaging is designed to look like a stimulant. Coffee is sold on flavour, provenance and ritual. Nobody puts 241 mg on the side of a flat white.
Volume. A 250 ml Red Bull is a small drink. A large takeaway coffee can be 400 ml or more of a liquid brewed to be strong, and chain espresso drinks are often built on two or three shots without anyone announcing it. Costa's small Americano lands around 200 mg, which is the Food Standards Agency's guidance figure for a single serving, in a cup most people would call modest.
Counting. People count energy drinks because they feel like a decision. Coffee gets poured, handed over, refilled and forgotten.
The 150 mg line, and the law arriving in 2027
There is now a regulatory line in the sand, and it says something useful about where the strength actually sits.
In July 2026 the government confirmed a ban on selling high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s in England, covering shops, vending machines and websites. It is expected to come into force in April 2027, subject to Parliamentary approval (GOV.UK, 2026). The announcement cites around 100,000 children in England drinking high-caffeine energy drinks every day.
The threshold that defines an affected drink is more than 150 mg of caffeine per litre, which works out at 15 mg per 100 ml.
Run high street coffee against that line and the result is awkward. Even the mildest americano in the table, a Starbucks Tall, works out at about 25 mg per 100 ml. A medium Costa americano is closer to 95.
The law targets a category and a marketing style, and the concentration test it uses would catch most of what a coffee shop sells if the same rule were applied there.
None of which makes coffee dangerous. It makes the point that the caffeine in your day does not care which aisle it came from.
What this means for your daily total
FSA guidance for healthy adults is 400 mg a day, and 200 mg in a single serving. Those are the only two numbers worth carrying around. In pregnancy the advice is 200 mg a day across everything you drink, energy drinks included. We looked at the evidence behind the 200 mg pregnancy limit in a separate post.
A fairly ordinary day:
- A medium Costa americano on the way in (325 mg)
- A Pret americano mid-morning (180 mg)
- A Red Bull with lunch (80 mg)
That is 585 mg, close to six mugs of instant, before anything unusual has happened. Nobody in that sequence feels like a heavy user, and two of the three items were coffee.
This is where the counting matters more than the category. Adding up an entire day, including tea, cola and anything taken before the gym, tends to produce a number people did not expect. Our caffeine calculator does the arithmetic and also shows how much is still circulating at bedtime, which is usually the more uncomfortable figure of the two.
The part that actually matters
Switching from an energy drink to coffee is not a reduction. Judging by the table above it is often an increase, and the swap people describe as cleaning up their intake frequently raises it.
What changes anything is the total coming down, in steps small enough that you do not spend two days with a headache. Withdrawal begins 12 to 24 hours after your last dose and peaks between 20 and 51 hours, which we covered in the caffeine withdrawal timeline.
The Uncaffed 30-day reset kit runs that taper on a fixed schedule so it does not depend on you estimating anything:
- Reset steps down by capsule count. 160 mg a day, then 120, then 80, then 40, then none, holding each level for five days.
- Flow runs alongside at a constant dose for all 30 days with no added caffeine.
Preorders are open. Kits ship by 30 October. There is more on how the steps were chosen on the science page.
Start by finding out what your number actually is. Most people are wrong about it, and they are usually wrong in the same direction.
