How much caffeine is in matcha?

A standard 1 tsp (2 g) serving of matcha has about 65–70 mg of caffeine. Matcha vs coffee, black tea, green tea, and latte amounts, with a calculator.

By PGP Iyer · July 28, 2026 · Updated September 21, 2026 · 7 min read

A standard serving of matcha — 1 teaspoon (about 2 grams) whisked into 2–3 oz of water — contains roughly 65–70 mg of caffeine. Depending on grade and how much powder you use, a serving ranges from about 60 to 80 mg. That's more than a cup of steeped green tea (~35 mg) but less than an 8 oz coffee (~95 mg).

Matcha caffeine by serving size

Caffeine scales directly with how much matcha powder goes into the bowl or cup. The three servings below cover the range you'll actually run into — a thin usucha bowl, a standard scoop, and a café-strength latte:

Cafés vary a lot here — some use closer to 1 tsp for a latte, others go as high as 2.5 tsp. If caffeine matters to you, it's worth asking how much powder goes into the drink.

Matcha vs coffee, green tea, and espresso

Use the calculator above to compare any drink by the cup or across a full day, or check the static reference table below — the same figures the calculator uses:

Two things stand out. First, matcha and espresso land in almost the same range per serving — a whisked bowl of matcha is closer to a shot of espresso than to a cup of steeped tea. Second, a matcha latte's 2 tsp pour puts it closer to a small brewed coffee than to a single serving of matcha.

Matcha vs black tea caffeine

Per standard serving, matcha has more caffeine than black tea: a 1 tsp (2 g) bowl of matcha runs about 65–70 mg (60–80 mg), while an 8 oz cup of steeped black tea runs about 50 mg (40–70 mg). The reason is the serving basis, not the plant. With matcha you drink the whole shade-grown leaf, stone-ground and suspended in 2–3 oz of water, so every milligram of caffeine in the powder ends up in the bowl. With black tea you drink an infusion and discard the leaves, so you get only what a few minutes of steeping pulled out.

That is also why a cup-to-cup claim is sensitive to dose. Drop to a thin half-teaspoon bowl and matcha (~35 mg) lands below a typical cup of black tea; go to a 2 tsp latte and it is roughly double. On the other side, a black tea brewed strong with more leaf and a longer steep, the way chai concentrate or Thai tea is made, can reach the top of its 40–70 mg band or a little past it. Gram for gram, matcha carries more caffeine into the cup because you consume the leaf; which drink has more in your cup comes down to how much powder you whisk versus how hard you steep. For the black-tea side of this comparison, see green tea vs black tea.

Why matcha caffeine numbers vary online

Search around and you'll find matcha caffeine figures ranging from under 20 mg to well over 100 mg for what's described as a single serving. The gap usually comes down to what's being measured, not a real disagreement about the tea. Some sources report caffeine per gram of dry powder; others report it per prepared cup, which depends entirely on how much water or milk the powder is whisked or steamed into. Some quote a 1/2 tsp thin-tea pour; others quote a 2 tsp latte-strength scoop. Agricultural products like tea also naturally produce a range rather than one fixed number, since caffeine content shifts with growing conditions, harvest timing, and how finely the leaf is ground.

This page standardizes on one convention throughout: caffeine per teaspoon of matcha powder used, cross-checked against the published tea-caffeine sources cited below. The comparator tool above and every table on this page pull from that same dataset, so the numbers won't drift depending on which section you're reading.

Matcha, caffeine, and L-theanine

Matcha is whole, stone-ground tea leaf, so a serving also carries a meaningfully higher dose of L-theanine — an amino acid concentrated in tea — than the same amount of caffeine delivers on its own. Published research has looked at how L-theanine and caffeine together affect measures of attention. Kelly and colleagues (2008, Journal of Nutrition) reported that the combination of L-theanine and caffeine was associated with changes in alpha-band brain activity and attention-task performance compared with either compound alone. That's a description of what the study measured, not a promise about how any individual cup will make you feel — responses to caffeine and L-theanine vary by person, tolerance, and how much you drink.

How to control your matcha caffeine

If you want to land at a specific caffeine level, the lever is powder-to-water ratio, not the tea itself:

• Usucha (thin tea): about 2 g (1 tsp) of matcha whisked into roughly 2 oz (60 ml) of water — the everyday bowl, and the baseline for the ~65–70 mg figure above.
• Koicha (thick tea): about 4 g of matcha whisked into roughly 1 oz (30 ml) of water — double the powder in less water, so roughly double the caffeine per serving.
• Grade: ceremonial and culinary grades come from the same shade-grown leaf; caffeine differences between grades are small relative to the effect of how much powder you scoop.
• Measuring tool: a bamboo chashaku scoop, a measuring spoon, and a kitchen scale can each land on a different actual gram weight for "1 tsp" of matcha, since sifted powder is less dense than packed powder. A scale is the most repeatable way to hit a target dose.

See our full breakdown of matcha-to-water ratio for gram-by-gram measurements across usucha, koicha, and lattes.

Matcha caffeine in recipes

Once matcha moves from a bowl into a latte, smoothie, or baked good, the caffeine math is still just the powder amount: matcha itself doesn't gain or lose caffeine when it's mixed with milk, blended with fruit, or baked into batter. A few common formats, using the same 1 tsp (2 g) ≈ 65–70 mg reference:

• Iced or hot latte: most recipes and café pours use 1–2 tsp of matcha per drink, so figure roughly 65–130 mg depending on how strong it's made.
• Smoothie: a typical home recipe calling for 1 tsp of matcha adds about the same ~65–70 mg found in a bowl of usucha, spread across a larger volume of liquid.
• Baked goods (cookies, muffins, mochi): a batch made with 1–2 tsp of matcha divides that total caffeine across however many servings the recipe yields, so caffeine per slice or cookie is usually well under a full-serving dose.

Is matcha too much caffeine?

For most adults, a single 1 tsp serving of matcha (~65–70 mg) or even a 2 tsp latte (~130 mg) is a modest share of the general daily reference published for healthy adults — the U.S. FDA has cited about 400 mg per day as a level not generally associated with dangerous, negative effects for most healthy adults. That reference covers total caffeine intake across everything you drink in a day, not any single cup, so it's worth counting coffee, tea, and other caffeinated drinks together rather than matcha in isolation. People who are pregnant, caffeine-sensitive, or managing a health condition should talk to a healthcare provider about what caffeine level is appropriate for them.

For more on matcha itself — how it's grown, graded, and prepared — see our complete matcha guide. To see how matcha stacks up against steeped green tea beyond caffeine, see matcha vs green tea.

This describes published research and general information, not medical or dietary advice.