Matcha Latte Caffeine Calculator

How much caffeine is in a matcha latte?

Caffeine in a matcha latte comes only from the matcha powder. Milk, ice, and sweetener don't add or remove any. So the question is really how many grams of matcha are in the cup.

Ippodo Tea's latte recipe uses 1.5 teaspoons, about 3 g of matcha. With published lab values of 18.9 to 44.4 mg of caffeine per gram, that latte contains roughly 57 to 133 mg. Using a mid-range estimate of about 30 mg/g for a typical latte-grade matcha gives around 90 mg, close to an 8 oz cup of brewed coffee (about 95 mg per USDA data).

Café lattes vary a lot

Cafés rarely publish grams of matcha per drink, and many use pre-sweetened matcha blends where sugar takes up part of each scoop. Two things to watch:

• Size: a 16 oz latte may use one and a half or two times the powder of a 12 oz
• Blend: a "matcha powder" that lists sugar first contains less actual tea, and less caffeine, per gram

If a café lists a caffeine figure, trust that over any estimate. If not, ask how many scoops go in and assume about 2 g per level teaspoon-sized scoop.

Grade and caffeine

Latte-grade matcha is usually a lower grade than what you would whisk with water alone. A 2025 study comparing three matcha grades found caffeine dropped from the top grade to food grade, so a culinary-grade latte can have noticeably less caffeine than the same grams of ceremonial matcha. The calculator defaults to the premium estimate (30 mg/g); switch the grade to see the difference.

Hot vs iced

Iced lattes are made with the same matcha whisked in hot water and poured over milk and ice, so caffeine is identical for the same grams. Some people use a little extra matcha in iced drinks to make up for dilution, which raises caffeine proportionally.

Fitting it into your day

Two 3 g lattes at about 90 mg each add up to around 180 mg, well under the FDA's 400 mg daily reference for most healthy adults. If you also drink coffee or soda, add those in the "other caffeine" box. Caffeine has a half-life of roughly five hours, so an afternoon latte can still be partly in your system at bedtime; the caffeine half-life calculator shows how much.

Sources

• Ippodo Tea — matcha latte recipe
• Kochman et al. (2020), Health Benefits and Chemical Composition of Matcha Green Tea, Molecules
• Toniolo et al. (2025), Characterization of Different Grades of Matcha Tea, Plants
• USDA FoodData Central — brewed coffee (FDC 171890)
• FDA — Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?
• Institute of Medicine (2001), Pharmacology of Caffeine — NCBI Bookshelf