How much caffeine is in matcha?

A 3g bowl of matcha holds roughly 70mg to 90mg of caffeine. A typical cup of filter coffee holds 90mg to 110mg. So one bowl sits a little below a coffee, and closer to it than most people expect.

That is an average, not a promise. Published measurements put matcha between about 19mg and 44mg of caffeine per gram, which means a 3g bowl can land anywhere from 57mg to 132mg depending on the tea and how heavily you dose it.

Three things move the number. The harvest: first-flush leaf picked in late April and early May carries more caffeine than later pickings. The shade: covering the plants before harvest raises both caffeine and L-theanine. And the dose: we use 3g a bowl, and a heaped scoop can push that closer to 4g.

Hikari and Shōgun are first harvest, which puts them at the higher end of that range rather than the lower. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume matcha is a low-caffeine drink. It is not.

Hikari, Shōgun and Okumidori are all drunk at 3g, which puts a bowl at roughly 70mg to 90mg, nearer a coffee than most people expect. Hōjicha is roasted rather than milled green, and roasting drives the caffeine down, which is why it is the one people reach for after dinner.

With matcha you drink the whole leaf as powder rather than steeping it and pouring the leaf away, so you take in everything that was in it, including L-theanine. L-theanine occurs naturally in tea and shade-growing increases it.

We are not going to tell you how that will make you feel. People describe the difference in very different ways, and the honest answer is that the research is still thin. What we can say is that the caffeine figure alone does not explain why a bowl of matcha and a cup of coffee feel unalike.

Use less. Matcha is one of the few caffeinated drinks where the dose is entirely in your hands, because you are measuring the powder yourself rather than accepting whatever a machine pours.

Dropping from 3g to 2g takes roughly a third off. Switching to Hōjicha takes off considerably more. Neither requires giving anything up.