Caffeine calculator

Almost nobody gets their caffeine from one place. Put in what you actually have in a day and see the total against the amount health authorities advise as a daily maximum.

The milligram figures are typical amounts and every one of them is editable. Pre-workouts in particular range from 100mg to over 400mg a scoop, so use the number on your own label if you have it.

Caffeine is the easy total. Your label has fourteen others.

Caffeine is the one ingredient people already think about across products. The same problem applies to everything else on the panel: two products supplying the same nutrient, a combined total clearing a published upper limit, or a long ingredient list where most of it sits below the amount any trial used.

Verdict reads the whole panel from a photograph and adds up every total across everything you take. It reports the arithmetic and names the source of every figure. It doesn't tell you what to take.

Where 400mg comes from

400mg a day is the figure advised for healthy adults on both sides of the Atlantic, by the European Food Safety Authority and by the US Food and Drug Administration. It is the whole day, from every source, not per drink.

EFSA also gives a single dose figure of about 200mg, which is the one a pre-workout can walk into on its own. A two scoop serving at 200mg a scoop is that entire figure in one drink, before any coffee.

Two groups have a lower number. 200mg a day is the amount advised during pregnancy, and people who metabolise caffeine slowly feel a normal dose far more strongly. Sensitivity varies enough between individuals that the daily maximum is a ceiling rather than a target.

What the tool does not know

Timing. Caffeine has a half life of roughly five hours, so a 200mg dose at 4pm still has around 100mg in you at 9pm. Two drinks totalling 300mg are a different experience spread across a day than taken together.

Your label. Brewing strength, cup size and formulation all move these numbers, which is why every field here is editable. If your tub states a figure, that figure beats the default.

For a single ingredient against the range used in published trials, use the dose checker. For why 800mg of beta-alanine is not a dose, see that post.