How Many Cups You Get From a Bag of Coffee (and What It Actually Costs)
The bag says 12 ounces. The bag does not say how many cups that is, because the answer depends on how much coffee you put in the cup, and that number is usually a guess.
So here is the honest version, with the weights, the doses, and the cost per cup for every size we sell.
We have run this math for our own catalog more than once, because the number on the bag is the one people actually compare, and it is not the number that tells you what a bag costs you.
Start with the weight, not the size on the bag
Ounces and pounds are weight, so start there and convert to grams once. Everything after this point is division.
- 12 oz = 340 g
- 1 lb = 454 g
- 2 lb = 907 g
- 5 lb = 2,268 g
- 12 lb = 5,443 g
Those are the five coffee sizes in the catalog. We sell a handful of teas and a matcha as well, and we will do those at the end.
How much coffee is actually one cup
Here is where the guesswork usually lives, and it is worth getting specific because a two-gram error per cup is a fifteen percent error on a bag.
Pour-over, one cup: 15 g. That is a little under two tablespoons.
Drip machine, one cup: 16 g to 20 g, depending on the machine and how strong you like it. Most people scoop, so most people land around 15 g.
French press, one full pot (about 500 ml): 30 g.
Espresso, one double shot: 18 g in the basket, which comes out as roughly 36 g to 44 g of liquid.
Cold brew concentrate: 60 g to 70 g per liter of concentrate.
Moka pot, the small three-cup size: about 17 g.
Now — and this is the part that catches people — a level tablespoon of whole coffee beans is about 5 g. Ground coffee packs tighter, so a tablespoon of ground coffee is closer to 6 g. If you have been using two tablespoons per cup, you have been brewing about 10 g of coffee, and your 12 oz bag has been giving you 34 cups rather than 22.
We wrote about dose in more detail in how much coffee is one cup, actually, and the short version is: the scoop, not the bag, is the variable that changes your cost per cup the most.
The math for every bag we sell
Three assumptions: 15 g of coffee per cup, whole bean, and no waste. Cost per cup is the bag price divided by the cups.
| Bag | Weight | Cups at 15 g | Price | Cost per cup | |---|---|---|---|---| | 12 oz | 340 g | 22 | $24.99 | $1.14 | | 1 lb | 454 g | 30 | $29.99 | $1.00 | | 2 lb | 907 g | 60 | $49.99 | $0.83 | | 5 lb | 2,268 g | 151 | $79.99 | $0.53 | | 12 lb | 5,443 g | 362 | $169.99 | $0.47 |
Now the same table with a two-tablespoon scoop, because that is how a lot of people actually brew:
| Bag | Cups at 10 g | Cost per cup | |---|---|---| | 12 oz | 34 | $0.73 | | 1 lb | 45 | $0.67 | | 2 lb | 90 | $0.56 | | 5 lb | 226 | $0.35 | | 12 lb | 544 | $0.31 |
Same bag, same price, and the per-cup cost moves by more than a dollar. The bag did not change. The scoop did.
The 5 lb bag is the honest sweet spot
The 12 lb bag has the lowest cost per cup in the catalog, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. $0.47 a cup is a real number.
But here is the other half of it: at 15 g per cup, a 12 lb bag is 362 cups. If you drink one cup a day, that bag lasts just under a year. A 5 lb bag is 151 cups, which is about five months.
Coffee does not stay at its best for a year once the bag is open. The aromatics are the first thing to go, and they are the thing you are paying for. A 5 lb bag at $0.53 a cup, finished in five months, is a better cup for longer than a 12 lb bag at $0.47 a cup, finished in twelve. That is the real trade, and nobody puts it on the label.
The 2 lb bag at $0.83 a cup is the one we would think twice about recommending to a single person, unless they share a house or drink coffee at a café for a living. The 12 oz and 1 lb bags are the ones we reach for most, mostly because the point of a small bag is that you can finish it.
The same math for tea and matcha
Tea is lighter per cup, so the bags go further.
Loose leaf tea, 3 oz ($19.99): that is 85 g. At 3 g per cup — about a rounded teaspoon — you get 28 cups. That is $0.71 a cup, and at 2 g per cup, 42 cups and $0.48 each. We wrote about why spoons are a bad measure in why tea measured in spoons does not work.
Matcha, 1 oz ($24.99): 28 g. Matcha is dosed lighter, usually 1 g to 2 g per cup, so you get about 18 cups at 1.5 g. That is $1.39 a cup, which is the highest per-cup number in this post, and it is the reason people buy matcha in smaller amounts than coffee. If matcha is on your list, the Taster Flight at $49.99 is the way to try three of our teas without committing to a full tin of one.
What it costs per week
A price per cup is easier to feel than a price per bag, so here is the same table run over a month of mornings.
At one cup a day, the 12 oz bag covers about three weeks, which is roughly $34 a month of coffee.
The same month on the 2 lb bag is $49.99 for about 60 cups, which is about $25 a month.
The 5 lb bag covers about five months at one cup a day, or about $16 a month.
The 12 lb bag covers about a year at one cup a day, or about $14 a month.
Two cups a day doubles all of those. One cup a week is a different life entirely, and for that the 12 oz bag is the right answer.
That is the whole pricing decision in four lines, and it is worth ten minutes of thought before you click buy.
What the math does not tell you
Three things this table cannot show you.
Freshness. We roast on Wednesday and ship on Thursday. A bag that sits in your cupboard for two months is a bag you are drinking in month three, and you can read more about how we decide when a coffee is past its peak in how we decide when a coffee is past its peak.
Variety. A 5 lb bag of one coffee for five months is five months of the same flavor. If you would rather rotate, buy two 12 oz bags and finish the first one before you open the second.
Storage. Once a bag is open, the coffee inside is losing aroma every day it sits, whether or not you reseal it. We have a whole post on this: coffee storage mistakes that are probably ruining your bag.
Try it on your own bag
The test takes about a week and it changes how you order for the rest of the year.
Weigh the coffee you put in one cup. A kitchen scale that reads to one gram costs less than a bag of coffee, and it is the only tool in this post that changes the answer. Most people find they are using somewhere between 10 g and 20 g without knowing which.
Then brew for a week at that dose, and at the end of the week divide the weight of the bag by your dose. That is your real number of cups, and your real cost per cup, and it is based on your kitchen and not on a table.
If the result is 10 g and you want more from the cup, change the dose before you change the bag. We wrote about that in fresh coffee versus good coffee — the cup is the test.
P.S. If you are ordering for a machine rather than a person, the espresso math is different and much faster: an 18 g dose means a 12 oz bag is 18 double shots, and a 5 lb bag is 126. If that is your situation, our anatomy of an espresso shot has the timing that goes with it.
Sip slow.
— Seraphina