Caffeine cutoff · bedtime midnight

Bedtime at midnight: when to stop caffeine

For a midnight bedtime, finish a mug of filter coffee by 4:36 pm, a single espresso by 7:56 pm and a can of Monster by 12:24 pm. After that hour, more than 40 mg is still active when you lie down.

A midnight bedtime is normal for evening shifts and late risers. A mug of filter coffee fits until 4:36 pm and a can of Red Bull until 6:06 pm.

The catch on a late schedule is the morning after. If the alarm still goes at 7 am, the night is short whatever the caffeine does, and the first coffee of the next day gets larger to make up for it. Keeping the cutoff is what stops that loop from starting.

The last hour for each drink

What you can drink at any hour

These stay under the 40 mg sleep threshold on their own: Dr Pepper (40 mg), dark chocolate (40 mg), oolong (38 mg), white tea (36 mg), Pepsi (36 mg), Coke Zero (33 mg), Coca-Cola (32 mg), chai latte (30 mg), green tea (29 mg), milk chocolate (10 mg), decaf coffee (3 mg), herbal tea (0 mg).

If you know the milligrams

If you clear caffeine faster or slower

The times above are for an average adult. A fast metaboliser gains two hours or more, a slow one loses as much.

Common questions

Other bedtimes

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Where these numbers come from

Every figure is calculated with the model the Cira app uses: caffeine peaks 45 minutes after you take it and halves every 5.7 hours, a typical value for healthy adults. The 40 mg sleep line is a working threshold of the model, and the 400 mg daily limit is the figure used by the European Food Safety Authority and the US FDA. These are averages. Smoking, pregnancy, the contraceptive pill and some medicines change how fast you clear caffeine. How the numbers are worked out.