Energy drink caffeine chart: every can, and when to stop

An 8.4 oz Red Bull has 80 mg of caffeine, a 16 oz Monster 160 mg, a Celsius about 200 mg and a Bang 300 mg. The spread is almost fourfold, and the cans look much the same in the fridge.

The number that matters more than the milligrams is how long each one takes to wear off. A Red Bull at 4 pm is fine for an 11 pm bedtime. A Celsius at noon is not.

Caffeine in every popular energy drink

Linked rows are the drinks Cira knows by name, with their own pages. The others are figures printed on the US cans, which brands change from time to time, so check yours. Every time in the last column is worked out the same way as the rest of this site, for an average adult going to bed at 11 pm.

The three tiers

Around 80 mg. Red Bull in the classic 8.4 oz can. Less than a mug of coffee, and gone in about six hours. If you want an energy drink in the afternoon, this is the size that leaves your evening alone.

Around 160 mg. Monster and Rockstar in the 16 oz can. About one and a half mugs of coffee. They need roughly eleven and a half hours to fall under the sleep line, so a can after late morning reaches bedtime. See Monster against a mug of coffee.

200 mg and up. Celsius, Alani Nu, Ghost, C4 and Prime Energy at about 200 mg, Bang at 300 mg. One can is half the daily limit or more. A 200 mg can needs about thirteen and a half hours to clear, which means it has to be your morning drink if you want to sleep at 11. The 200 mg and 300 mg pages show the hour-by-hour curve.

Per ounce, not per can

Can sizes differ, so comparing cans can mislead. Per fluid ounce, Red Bull and Monster are almost the same, about 10 mg. Monster simply sells twice as much. Celsius is about 17 mg per ounce and Bang about 19, nearly twice as concentrated.

That is why the Celsius against Red Bull and Red Bull against Monster comparisons come out so differently from what the cans suggest.

How many is too many

The general limit for a healthy adult is 400 mg a day from everything: coffee, tea, soda and energy drinks together.

• Two 200 mg cans reach it with nothing else.
• One Bang and a mug of coffee reach it.
• Five Red Bulls reach it.

The European Food Safety Authority also puts 200 mg as the most to take at once. Most of the big cans sit exactly at that line, which is part of why they hit harder than a coffee: the dose arrives in ten minutes instead of over half an hour.

When to stop

Count back from your bedtime, not from the clock. For 11 pm, a Red Bull is fine until about 5 pm, a Monster until late morning and a 200 mg can only in the morning. For a 10 pm bedtime take an hour off each.

The full reasoning, and what helps when it is already too late, is in how late you can drink an energy drink. Your own cutoff for any bedtime is on the bedtime pages.

Sources

• US Food and Drug Administration. Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?
• EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies. Scientific Opinion on the safety of caffeine. EFSA Journal, 2015.
• Caffeine figures for drinks without their own page are as printed on the US cans of Bang (16 oz), Ghost (16 oz), C4 Energy (16 oz) and Prime Energy (12 oz).