How Much Caffeine Is in Japanese Green Tea? (And Which Ones to Drink at Night)

"Green tea has less caffeine than coffee" is one of those statements that is true on average and misleading in practice.

It depends entirely on which green tea, and on how you prepare it. A bowl of matcha and a cup of coffee are in the same neighbourhood. A cup of genmaicha is not in the same city.

Here is the actual spread.

The numbers

Caffeine content, per 100ml of prepared drink:

Drink	Caffeine (approx.)	Notes
Gyokuro	~160mg	Highest of all. Shaded leaves, and you use a lot of them in very little water
Coffee (drip)	~60mg	The reference point
Matcha	~64mg per 2g serving	You consume the whole leaf, not an infusion
Sencha	~20mg	The everyday cup
Hojicha	~20mg	But see below — the serving reality differs
Bancha	~10mg	Coarse, late-harvest leaf
Genmaicha	~10mg	Half the volume is roasted rice, not tea

Two things jump out of that table.

Gyokuro is the most caffeinated thing on the list — more than coffee, by a wide margin. Shading raises both theanine and caffeine, and the brewing method uses a large quantity of leaf in a small amount of water. It is not a morning-mug tea; it is a small, deliberate cup.

Matcha is not a "low caffeine alternative." You are drinking the ground leaf itself rather than an infusion of it, so nothing stays behind in the pot. A standard 2g serving lands near a cup of coffee.

Caffeine figures are drawn from the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan (MEXT, 8th Revised Edition). Treat them as central values — leaf, dose and brewing all move the real number.

Why the same caffeine feels different

This part is not folklore. Shaded Japanese teas are high in L-theanine, an amino acid that shows up in very few foods and is the reason gyokuro and good matcha taste sweet and broth-like rather than sharp.

L-theanine appears to smooth out the way caffeine arrives — less of the sudden lift and subsequent drop that people describe with coffee. This is why a bowl of matcha with roughly a coffee's worth of caffeine can feel steadier than the coffee did.

It is also why the shaded teas are the expensive ones. The same 20 days under cover that builds theanine also builds the price.

What to drink at night

This is where Japanese practice is more useful than any chart, because Japanese households solved this problem long ago: they roast the tea.

Hojicha is sencha or bancha roasted at high heat until it turns brown. Roasting transforms the flavour — toasty, mild, no astringency — and a brewed cup sits at the gentle end of the table above, nowhere near matcha or gyokuro. It is what commonly appears after dinner, and what tends to be served to children and older family members.

Genmaicha — tea blended with roasted brown rice — is diluted by design. Half of what is in the pot is not tea leaf at all.

Bancha, made from coarse later-harvest leaves, is naturally lower in caffeine than the tender first flush.

If you want...	Drink
Something after dinner	Hojicha
Tea with a meal	Genmaicha
Volume, all day	Bancha
To avoid caffeine entirely	Neither — these are lower, not zero. Look for caffeine-free herbal options

And here is the part that tends to surprise people outside Japan: nobody there is doing this math. In my experience, caffeine is simply not something Japanese people think about when drinking tea — if anyone is watching their caffeine intake, the drink they are watching is coffee, not sencha. The habits in the table above are not a health protocol anyone follows consciously; they are just what gets served. The low-caffeine evening cup is a problem Japan solved culturally, long before anyone needed a chart.

You can lower the caffeine yourself

Caffeine extracts faster in hot water than the compounds responsible for sweetness. That gives you two levers on any tea you already own:

• Brew cooler. 60–70°C instead of 80°C pulls less caffeine and, as a side effect, less bitterness. This is the standard way to brew gyokuro anyway
• Brew shorter, then re-steep. The first infusion carries most of the caffeine; the second and third are considerably gentler
• Cold brew. Steeping in cold water in the fridge for several hours produces a sweet, low-caffeine drink from ordinary sencha

None of these make a tea caffeine-free. They shift it down.

Two cases that need care

Drinking on an empty stomach. Green tea on an empty stomach makes some people feel queasy — a combination of caffeine and catechins, particularly with strong sencha or matcha. If this is you, drink it with or after food, or switch to genmaicha or hojicha.

Pregnancy. Common guidance limits caffeine during pregnancy to roughly 200mg per day, and green tea counts toward that total — matcha and gyokuro substantially so. Green tea also affects folate absorption, which is why advice here differs from general caffeine advice.

This article is not medical advice. If you are pregnant, nursing, or managing a condition affected by caffeine, ask your doctor or midwife rather than a tea blog.

The short version

• Gyokuro and matcha are high caffeine — matcha is comparable to coffee, gyokuro exceeds it
• Sencha is moderate — the everyday cup
• Hojicha, genmaicha and bancha are low — and are what Japan actually drinks in the evening
• Cooler water and shorter steeps lower caffeine in anything
• Low is not zero

If you want one tea for after dark, buy hojicha. It is inexpensive, it is forgiving to brew, and it is the answer Japanese households arrived at without needing a chart.

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New to Japanese tea in general? Start with our guide to the types. If you want to get the temperature right, we have a brewing guide too.