Your coffee habit
Pretty close estimates are fine — adjust anything to see how it changes.
If you bought it at a café instead
The drink you'd buy if you weren't making it at home.
How fast premium gear pays itself off
If you put your annual café savings toward better home gear, here's when each pays itself back. Click through to see top-rated picks.
Want to brew it the right way at home?
Get exact gram measurements, grind size, and a pour schedule for any brew method.
How these numbers work
How we calculate cost per cup
Cost per cup = bag price ÷ (grams per bag ÷ grams per cup).
One ounce = 28.35 grams. So a 12oz bag holds about 340g of coffee. At a typical pour-over ratio of 1:16 with a 12oz cup, that's roughly 22g per cup — meaning your $16 bag makes about 15 cups, or $1.07 per cup at home.
Different brew methods use different amounts:
Drip: ~15g per 12oz cup (1:23, accounting for water absorbed by grounds)
Pour-over: ~22g per 12oz cup (1:16)
French press: ~24g per 12oz cup (1:15)
AeroPress: ~17g per 12oz cup (1:14)
Espresso: ~18g per double shot
Cold brew: ~30g per 12oz serving (uses concentrate, more grounds)
Why the café number is conservative
The default $5.50 is a Grande latte — but most café visits cost more in practice once you add tax (8–10%), tip (often $1+), and the food you grab alongside. If you average $7 per visit including tax and tips, the savings calculator gets even more dramatic.
The numbers also don't include the time cost of café visits — driving, parking, waiting in line — which most people don't think of as a "cost" but adds up to hours per month for daily café-goers.
Is premium home gear actually worth it?
It depends on whether you'll actually use it. The math says yes — even a $500 espresso machine pays itself back in under a year if you're replacing daily $5.50 lattes. The real question is whether you'll keep using it after the novelty wears off.
The best test: start cheap and upgrade. A $30 V60, $25 AeroPress, or $40 French press paired with a $170 burr grinder is most of the way to specialty-cafe quality at home. Most people never need more.
If you're pulling shots, a real espresso machine ($500+) and a grinder built for espresso ($300+) is the threshold for cafe-quality results. Below that, you're buying a glorified coffee maker that disappoints.
What about subscription coffee?
Most subscription services price specialty bags around $14–20 (12oz), comparable to the bags you'd buy from a roaster directly. The advantage is freshness — bags ship within days of roasting. The disadvantage is that flat-rate subscriptions sometimes exceed $25/bag for "premium" tiers, which doesn't change the cost-per-cup math much but does change the bag economics.
Plug your actual subscription price into the bag price field above to see your real per-cup cost.
RoastRanked is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cost estimates are based on average retail pricing as of 2026 and typical brew ratios — your actual numbers may vary based on your bag choice, brewing style, and local café prices.