Here's How Much Caffeine Is In A Cup Of Hot Chocolate

It's a frosty night, and you're looking for a warm beverage to chase the chill from your bones. You could patter into the kitchen and brew a Cioccolatino pod on your fancy, new Nespresso machine, but you're not in the mood to lay awake all night. So instead, you grab a packet of store-bought hot cocoa mix, warm it up in the microwave, and settle on the couch with a cozy blanket and a good book. There's a nagging voice in the back of your head that wonders, though. "Hot cocoa doesn't have caffeine in it, does it?" you think. Actually, it does!

There is a sneaky friend lurking inside this creamy beverage: about 5-25 grams of caffeine. You may feel a little shocked and betrayed, but caffeine is a naturally occurring stimulant in pretty much anything made from the cacao plant. That means there's a little caffeine in everything chocolatey, from Hershey's chocolate bars to chocolate milk. Anything made with dark chocolate will more than likely contain more caffeine than milk chocolate — the darker the chocolate, the more cocoa solids it has, which is where the caffeine lives. The amount of caffeine will vary depending on the product and manufacturer, but luckily the caffeine in hot chocolate is still minimal compared to the amount in other beverages.

That packet of Swiss Miss that you nuked in the microwave isn't as caffeine-free as you thought. It contains about 5 milligrams of caffeine, despite not being advertised as a caffeinated drink. A 16-ounce cup of hot chocolate from Starbucks contains roughly five times as much caffeine. 

To put that in perspective, you'll find about 95 milligrams of caffeine in an 8-ounce cup of black coffee and about 63 milligrams in a shot of espresso. Your favorite store-bought cold brew probably contains around 200 milligrams per serving, and even a can of regular Pepsi has about 35 milligrams of caffeine. Feeling any better about that hot chocolate yet? Not only does hot chocolate have less caffeine than coffee and soda, but it also has less caffeine than most teas. An 8-ounce glass of black tea contains about 25-48 milligrams of caffeine, and green tea has around 25-29 milligrams. 

Although most hot chocolates aren't entirely caffeine-free, the amount of caffeine that they do contain is barely noticeable and shouldn't produce any negative effects the way larger amounts of caffeine can. The Food and Drug Administration says we can consume up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day anyway, so feel free to have about 60 cups of that hot chocolate before you crash out -– though you may have a sugar overload long before the caffeine gets you!