What a cup of coffee really costs at home: the sums

The short answer

Cost per cup = coffee + machine share + consumables.

• Coffee: price per kilo ÷ 1,000 × grams per cup. For pods, simply the price of one pod.
• Machine share: purchase price ÷ all the cups you will make while you own it.
• Consumables: filters, descaler, cleaning products, and milk if you use it.

The first two are exact once you know your own prices. The third depends on your water and your machine, and it is the part most comparisons leave out. For machines we show the Amazon price where available, with the date and time we checked it, and the manufacturer’s RRP where the manufacturer publishes one. The Amazon price is checked once a day and may have changed since, and the price that counts is the one Amazon shows when you buy, so the examples below use made-up figures for coffee only. For your real numbers, use the calculator:

ToolCost per cup calculator: beans or pods?

Part one: the coffee

The dose decides everything. The table is pure arithmetic: 1,000 g divided by the dose.

Dose per cup	Full cups from 1 kg
7 g	142
9 g	111
11 g	90
16 g	62
18 g	55

Which line is yours? The calculator’s starting value is 9 g; change it to match your machine and your drink. For an espresso machine, Sage designs the Bambino’s one-cup basket for 8 to 11 g and its two-cup basket for 16 to 19 g (the Bambino BES450/SES450 EN Quick Guide). A daily double therefore costs about twice as much in coffee as a daily single. If you can, weigh what your machine actually grinds for your usual drink, once, and use that.

The amounts in the box are invented for the sake of the sum. Put in what you actually pay.

A side note on hoppers, since it uses the same division: the Philips 2200’s bean hopper holds 275 g according to Philips. At 9 g a cup that is about 30 cups per fill, so a household making six cups a day refills it every five days or so.

Part two: the machine’s share

A machine is a fixed cost spread over a number of cups. Work out the number of cups first:

cups per day × 365 × years of use

At three cups a day over five years, that is 3 × 365 × 5 = 5,475 cups. At one cup a day it is 1,825; at six, 10,950. The purchase price divided by that number is the machine’s share of each cup.

This is why the same machine can be good value in one household and poor value in another. A machine from a higher price band is not expensive per cup if it makes ten thousand of them, and a cheap one is not cheap per cup if it makes a few hundred. Our tables show a price band for each model and, where available, the Amazon price, with the date and time we checked it, alongside the manufacturer’s RRP where the manufacturer publishes one. The Amazon price is checked once a day and may have changed since; the price that counts is the one Amazon shows when you buy.

Two honest caveats:

• How many years? No manufacturer in our database publishes a service life. Where a profile shows a UK guarantee it is two years, and a guarantee is not a service life. The five years the calculator starts with is an assumption you should change to suit your own expectations.
• Espresso machines need a grinder. If you buy one without a built-in grinder and use whole beans, the grinder’s price belongs in the machine share too. The budget espresso and grinder pairings are built around that idea.

Part three: beans against pods, and the break-even point

Pods cost more per cup; a bean-to-cup machine costs more to buy. The question is how long the saving per cup takes to cover the difference in purchase price.

months to break even = extra purchase price ÷ (saving per cup × cups per month)

The calculator makes this comparison with your figures and draws the two cost lines over the years you enter. It also tells you when the higher purchase price is never recovered within that period, which happens at low cup counts. For the non-financial side of the choice, see bean-to-cup, pods or espresso machine.

Part four: the consumables nobody counts

The calculator states that it leaves out water, electricity, descaler, cleaning products and milk. Here is how to put a figure on the ones you can.

Water filters. The makers give replacement intervals, so the yearly count is easy:

Filter	Stated life	Filters per year
De’Longhi water softener filter	about two months in normal use	6
Sage water filter (the Bambino)	three months or 40 litres	4, or more if you pass 40 litres sooner
Philips AquaClean	changed when the machine prompts, up to 625 cups each according to Philips	depends on use

The De’Longhi figure comes from the Magnifica S manual (ECAM11.1XX - 12.1XX - 20.1XX - 21.1XX - 22.1XX Bean to cup espresso and cappuccino machine, Instructions for Use), which adds that a filter left in an unused machine lasts three weeks at most. Multiply the number of filters by what you pay for one, divide by your cups per year, and you have the filter’s share of each cup.

Descaler. One dose per descaling cycle, and the number of cycles depends on your water hardness and on whether you use a filter. Philips says its AquaClean filter allows up to 5,000 cups without descaling, a figure based on eight filter changes. Filters and descaler are therefore partly alternatives: more of one, less of the other. The descaling guide and the water hardness guide explain the link.

Cleaning products. Philips asks for a coffee oil remover tablet once a month, so twelve a year, plus a milk circuit cleaner on some models. De’Longhi’s Magnifica manuals ask for none. See the cleaning guide.

Milk. For a cappuccino or a latte, milk is a cost of its own. The sum is the same shape as for beans: price per litre ÷ 1,000 × millilitres per drink. Measure what you pour for your usual drink.

Electricity. We cannot give you a figure. Manufacturers state the rated power, which says how fast a machine can heat, not how much energy a cup uses. Energy use per drink and on standby is one of the measurements we plan to make ourselves, as set out in our method.

What to do with the result

• If the machine share dominates your cost per cup, you are making few cups: a lower price band, or a simpler system, is the rational choice. Start with affordable bean-to-cup machines or the first espresso machine comparison.
• If the coffee dominates, the machine hardly matters to your budget and the beans do. Spend the effort on the dose and on what you buy by the kilo.
• If milk dominates, the milk system and its routine matter more than the grinder.

Not sure which machine fits your cup count and space? The machine finder narrows the list from our database.