What your daily cup actually costs
Coffee is one of the few habits where the unit economics fit on a receipt. Here is the whole computation, assumptions included.
The arithmetic
Cost per brew = (bag price + shipping) × grams per brew ÷ bag weight.
That is the whole formula. Everything else is choosing honest inputs — and two of them are routinely forgotten: shipping, and how much coffee you actually use.
Worked example, hypothetical inputs
Say a bag costs $20, shipping $5, the bag holds 340 g, and you use 20 g per brew. The bag really cost $25 delivered; 340 ÷ 20 is 17 brews; so each cup carries 25 × 20 ÷ 340 ≈ $1.47. At two cups a day that is about $88 a month — real money, and still roughly half a café habit at $3.50 a cup.
Run your own numbers in the cost sheet — it shows this exact arithmetic with your inputs, and a pen check against your café baseline.
Where the number moves
- Shipping is a per-bag tax. A $5 shipping fee on one bag adds ~$0.29 a cup at 17 brews. Buying two bags halves it.
- The gram line is where cups hide. 15 g vs 20 g per brew is a 25% swing. A $15 kitchen scale turns this from a guess into a fact.
- Intro offers are not prices. Price a subscription on its renewal terms; the discounted first bag is marketing. More in the renewal guide.
- Espresso drinks are a different sport. Milk, syrups, and café rent are why a latte costs five dollars — home economics mostly apply to the coffee itself.
What this page deliberately doesn’t do
It doesn’t track prices, store your inputs, or alert you when a price moves. The calculator is yours, runs in your browser, and forgets everything the moment you leave. That is a design decision, not a limitation — the short version of why is that we never want your habits, and retailer rules say copied prices go stale and wrong.