How many cups of coffee are in a pound?

A pound of coffee is 453.592 grams, so the number of cups it makes is 453.592 divided by your dose. At 15g a cup that is 30.2 cups. At 10g it is 45.4, at 18g it is 25.2, and at 21g it is 21.6. There is no single right answer because "a cup" is not a fixed volume and dose is not a fixed weight, which is why every published figure you see for this differs. At the July 2026 US average price of $9.317 a pound for ground roast coffee (BLS series APU0000717311), those doses cost $0.31, $0.21, $0.37 and $0.43 of coffee per cup.

Cups per pound by dose

Division only: 453.592 divided by dose, and $9.317 multiplied by dose divided by 453.592. The price is the July 2026 US city average for BLS series APU0000717311 (source file).

Work backwards from your mug instead

If you do not know your dose, the ratio gives it to you. The National Coffee Association publishes 1:13 to 1:16 by weight for pour over (NCA), and a fluid ounce of water weighs about 29.5735 grams, so mug size sets the dose.

Arithmetic from the NCA ratio band and 29.5735 grams per US fluid ounce of water. The 1:16 and 1:13 columns are the weak and strong ends of the published band.

Why the answers on the internet range from 15 to 60

Two reasons, and both are real rather than sloppy. The first is that a "cup" on a drip machine is 5 or 6 fl oz, not the 12 or 16 fl oz mug you actually drink from, so machine-cup counts run high. The second is that the NCA states the drip golden ratio in volume, 1 to 2 tablespoons of ground coffee for every 6 fl oz of water (NCA), and a tablespoon of ground coffee is not a fixed mass. Grind size and bean density change how much coffee fits in the spoon, so that ratio cannot be converted into a single gram figure without inventing one.

That is why this page counts in grams. If a source gives you cups per pound without telling you the dose and the cup size, it has hidden the only two numbers that matter.

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Every figure above depends on a dose you can only know by weighing it once: search coffee scales on Amazon. Links are searches, not stocked listings.

Related reading

• How much coffee per cup
• Coffee price statistics 2026
• The coffee cost calculator

FAQ

How many cups of coffee are in a pound? A pound is 453.592 grams, so it is 453.592 divided by your dose: about 30 cups at 15g, 45 at 10g and 25 at 18g.

How many 12 oz mugs does a pound make? A 12 fl oz mug holds about 354.9g of water, which needs 22.2g of coffee at 1:16 or 27.3g at 1:13. That is 20.5 mugs per pound at the weaker end of the NCA band.

Why do answers vary so much? Because a drip machine cup is 5 or 6 fl oz rather than a mug, and because the NCA states the drip golden ratio in tablespoons per 6 fl oz, a volume measure that does not convert to a fixed weight of ground coffee.

Sources: the $9.317 per pound price is the July 2026 US city average for Bureau of Labor Statistics series APU0000717311, coffee, 100 percent, ground roast, all sizes, from the Average Price Data file ap.data.3.Food. The 1:13 to 1:16 pour over ratio and the drip golden ratio of 1 to 2 tablespoons per 6 fl oz are published by the National Coffee Association (pour over, drip). All fetched and cached 2026-08-18. Cup counts, doses and costs are arithmetic from those figures, from 453.592 grams per pound and from 29.5735 grams per US fluid ounce of water.