Tea Bag Price Index (July 2026): Cost Per Cup, Measured

We checked 201 Amazon listings that this site links to across its reviews and buying guides, kept the 162 that were in stock with a live price and a verifiable bag count, and computed cost per cup as live price divided by total bags (one bag = one cup; brewing method doesn't change the math).

Put another way: at the median, a cup-a-day tea habit costs about 102 dollars a year. At the cheapest verified cup it's about 17 dollars a year, and even the priciest cup in the entire index costs $2.50, which is still less than a typical coffee-shop drink.

Category is destiny in tea pricing. Plain black tea is dominated by huge British-style value boxes (240 and 320 counts), while green tea skews toward smaller Japanese import boxes and whole-leaf pyramid bags, and herbal blends sit in between.

Three things stand out. First, black tea is the bargain of the aisle: 16.3¢ per cup on average, with a floor under a nickel, thanks to the big British blends we cover in the Tetley, PG Tips, and Yorkshire Tea reviews. Second, green tea costs about 2.6x as much as black per cup (41.5¢ average): the category is full of imported Japanese sencha, genmaicha, and hojicha in 16-to-20-bag boxes, the format we break down in our best green tea guide. Third, named black styles carry a premium over plain black: Earl Grey averages 36.2¢ and English Breakfast 36.5¢, roughly double the plain-black average, because both categories include several whole-leaf and organic picks. Decaf, notably, averages 17.2¢, barely above regular black.

Every tea below was in stock at the listed price when we pulled the data. The pattern is unmissable: buy black tea in the biggest box the brand sells.

The top of this list is effectively a British breakfast-table roll call. It's also why our Lipton vs Tetley and PG Tips vs Tetley comparisons keep coming back to value per cup: at these counts, the price difference between brands is real money over a year.

At the other end of the index, whole-leaf sachets and specialty imports command coffee-shop money per cup:

A caveat that matters: these are live Amazon listing prices, and some specialty boxes on Amazon are sold by third parties at above shelf price, the Teavana sachets being the clearest example. That's still the real price an Amazon buyer pays today, which is exactly what this index measures.

To put a number on the everyday-vs-premium divide, we averaged the verified teas from two budget British stalwarts (Tetley and PG Tips, 6 teas) against two premium European brands (teapigs and Kusmi Tea, 7 teas).

That's a 3.7x average gap, and it widens on like-for-like blends: PG Tips Original costs 6.7 to 7.5 cents per cup while teapigs English Breakfast temples cost 51.4 cents and Kusmi Anastasia 60 cents, roughly 7 to 9 times the everyday cup. Whether the whole-leaf difference is worth it is a taste question, and our teapigs review and Kusmi Tea review take it head on. The honest budget framing: even the premium cup costs less than any coffee-shop drink, and the budget cup costs about as much as the hot water.

The complete dataset, sorted from cheapest to priciest cup. Prices are the live Amazon listing price on July 21, 2026; bag counts come from the listing itself. Every product links to the exact listing we priced.

Spot a price that's moved? Amazon prices change constantly; the index reflects the day we pulled it, and we re-pull the data when we update this page.

This index measures bags, but we priced several loose-leaf listings from the same brands on the same day, using the standard 2 grams of leaf per cup. Same-brand comparisons:

In all three same-brand checks, loose leaf came out meaningfully cheaper per cup, roughly 30 to 60 percent less, and the gap grows if you re-steep, which good loose leaf tolerates and paper bags mostly don't. The trade is convenience and gear. The full argument, including when bags genuinely win, is in our loose leaf vs tea bags explainer and best loose leaf guide.

• Source: live product data from the Amazon Creators API (getItems), pulled July 21, 2026, for the Amazon listings this site links to across its reviews and guides.
• Sample: 201 listings checked; 162 qualified: in stock (or low stock) with a live price and a bag count verifiable from the listing title.
• Cost per cup = live listing price ÷ total tea bags in the listing (multi-box packs counted at their full combined bag count). One bag = one cup.
• Excluded: out-of-stock and unpriced listings, loose-leaf tins and pouches (covered separately above at 2g per cup), family-size and gallon-size iced-tea bags (they brew quarts, not cups), pods, and listings whose pack math couldn't be verified.
• Categories were assigned from the listing's own description (Earl Grey and English Breakfast are broken out of plain black; decaf and samplers are kept separate so they don't skew the caffeinated averages).
• Caveats: Amazon prices move daily and some listings are third-party sellers priced above shelf price; the index reflects what an Amazon buyer paid on the pull date. Averages are unweighted (each tea counts once).