The short answer is roughly 80mg to 120mg per serving, depending on how it is prepared. A 330ml can of Matelo contains 96mg.
That puts yerba maté in the same territory as a strong cup of coffee, and significantly more than most teas. If caffeine content is what you are trying to understand, that is the number.
But caffeine content alone does not tell you how a drink will feel. And with maté, the gap between the number and the experience is worth understanding.
How Maté Compares to Other Drinks
For context:
A standard cup of coffee contains roughly 95mg of caffeine. A shot of espresso around 63mg. A cup of green tea around 30 to 50mg. A matcha preparation roughly 40 to 70mg depending on grade and quantity. A can of Matelo, 96mg.
Maté sits at the coffee end of the spectrum, not the tea end. If you are switching from coffee for caffeine reasons, the amount you are getting is comparable. If you are switching from green tea or matcha expecting a similar lift, maté will be noticeably stronger.
Why the Experience Feels Different From Coffee
The caffeine content of maté and coffee overlap. The experience does not, and the reason is theobromine.
Yerba maté contains theobromine, a natural compound also found in cacao. It softens the adrenal response that caffeine triggers on its own, producing a calmer, longer-lasting alertness rather than a sharp spike. The number on the label does not change. How that caffeine lands does.
We wrote about this in more depth in our piece on caffeine in maté and why the afternoon changes everything.
What Affects the Caffeine Level
If you are brewing traditionally rather than drinking from a can, the caffeine content varies. Younger leaves generally contain more caffeine than older, more aged leaves. Longer steep times extract more. Hotter water extracts more. The traditional Argentine style, made with aged leaves and hot water in a gourd, tends toward the higher end of the range. Chimarrão, the Brazilian green style made with younger unsmoked leaves, is lighter.
Is Yerba Maté High in Caffeine?
Relative to tea, yes. Relative to coffee, no. It is roughly comparable. Relative to energy drinks, it depends on the brand, but most mainstream energy drinks contain between 80mg and 160mg per can.
Maté is not a low-caffeine drink. It is a natural-caffeine drink that delivers its caffeine differently from coffee. That distinction matters more than the number.
Know Your Maté is Matelo's series on the science, culture and history of yerba maté. Matelo. Steeped in Culture.
Photo by Matias Megapixel on Unsplash