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Standard Drinks Calculator

Count the standard drinks in any serving.

How it is calculated

The tool first finds the mass of pure alcohol in the serving: grams = volume × (ABV ÷ 100) × 0.789, where volume is in millilitres, ABV is the alcohol by volume in percent, and 0.789 g/ml is the density of ethanol. That mass is then divided by the size of a standard drink: drinks = grams ÷ 10 for the 10 g standard, and US drinks = grams ÷ 14 for the 14 g US standard.

The pure-alcohol figure is shown in grams to one decimal, and both drink counts are rounded to one decimal place. A drink with 0% ABV shows 0.0. Countries define a standard drink differently (the UK uses a unit of 8 g), so if your country uses another size, divide the grams figure by it yourself. The tool measures one serving and does not estimate blood alcohol level or tell you whether a drinking pattern is safe.

Worked example

Take a 150 ml glass of wine at 13% ABV. Pure alcohol is 150 × 0.13 × 0.789 = 15.39 g, shown as 15.4 g. Dividing by 10 gives 1.5 standard drinks on the 10 g scale. Dividing the same 15.4 g by 14 gives 1.1 US standard drinks. So one ordinary glass of wine counts as more than one standard drink, while a 500 ml beer at 5% comes to about 2.0.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering the volume in litres, ounces or centilitres. The field is millilitres, so a 330 ml can is 330, not 0.33.
  • Typing ABV as a decimal (0.13). The field is in percent, so 13.
  • Using the bottle's total volume for a single serving. A 750 ml bottle of 13% wine is about 7.7 standard drinks, not one.
  • Comparing the 10 g and 14 g columns as if they disagreed. They count the same alcohol against different drink sizes.
  • Forgetting that generous pours are larger than the listed serving. A large glass of wine can easily hold 250 ml, which is about 2.6 drinks.

About this calculator

A standard drink is a fixed amount of pure alcohol used to compare different beverages on equal footing, since a can of beer, a glass of wine and a shot of spirits all contain wildly different volumes and alcohol percentages but can still deliver the same amount of actual ethanol. Most countries define a standard drink around 10 grams of pure alcohol (Australia and much of Europe), the UK uses a smaller 8-gram unit (not output here — UK readers should read the raw grams figure), and the US uses a larger 14-gram standard; the calculation itself is straightforward — volume in millilitres × ABV (as a decimal) × ethanol's density (0.789 g/mL) gives grams of alcohol, which is then divided by the standard drink size.

Public health guidelines, low-risk drinking recommendations, and blood-alcohol calculators are all built around standard drink counts rather than raw serving sizes, because "one drink" means wildly different things depending on whether it's a 5% beer, a 13% wine, or a 40% spirit poured generously. Bartenders, health professionals and anyone tracking their own intake use standard-drink conversions to compare servings consistently, since a large glass of strong wine can easily equal two or more standard drinks.

This calculator converts a drink's volume and ABV into grams of pure alcohol, and from there into both the international standard drink count (10 g) and the US standard drink count (14 g).

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