How Many Calories in Sweet Tea?
A 12 fl oz glass of sweet tea is 119 calories, which is 32 calories per 100 g. An 8 fl oz cup is 79. The figure most people never see is the one at the other end of the drive-through menu: an extra large cup holds 1,023 g of tea and 327 calories, with nothing in it but tea, water and sugar.
You'd need to walk about 24 minutes to burn the 119 calories in a 12 fl oz glass (372 g).
How long does it take to burn off sweet tea?
A 12 fl oz glass (372 g) is 119 kcal. Enter your weight and the amount you ate to see how long it takes you to burn that off:
lb
| Activity | Time to burn 119 kcal |
|---|---|
| Walking, brisk | 24 min |
| Cycling, moderate | 15 min |
| Swimming, moderate | 17 min |
| Jogging | 14 min |
| Weight training, moderate | 26 min |
Times are for a 155 lb adult at a steady pace; change the weight to see yours. The amount is set to the portion in the text (372 g); change it to what you actually ate. BodyPal works this out from your steps automatically.
On this page
- Sweet tea quick facts
- Why 32 is the wrong number to log
- Cup, glass, large, extra large
- The ice takes a quarter of the glass
- Sugar is the entire drink
- Green, decaf and the diet version
- Bottled, instant and the dry mix
- How does sweet tea compare?
- FAQ
Sweet tea quick facts
The reference record is USDA's Tea, iced, brewed, black, pre-sweetened with sugar (fdc_id 2710515) — brewed black tea, sweetened with sugar, served cold. That is what a Southern pitcher holds and what a restaurant pours. The serving column below is a 12 fl oz glass, which USDA weighs at 372 g.
| Nutrient | Per 100 g | Per 12 fl oz glass (372 g) | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 32 kcal | 119 kcal | — |
| Total fat | 0.02 g | 0.1 g | 0% |
| Saturated fat | 0 g | 0 g | 0% |
| Carbohydrate | 7.94 g | 29.5 g | 11% |
| Dietary fiber | 0 g | 0 g | 0% |
| Total sugars | 7.68 g | 28.6 g | — |
| Protein | 0 g | 0 g | 0% |
| Sodium | 3 mg | 11 mg | 0% |
% Daily Value is based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
Verified nutrition data
Numbers on this page come from USDA FoodData Central, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food composition database, and from manufacturer labels where a branded product is named. Last verified September 2026. How we verify our data →
One row moves and the rest sit at zero. Carbohydrate is 11% of the day in a single glass. Fat is 0.1 g, protein is 0 g, fiber is 0 g, and sodium is 11 mg against the FDA Daily Value of 2,300 mg, which rounds to nothing.
There is no added sugars line in that table on purpose. USDA's survey record for brewed sweet tea does not publish one, and inventing a figure to fill the gap would be worse than leaving it out. The section on sugar below gets at the same answer a different way.
Why 32 is the wrong number to log
Sweet tea reads as harmless on a nutrition panel because the panel is per 100 g, and 32 calories per 100 g really is small. Milk sits higher. So does orange juice.
Nobody drinks 100 g of tea. A hundred grams is a little over three fluid ounces, a splash in the bottom of a glass. The unit sweet tea actually arrives in is the cup, the glass and the giant waxed cup with a straw in it, and each of those multiplies the small number by a lot.
Run it out. Multiply 32 by 3.72 and a 12 fl oz glass is 119. Multiply by 7.44 and a large is 238. Multiply by 10.23 and an extra large is 327 — more than ten times the number printed on the panel, from one drink.
That is the whole trap. The per-100 g figure describes the liquid; the serving size describes your day. Log the cup, not the density.
Cup, glass, large, extra large
USDA lists gram weights for the sizes restaurants actually serve, so the ladder here is not guesswork. The one line we worked out ourselves is the 8 fl oz cup: 248 g is 8 × USDA's 31 g fluid ounce, not a separate USDA entry.
| Serving | Grams | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| 1 fl oz, no ice | 31 g | 9.9 kcal |
| 1 fl oz, with ice | 23 g | 7.4 kcal |
| 1 cup (8 fl oz) | 248 g | 79 kcal |
| Child or senior drink (9 fl oz) | 279 g | 89 kcal |
| Small drink / 12 fl oz glass | 372 g | 119 kcal |
| Medium drink | 512 g | 164 kcal |
| Large drink | 744 g | 238 kcal |
| Extra large drink | 1023 g | 327 kcal |
The interesting jump is not from small to medium. It is from medium to large: 512 g to 744 g adds 74 calories in one step, almost as much as the entire 89-calorie child-size drink a few rows up.
An extra large is worth staring at. At 327 calories it costs about the same as a meal component, and it does it without protein, fiber or anything that slows you down. A refill turns it into a second one, because the pitcher and the free refill are the two things this drink is famous for.
If you want a number to carry around: a cup of sweet tea is roughly 80 calories. Count cups, and you will be close to right without ever opening a table.
The ice takes a quarter of the glass
Here is the detail almost no calorie chart carries, and USDA has it in plain sight. The database gives two weights for one fluid ounce of sweet tea: 31 g without ice and 23 g with ice.
Ice occupies volume. A 12 fl oz glass filled to the brim with tea holds 372 g of tea; the same glass packed with cubes holds 12 × 23 g, which is 276 g — our arithmetic on USDA's two fluid-ounce weights, not a USDA serving of its own. Multiply 32 by 2.76 and that glass is 88 calories, not 119.
Same glass, same order, same wording on the menu. A 31-calorie difference, decided by how much ice the person behind the counter scooped in.
This cuts both ways, and the second direction is the one that hurts. Order a large with light ice and you are closer to the full 238 than the number in your head. Ask for extra ice and a large behaves more like a medium. If you drink sweet tea daily, that gap compounds faster than any swap you could make to the tea itself.
It also explains why two honest apps can disagree about the same glass. One is logging tea; the other is logging tea plus the space the ice took up.
Sugar is the entire drink
Look at the two middle rows of the quick facts table again. Carbohydrate is 7.94 g per 100 g. Total sugars are 7.68 g. There is essentially nothing else in the carbohydrate column, because there is essentially nothing else in the glass.
The cleanest proof sits in USDA's own catalog. The same brewed black iced tea, sweetened with a low-calorie sweetener instead of sugar (fdc_id 2710516), is 2 calories per 100 g against 32. The difference in total sugars between the two records is 7.68 − 0.33 = 7.35 g per 100 g, which is about 27 g in a 12 fl oz glass. Take the sugar out and 119 calories become 7.
That gives you the real scale. A glass of sweet tea carries 28.6 g of total sugars. The FDA sets the Daily Value for added sugars at 50 g, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans put the target at under 10% of daily calories, which on a 2,000-calorie day works out to the same 50 g. Brewed tea leaves carry no sugar of their own, so what is in the glass got there from a bag.
A large drink is where this stops being academic: 7.68 g × 7.44 comes to 57 g of sugar in one cup, past a full day's worth on its own. The CDC's work on sugar-sweetened beverages treats sweet tea as exactly what the numbers say it is, and MyPlate's advice on drinks starts from water for the same reason.
None of that makes a glass of sweet tea a problem. One 12 fl oz glass at 119 calories is a modest thing to spend on something you enjoy. Four refills at a barbecue is a different arithmetic, and it is the refills, not the glass, that people forget to log.
Green, decaf and the diet version
Two of the three common swaps change nothing at all on the calorie line.
| Version | fdc_id | Per 100 g | 12 fl oz | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brewed black, sugar (the standard) | 2710515 | 32 kcal | 372 g | 119 kcal |
| Brewed green, sugar | 2710521 | 32 kcal | 372 g | 119 kcal |
| Brewed black, decaffeinated, sugar | 2710518 | 32 kcal | 372 g | 119 kcal |
| Brewed black, low-calorie sweetener | 2710516 | 2 kcal | 360 g | 7 kcal |
Green sweet tea is 32 calories per 100 g, the same as black, because the sugar is doing the work and the leaf is not. What does move is potassium: 34 mg per 100 g in the black record, 8 mg in the green one. Neither figure is large enough to change a shopping decision.
Decaf is identical on every macro USDA reports. Taking the caffeine out does not take calories out, and if a decaf order feels lighter, that is a feeling rather than a number.
The diet version is the only swap that does anything. Seven calories in a 12 fl oz glass against 119 is a 112-calorie saving per drink, which for a two-glass-a-day habit is over 200 calories without touching anything else you eat. That is the largest single lever on this page, and it is the only one.
Bottled, instant and the dry mix
Sweet tea from a bottle is not the same drink as sweet tea from a pitcher, and the gap runs the wrong way.
| Form | fdc_id | Per 100 g | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brewed at home or in a restaurant | 2710515 | 32 kcal | 119 kcal per 12 fl oz (372 g) |
| Bottled black iced tea | 2710527 | 45 kcal | 167 kcal per 12 fl oz (372 g) |
| Iced tea and lemonade | 2710512 | 34 kcal | 122 kcal per 12 fl oz (360 g) |
| Instant, prepared with water | 175090 | 35 kcal | no USDA household weight for this record |
| Instant mix, dry powder | 2710511 | 401 kcal | 95.29 g of sugar per 100 g |
Bottled black tea runs 45 calories per 100 g, about 40% above brewed. At the same 12 fl oz that is 167 calories against 119 — a 48-calorie penalty for the convenience, before anyone has ordered a bigger size.
The dry mix row is there to be read correctly, not to alarm anyone. At 401 calories per 100 g the powder looks like candy, and in composition it nearly is: 95.29 g of sugar in every 100 g. Nobody eats it by the spoon. Stirred into water it becomes the 35-calorie drink one row up, which is why the scoop, not the tub, is the thing to log.
The Arnold Palmer, half tea and half lemonade, lands at 34 calories per 100 g and 122 in a 12 fl oz glass. Almost the same as straight sweet tea, which surprises most people who assume the lemonade half is the expensive one.
How does sweet tea compare?
| Drink | Per 100 g | Serving | Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet tea, brewed black | 32 kcal | 12 fl oz (372 g) | 119 kcal | 0 g | 29.5 g | 0.1 g |
| Iced tea, bottled, black | 45 kcal | 12 fl oz (372 g) | 167 kcal | 0 g | 40.2 g | 0.8 g |
| Iced tea, bottled, green | 27 kcal | 12 fl oz (372 g) | 100 kcal | 0 g | 23.1 g | 0.8 g |
| Iced tea and lemonade | 34 kcal | 12 fl oz (360 g) | 122 kcal | 0.7 g | 32.9 g | 0.2 g |
| Diet sweet tea | 2 kcal | 12 fl oz (360 g) | 7 kcal | 0 g | 2.4 g | 0 g |
Our take: if you are counting, the ranking is blunt. Diet sweet tea at 7 calories wins by a distance that nothing else on the list can close, and bottled green at 100 is the lightest of the sugar-sweetened options only because it is sweetened a little less. Brewed sweet tea at 119 is the honest everyday number, and bottled black at 167 is the one to notice, because it is the version people buy by the six-pack believing it matches what comes out of a pitcher.
Between the two that taste closest, brewed beats bottled by 48 calories a glass. Making it at home is not a health decision so much as a portion decision: you control the sugar and you control the ice, and those two things are the entire difference on this page.
Sweet tea FAQs
How many calories are in sweet tea?
119 calories in a 12 fl oz glass, which USDA weighs at 372 g, or 32 calories per 100 g. An 8 fl oz cup is 79 calories. Every one of those calories comes from sugar: the drink has 0 g of protein, 0 g of fiber and 0.1 g of fat per glass.
How many calories in a large sweet tea?
238 calories. USDA weighs a large drink at 744 g, so 32 calories per 100 g works out to 238. An extra large is 1,023 g and 327 calories. A medium sits between them at 512 g and 164 calories, which is why the medium-to-large step is the expensive one.
How much sugar is in sweet tea?
28.6 g in a 12 fl oz glass, from 7.68 g per 100 g. The FDA Daily Value for added sugars is 50 g, so one glass uses more than half of it. A large drink carries about 57 g of sugar, past a full day in a single cup.
How many calories are in a cup of sweet tea?
79 calories in an 8 fl oz cup, which weighs 248 g. That is the most useful number to memorize, because roughly 80 calories a cup lets you count glasses instead of grams. A 9 fl oz child or senior drink is 279 g and 89 calories.
Does the ice change how many calories are in the glass?
Yes, by about a quarter. USDA weighs 1 fl oz of sweet tea at 31 g without ice and 23 g with it. A 12 fl oz glass packed with cubes holds 276 g of tea rather than 372 g, so it is 88 calories instead of 119. Light ice moves it back up.
How many calories in diet sweet tea?
7 calories in a 12 fl oz glass, at 2 calories per 100 g. USDA's record for brewed black iced tea with a low-calorie sweetener carries 0.33 g of sugars per 100 g against 7.68 g in the sugar version. That swap alone saves 112 calories a glass.
Is bottled sweet tea the same as brewed sweet tea?
No — bottled black iced tea is 45 calories per 100 g against 32 for brewed, so the same 12 fl oz is 167 calories rather than 119. Bottled green iced tea goes the other way at 27 calories per 100 g, or 100 calories for the same pour.
Does green or decaf sweet tea have fewer calories?
Neither — brewed green sweet tea and decaffeinated black sweet tea are both 32 calories per 100 g, identical to the standard version, because the sugar sets the number and the leaf does not. Green carries less potassium, 8 mg per 100 g against 34 mg.
Similar foods
- Lime juice — 11 cal per Juice of 1 lime
- Root beer — 152 cal for 12 fl oz glass
- Apple cider — 114 cal per cup
- Bubble Tea — 239 cal per drink
- Eggnog — 112 cal for 1/2 cup
- Chocolate Chip Cookie — 148 cal per medium cookie
Count it without the math
Point the camera at the glass and BodyPal logs the calories and the sugar before the ice melts.
