Alcohol Units Calculator: Grams of Ethanol First, Then Four Countries' Units

How much pure ethanol is in a drink, and what that same amount is called in four different places — because a UK unit is 10 mL of ethanol, about 8 g, a US standard drink is 14 g, an Australian standard drink is 10 g and a Canadian one is 13.45 g, so the same glass is 3.25 of one thing and 1.8 of another. Grams of ethanol is the headline because it is the only figure the conventions agree on. Published weekly figures are quoted with the body and the date that published them. Nothing here is presented as a safe amount, and the page deliberately does not compute how much you have left.

Last updated 5 Oct 2026

This sorts a measurement into a published category. It is not a diagnosis, and one reading taken once is rarely enough to act on. If a result here worries you, take it to a doctor rather than to the internet.

Grams of ethanol, and the same amount in four national conventions

volume, ABV and a count -> grams of ethanol, UK units, US drinks, Australian and Canadian standard drinks

Volume of ONE drink (mL)The volume of the drink itself, not of the alcohol in it. Some reference points, since the glass is where most of the error in this arithmetic comes from: a 650 mL beer bottle, the size usually sold in India, is the default here; a UK pint is 568 mL; a US pint is 473 mL; a 330 mL bottle or a 500 mL can; a standard restaurant glass of wine is 175 mL in the UK but a “large” one is 250 mL and a home pour is frequently more; a UK pub measure of spirits is 25 mL or 35 mL; a US shot is about 44 mL; an Indian small peg is 30 mL, a large or double peg 60 mL and a patiala 90 mL. Pour sizes are the least standardised part of this subject and a home pour of wine is commonly half again what a bar would serve.

Strength, % ABVAlcohol by volume, as printed on the label — the percentage of the liquid that is ethanol, by volume. Read it rather than assuming it: beers run from under 0.5% to over 8%, wines from about 8% to 15% and higher for fortified, and spirits from 37.5% upward. Indian-made spirits are commonly bottled above 40%. The page accepts 0 to 96% and refuses outside, because above about 96% ethanol and water form an azeotrope and the liquid is not a beverage.

How many drinks of this size and strengthThe count you want totalled — one evening, one bottle shared three ways, whatever you are actually counting. Fractions are fine. This field and the weekly field below are separate on purpose: counting a particular occasion and describing a typical week are different questions, and a page that merged them would quietly turn one into the other.

… and how many in a TYPICAL WEEK (0 leaves the weekly rows out)How many drinks of this size and strength you would have in an ordinary week. Leave it at 0 and the weekly rows disappear. Set it and the page reports weekly ethanol and weekly units in all four conventions, and the difference from the weekly figure the selected body publishes. It reports; it does not compute a remaining allowance, and the reason is in the last note under the result.

Whose published figures to quoteThis changes only which body’s published figures are quoted in the note under the result, with its name and date. It does NOT change the arithmetic: all four national unit conversions are shown in the rows below whatever you pick here, because the point of this page is that the conventions disagree. The default quotes nobody.

25.7g ethanolExample

one 650 mL bottle of 5.0% ABV beer, counted once, with no weekly figure and no country selected

One multiplication, one density, and four divisors that do not agree

ethanol volume = drink volume × ABV/100 · grams of ethanol = ethanol volume × 0.78924 g/mL · UK units = ethanol volume / 10 mL, which is the published ABV × mL / 1000 · US standard drinks = grams / 14 · Australian standard drinks = grams / 10 · Canadian standard drinks = grams / 13.45 · energy = grams × 7 kcal/g = grams × 29 kJ/g

0.78924: grams per millilitre: the density of ethanol at 20 °C. It is the hinge of the whole calculation and it is worth checking that it reproduces the published definitions: the US standard drink of 0.6 fl oz is 17.744 mL, and 17.744 × 0.78924 = 14.00 g, exactly the published 14 g; the Canadian standard drink of 17.05 mL gives 17.05 × 0.78924 = 13.456 g against the published 13.45 g. Two national definitions, derived independently, both reproduced to three significant figures. That is the check that says the density is right
10 mL: the UK unit is defined by VOLUME, as 10 mL of pure ethanol, which is why the published UK formula is ABV × mL / 1000 and needs no density at all. The familiar “8 g” is a rounding of 10 × 0.78924 = 7.8924 g. Taking the 8 g literally instead gives a unit count 1.4% lower, and this page prints both so the difference is visible rather than argued about
14, 10, 13.45: grams of ethanol: the US, Australian and Canadian standard drinks, each defined by MASS of ethanol. The Canadian figure is 17.05 mL by volume; the Australian 10 g is sometimes printed as 12.5 mL, which implies a density of 0.80 g/mL and is internally 1.4% out. This page computes from the gram figures, which are the defining ones in all three
7, 29: kcal/g and kJ/g: these are the energy conversion factors for alcohol (ethanol) set out in Annex XIV of EU Regulation 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, which is the figure on European labels. Note that the regulation’s own pair is not self-consistent: 7 kcal/g converted at 4.184 kJ/kcal is 29.288 kJ/g, not 29, a 1% difference. Both are printed in the rows below. Neither includes the sugar in a beer or a liqueur, so this is the ethanol’s energy and not the drink’s
not done: what this page does not do: the page multiplies and divides. It does not model absorption or elimination, does not estimate blood alcohol concentration, and does not subtract anything from any weekly figure

Worked example

one 650 mL bottle of 5.0% ABV beer, counted once, with no weekly figure and no country selected
The ethanol, by volume. 650 mL × 5.0/100 = 32.5 mL of pure ethanol. That is the whole of the physics; everything after it is a choice of divisor.
The ethanol, by mass. 32.5 mL × 0.78924 g/mL = 25.65 g, which the headline rounds to 25.7 g. This is the figure every country's definition is built from and the only one that does not depend on where you live.
Now the same bottle in four conventions, and they are not close. UK units: 32.5 / 10 = 3.25 units (the published UK formula gives 5 × 650 / 1000 = 3.25 directly, with no density needed). US standard drinks: 25.65 / 14 = 1.83 drinks. Australian standard drinks: 25.65 / 10 = 2.57. Canadian standard drinks: 25.65 / 13.45 = 1.91. One bottle of beer, four counts. The Australian figure is 1.40 times the American one — exactly 14/10, the ratio of the two definitions, because each count is the same grams divided by a different divisor. That 40% spread between the largest and the smallest national count is the thing this page exists to make visible.
Why the spread matters more than it looks. Weekly figures are quoted in national units, so they inherit the national definition. The UK figure of 14 units a week is 14 × 7.89 = 110.5 g of ethanol. The Australian figure of 10 standard drinks a week is 100 g. The top of Canada's low-risk band, 2 standard drinks a week, is 26.9 g — about one bottle of this beer. Those three numbers are not variations on a theme; the Canadian figure is a quarter of the UK one. Reading one country's unit count against another country's weekly figure, which is the easiest mistake to make on the internet, can be wrong by a factor of four.
The 8-gram question, which is small but worth being exact about. A UK unit is DEFINED as 10 mL of ethanol, and 10 mL weighs 7.8924 g, so "8 g" is a rounding. Divide this bottle's 25.65 g by 8 and you get 3.21 units instead of 3.25 — 1.4% lower. The rows below print both. The same 1.4% appears inside the Australian definition, where the 10 g is sometimes printed as 12.5 mL, which implies a density of 0.80 rather than 0.78924.
Energy, since the label does not usually tell you. 25.65 g of ethanol at the European labelling factor of 7 kcal/g is 180 kcal from the alcohol alone, before any sugar in the beer. In kJ the same regulation says 29 kJ/g, giving 744 kJ; converting the 7 kcal/g at 4.184 kJ/kcal instead gives 751 kJ. The regulation's own two factors are 1% apart and both are printed below.
And an Indian large peg, for comparison, because this site's readers mostly do not drink in pints. A 60 mL large peg of spirits at 42.8% ABV is 60 × 0.428 = 25.68 mL of ethanol, 20.3 g, 2.57 UK units or 1.45 US standard drinks. A 90 mL patiala peg is 38.5 mL of ethanol, 30.4 g, 3.85 UK units. India has no official standard-drink definition that this page could establish — the peg is a pour size, not an alcohol-content unit — so none is offered, and the arithmetic is given in grams and in other countries' units instead.
What this page refuses to produce, and why that is the most important line on it. There is no "safe amount" here and there is no remaining allowance. The bodies quoted on this page have moved away from the language of safety themselves: the UK Chief Medical Officers state that no level of regular drinking can be considered completely safe in relation to some cancers; Canada's 2023 guidance states that there is no healthy amount; and the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans dropped the two-drinks-a-day and one-drink-a-day figures entirely in favour of "consume less alcohol for better overall health". A calculator that printed "you have 4 units left this week" would be converting a population risk statement into a personal permission slip, and would read as encouragement to use it up. This one counts what it is given and stops.

What one “unit” or “standard drink” is, by country

The spread between the smallest and the largest definition is 10 g to 14 g, a factor of 1.4, and it means the same drink carries four different counts. The spread between the weekly figures is much larger: 14 UK units is 110.5 g of ethanol a week, 10 Australian standard drinks is 100 g, and the top of Canada’s low-risk band, 2 standard drinks, is 26.9 g — a quarter of the UK figure. The United States currently publishes no number at all. For India the honest entry is that nothing could be established: no government standard-drink definition and no national weekly figure could be found, the peg is a measure of liquid rather than of alcohol, and this page offers no substitute for either.
Country or body	Name used	Ethanol per unit	By volume	Published weekly figure	Published single-occasion figure
United Kingdom – Chief Medical Officers, 2016	unit	7.89 g (printed as 8 g)	10 mL, the defining figure	Not more than 14 units a week on a regular basis, same for men and women; spread over 3 or more days if drinking that much	Limit the amount on any single occasion; drink more slowly, with food, alternating with water. No number given
United States – NIAAA and the Dietary Guidelines	standard drink	14 g, the defining figure	0.6 fl oz, about 17.74 mL	None in the current edition. The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines, published January 2026, say “Consume less alcohol for better overall health” and give no numeric limit. The 2 a day for men and 1 for women came from the 2020–2025 edition and is superseded	NIAAA defines binge drinking as 5 or more (men) or 4 or more (women) in about 2 hours, and heavy drinking as 5 or more on any day or 15 a week (men), 4 or more on any day or 8 a week (women) – research definitions, not recommendations
Australia – NHMRC, 2020	standard drink	10 g, the defining figure	About 12.5 mL as usually printed, which implies a density of 0.80 g/mL	No more than 10 standard drinks a week for healthy adults	No more than 4 standard drinks on any one day
Canada – CCSA guidance, 2023	standard drink	13.45 g	17.05 mL	A continuum rather than a limit: 0 a week; 1–2 low risk; 3–6 moderate risk; 7 or more increasingly high risk	More than 2 standard drinks on one occasion raises the risk of injury and violence
India	no official definition established	not established	a peg is a pour size, not a unit: 30 mL small, 60 mL large or double, 90 mL patiala	none established	none established

The same amount of ethanol, from drinks people actually pour

Computed by this page’s own arithmetic at 0.78924 g/mL. Three things in it are worth more than the rest. A UK pub measure of 25 mL of 40% spirits is exactly one UK unit, which is not a coincidence: 25 × 0.40 = 10 mL of ethanol, the definition. A US shot of 1.5 fl oz at 40% is exactly one US standard drink, for the same reason. And a bottle of wine is 9.75 UK units, so the UK Chief Medical Officers’ 14-unit weekly figure is about one and a half bottles of wine — which is the single most useful line in this table for anyone who has never counted. Note also that a 650 mL bottle of 5% beer and a 250 mL “large” glass of 13% wine contain EXACTLY the same amount of ethanol — 32.5 mL, 25.7 g, 3.25 UK units — which is the sort of equivalence nobody has an intuition for.
Drink	Volume	ABV	Ethanol	UK units	US drinks	Aus drinks	Canadian drinks
Beer bottle, Indian size	650 mL	5.0%	25.7 g	3.25	1.83	2.57	1.91
Beer bottle or can	330 mL	5.0%	13.0 g	1.65	0.93	1.30	0.97
Can	500 mL	5.0%	19.7 g	2.50	1.41	1.97	1.47
UK pint, lower strength	568 mL	3.6%	16.1 g	2.04	1.15	1.61	1.20
UK pint, higher strength	568 mL	5.2%	23.3 g	2.95	1.67	2.33	1.73
US pint	473 mL	5.0%	18.7 g	2.36	1.33	1.87	1.39
Restaurant glass of wine	175 mL	13.0%	18.0 g	2.27	1.28	1.80	1.33
Large glass of wine	250 mL	13.0%	25.7 g	3.25	1.83	2.57	1.91
Bottle of wine	750 mL	13.0%	77.0 g	9.75	5.50	7.70	5.72
UK pub measure of spirits	25 mL	40.0%	7.9 g	1.00	0.56	0.79	0.59
US shot	44.4 mL	40.0%	14.0 g	1.78	1.00	1.40	1.04
Indian small peg	30 mL	42.8%	10.1 g	1.28	0.72	1.01	0.75
Indian large or double peg	60 mL	42.8%	20.3 g	2.57	1.45	2.03	1.51
Indian patiala peg	90 mL	42.8%	30.4 g	3.85	2.17	3.04	2.26

Where each figure comes from, and what was rejected

The pattern worth noticing is that THREE of the five national sources here have changed in the last few years and most calculators on the internet are quoting the previous version. The United States dropped its numeric limits in January 2026. Canada replaced 15-and-10 a week with a continuism topping out at 2 a week in 2023, and its own Government page still shows the old figures. Australia lowered its weekly figure to 10 in 2020. Only the UK’s 14 units, from 2016, has stood. A calculator that quietly picked one country’s convention and one edition of its guidance would be wrong twice over, which is why this page shows all four conventions and names the date on everything.
Figure	Source used	What was rejected, or could not be established
The UK unit as 10 mL / 8 g, the ABV × mL / 1000 formula, and 14 units a week	The UK Chief Medical Officers’ low risk drinking guidelines, Department of Health and Social Care, published 25 August 2016, and the NHS page on calculating alcohol units, which gives “One unit equals 10 ml or 8 g of pure alcohol” and the formula. Both are UK Government works published under the Open Government Licence version 3.0, which permits commercial use with attribution — so unlike most of this site’s sources, the WORDING here can be quoted, and three sentences of it are.	Nothing from the UK national institute, whose open content licence is United Kingdom-only and forbids displaying the licensed information next to advertising. The CMO guidelines are a different document under a different licence and are usable.
The US standard drink as 14 g / 0.6 fl oz, and the drink examples	The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health — a United States Government work. 14 g of pure alcohol, about 0.6 fl oz, illustrated as 12 fl oz of 5% beer, 8–10 fl oz of 7% malt liquor or hard seltzer, 5 fl oz of 12% table wine, 3–4 fl oz of 17% fortified wine, or 1.5 fl oz of 40% spirits. NIAAA’s binge and heavy drinking definitions are from the same source.	The 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines figures of up to 2 drinks a day for men and 1 for women, which many readers and most calculators still quote. They are SUPERSEDED. The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published January 2026, carry no numeric daily limit; the recommendation is “Consume less alcohol for better overall health”. A page quoting the old figures today would be quoting a withdrawn number.
The Australian standard drink as 10 g, and 10 a week / 4 a day	The Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol, National Health and Medical Research Council, finalised 2020, as published by the Australian Government Department of Health: healthy adults no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 on any one day; under-18s not at all; no alcohol in pregnancy or when planning one, and not drinking is safest while breastfeeding. A standard drink contains 10 g of pure alcohol.	The 12.5 mL volumetric figure as a basis for computing. It implies a density of 0.80 g/mL where ethanol is 0.78924, so it is 1.4% inconsistent with the 10 g in the same definition. This page computes from the 10 g and records the discrepancy rather than smoothing it.
The Canadian standard drink as 17.05 mL / 13.45 g, and the 2023 continuum	Health Canada’s own page gives the standard drink as “17.05 millilitres or 13.45 grams of pure alcohol” — a Government of Canada work. The continuum (0; 1–2 low; 3–6 moderate; 7 or more increasingly high risk; more than 2 on an occasion for injury and violence) is from Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, published 2023 by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction with Health Canada funding, cited by figure. 17.05 × 0.78924 = 13.456, so the two halves of the Canadian definition are self-consistent to three significant figures.	Health Canada’s own low-risk-drinking page figures of 15 a week for men and 10 for women. Those are the 2011 guidelines, which the 2023 guidance replaced, and they are five to seven times higher than what replaced them. A Government source carrying a superseded number is still a superseded number, and this page says so instead of preferring it for its licence.
An Indian standard drink, and an Indian weekly figure	Nothing. Neither could be established.	Inventing either. The peg is a pour size — 30 mL small, 60 mL large or double, 90 mL patiala — and carries no defined alcohol content, so converting it into a “unit” would require assuming a strength. No Government of India standard-drink definition and no national low-risk weekly figure could be found by the author of this page. Saying so is better than importing another country’s number and labelling it Indian. The arithmetic is offered in grams, which needs no national convention at all, and in the four countries’ units for comparison.
0.78924 g/mL for ethanol	The density of ethanol at 20 °C. Verified against two independent national definitions rather than taken on trust: the US 0.6 fl oz (17.744 mL) gives 14.00 g against a published 14 g, and the Canadian 17.05 mL gives 13.456 g against a published 13.45 g.	Using 0.8 g/mL, which appears implicitly in the Australian 12.5 mL figure and would inflate every gram figure on this page by 1.4%.
7 kcal/g and 29 kJ/g	Annex XIV of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, which sets the energy conversion factors used on European labels: alcohol (ethanol) 29 kJ/g and 7 kcal/g, alongside fat 37/9, carbohydrate 17/4 and protein 17/4.	Reconciling the regulation with itself. 7 kcal/g at 4.184 kJ/kcal is 29.288 kJ/g, not 29, so the regulation’s own pair is 1% inconsistent. Both are printed. Also rejected: adding the energy from sugars, which varies by drink and which this page does not know.
Any statement that an amount is safe	Not made. The page quotes what named bodies recommend, with their names and dates, and goes no further.	The word “safe”, and any remaining-allowance arithmetic. The bodies themselves have moved: the UK Chief Medical Officers write that there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe in relation to some cancers; Canada’s 2023 guidance states there is no healthy amount of alcohol use; the current US Dietary Guidelines abandoned numeric limits. Also rejected on licensing grounds: the international health body whose 2023 statement on this is most often quoted. Its publications are licensed on NonCommercial terms, this site carries advertising, and copyright does not launder through a third party that has reprinted it — so neither its text nor its criteria appear here, and the position above is sourced to the UK, Canadian and US documents instead.
Blood alcohol concentration, and anything about driving	Not computed here. The Widmark page in the medical set does it, with its published error range.	Any estimate of intoxication or fitness to drive from a unit count. Units consumed and blood concentration are different quantities: concentration depends on body mass, body water, sex and the time over which the drinks were taken, and the published error on the Widmark estimate is wide enough to straddle two legal limits at once.

Why this page gives you grams first, and why there is no safe number on it

A “unit” of alcohol is not a quantity of alcohol. It is a quantity of alcohol as defined by one country. A UK unit is 10 mL of pure ethanol, which weighs 7.89 g and is usually printed as 8 g. A US standard drink is 14 g. An Australian standard drink is 10 g. A Canadian standard drink is 13.45 g. These are not approximations of each other — the largest is 1.4 times the smallest — and they are not even defined the same way: the UK defines its unit by volume and everyone else by mass. So a 650 mL bottle of 5% beer is 3.25 UK units, 1.83 US standard drinks, 2.57 Australian standard drinks and 1.91 Canadian ones. All four of those numbers describe the same bottle. None of them is more correct than the others, and a calculator that silently picks one and calls the answer “units” has hidden the most confusing fact in the subject.

Which is why the headline here is grams of ethanol. Grams is what every national definition is built out of, it needs no convention, and it is the quantity that research on alcohol and health is actually conducted in. Once you have grams, every national count is a division: by 7.89 for UK units, by 14 for US drinks, by 10 for Australian drinks, by 13.45 for Canadian ones. The page prints all four, every time, regardless of what you select, because the selector only changes which body’s published guidance gets quoted underneath — not the arithmetic.

The weekly figures diverge much further than the units do, and this is where real confusion lives. Translate each country’s weekly figure into grams and the spread is enormous. The UK Chief Medical Officers’ 14 units a week is 110.5 g of ethanol. The Australian NHMRC’s 10 standard drinks a week is 100 g. The top of the band Canada’s 2023 guidance calls low risk — 2 standard drinks a week — is 26.9 g, roughly one bottle of beer, which is about a quarter of the UK figure. And the United States, as of the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines published in January 2026, publishes no weekly or daily number at all; its recommendation is “Consume less alcohol for better overall health”. Four wealthy countries with access to the same literature, and their published figures differ by a factor of four and one of them has stopped giving a figure. That is not a sign that somebody has made an arithmetic error. It is a sign that the question “how much is all right?” does not have a single answer that evidence can settle, because it depends on which harms you count, how much risk is treated as acceptable, and what a public health document is for.

This page does not tell you that any amount is safe, and that is a decision, not an omission. It would be easy to print a green tick under 14 units and a red cross over it, and it would be wrong, for a reason the bodies themselves now state in their own words. The UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines say “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe in relation to some cancers” — that sentence is in the guidance that gives the 14-unit figure. Canada’s 2023 guidance says there is no healthy amount of alcohol use, and presents risk as a continuum rising from zero rather than as a threshold. The US guidelines abandoned their numeric limits rather than defend them. The 14 units is described in its own source as the level at which risk is kept LOW, not at which risk is absent, and the difference between those two statements is the whole of the honesty available here. So this page reports: here is the ethanol, here is what it is called in four places, and here is what a named body said, with its name and the date it said it. It stops there.

It also refuses, deliberately, to compute how much you have “left”. That is the output readers most expect from a page like this and it is the one output that would do harm. A remaining allowance converts a statement about populations into a personal permission slip, and it reads as encouragement to spend the balance. It is also arithmetically dishonest: the weekly figures are not budgets that reset on Sunday, the harms they are derived from accumulate over decades, and every one of the four bodies quoted here attaches a SEPARATE caution about single occasions precisely because a week’s worth in one night is a different kind of risk from the same amount spread out. The weekly rows on this page report what you have counted, and the difference from the published figure, and nothing else.

Where the real error in this calculation is, and it is not the arithmetic. The multiplication is exact. What is not exact is the glass. Pour sizes are the least standardised thing in this subject: a UK pub measure of spirits is 25 mL in some establishments and 35 mL in others; a restaurant glass of wine is 175 mL but “large” is 250 mL and a home pour is routinely more than either; a US shot is about 44 mL; an Indian peg is 30, 60 or 90 mL depending on who is pouring and what it is called. Strength is the second source of error — beers run from under 0.5% to over 8% and the label is the only way to know. The honest reading of any number on this page is that it is exact arithmetic on two figures you have estimated, so treat the second decimal place as decoration.

On India specifically, because this site’s readers mostly do not drink in pints. There is no Indian standard-drink definition that the author of this page could establish, and no Indian national weekly figure. The peg — conventionally 30 mL for a small peg, 60 mL for a large or double and 90 mL for a patiala — is a measure of liquid, not of alcohol, so it carries no fixed ethanol content and converting it into a “unit” would mean assuming a strength. Indian-made spirits are commonly bottled above 40% ABV, so the label matters: at 42.8%, a 60 mL large peg is 20.3 g of ethanol, 2.57 UK units or 1.45 US standard drinks, and a 90 mL patiala is 30.4 g. Rather than import another country’s convention and label it Indian, this page gives the grams, which need no convention, and the four national counts for comparison. Saying that a figure could not be established is a legitimate outcome and it is a better one than a confident invention.

What this page is not. It is not a blood alcohol calculator. Units consumed and blood alcohol concentration are different questions: concentration depends on body mass, body water, sex and the time over which the drinks were taken, and the Widmark page in the medical set estimates it along with the published range around the estimate, which on its own default inputs is wide enough to straddle two legal limits at once. It cannot tell anyone whether they are fit or legal to drive, and neither can this page. There is no screening questionnaire here either — the tools that assess drinking as a problem rather than counting it are questionnaires, not arithmetic, and they belong with the people who can act on the answer. If your own drinking worries you, the number on this page is not the thing that will help; a doctor is. Blood pressure and tobacco, the two other things this part of the site counts, are on the blood pressure category page and the pack-years page.

Frequently asked questions

How many units are in a pint of beer, or a glass of wine?

It depends on the size and the strength, which is why this page asks for both rather than offering a menu. A UK pint (568 mL) of 3.6% beer is 2.0 UK units; the same pint at 5.2% is 2.9 units. A 175 mL restaurant glass of 13% wine is 2.3 UK units; a 250 mL “large” glass of the same wine is 3.25 units, the same as a 650 mL bottle of 5% beer. A whole 750 mL bottle of 13% wine is 9.75 units, so the 14-unit weekly figure the UK Chief Medical Officers name is about one and a half bottles of wine. Two of the entries in the table above are not coincidences: a 25 mL UK pub measure of 40% spirits is exactly one UK unit, because 25 × 0.40 = 10 mL of ethanol, which is the definition of a unit; and a 1.5 fl oz US shot of 40% spirits is exactly one US standard drink, for the same reason. Those two are the only drinks in common use that are exactly one of anything.

Why does the same drink give a different number of units in different countries?

Because the unit is a national convention and the conventions were set independently. A UK unit is 10 mL of pure ethanol, defined by volume, which works out to 7.89 g. A US standard drink is 14 g, defined by mass. An Australian standard drink is 10 g. A Canadian standard drink is 13.45 g, equivalently 17.05 mL. The largest definition is 1.4 times the smallest, so the same glass carries four counts that differ by up to 40%. This matters most when a weekly figure crosses a border: 14 UK units is 110.5 g of ethanol a week, while 10 Australian standard drinks is 100 g and 2 Canadian standard drinks — the top of the band Canada’s 2023 guidance calls low risk — is 26.9 g. Someone who reads “no more than 2 drinks a week” from a Canadian source and counts in UK units has misread the figure by a factor of about four. Grams of ethanol is the only count that travels, which is why it is the headline here.

How much alcohol is safe?

This page will not answer that, and the reason is that the bodies that publish the figures have stopped answering it in those terms. The UK Chief Medical Officers give 14 units a week as the level at which health risks are kept LOW, and in the same guidance write that “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe in relation to some cancers”. Canada’s 2023 guidance presents a continuum of risk rising from zero — 0 a week, 1 to 2 low risk, 3 to 6 moderate, 7 or more increasingly high — and states that there is no healthy amount of alcohol use. The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published in January 2026, removed the numeric daily limits that the previous edition carried and say only “Consume less alcohol for better overall health”. So what this page does is report what a named body recommends, with its name and date, and leave it there. What it will not do is attach the word “safe” to a number, or compute how much you have left against one, because both of those turn a statement about populations into a personal permission and the second actively invites spending the balance.

Is a UK unit 8 grams or 7.89 grams?

Both, and the difference is 1.4%. The definition is volumetric: one UK unit is 10 mL of pure ethanol, which is why the published UK formula is ABV multiplied by millilitres and divided by 1,000, with no density anywhere in it. Ethanol’s density at 20 °C is 0.78924 g/mL, so 10 mL weighs 7.8924 g, and “8 g” is that rounded. If you take the 8 g literally and divide grams of ethanol by 8, you get a unit count 1.4% lower than the official formula gives. This page prints both figures in the rows above so you can see the gap rather than wonder about it. The same 1.4% appears on the other side of the world: the Australian standard drink is defined as 10 g, but the 12.5 mL often printed beside it implies a density of 0.80 g/mL, so that definition is internally inconsistent by the same amount. Neither discrepancy matters for anything a reader would do. Both are worth stating, because a page that prints 3.25 and a page that prints 3.21 for the same bottle should be able to explain why.

What is a peg, and how many units is one?

A peg is a pour size, not an alcohol-content unit, which is exactly why it cannot be converted without a strength. Conventionally a small peg is 30 mL, a large or double peg 60 mL and a patiala peg 90 mL. The ethanol depends entirely on what is in it: at 42.8% ABV, which is how a good deal of Indian-made spirit is bottled, a small peg is 10.1 g of ethanol (1.28 UK units), a large peg 20.3 g (2.57 UK units) and a patiala 30.4 g (3.85 UK units). At 40% those figures are about 7% lower. The author of this page could not establish any Government of India standard-drink definition or national weekly figure, and rather than import another country’s number and present it as Indian, this page says so. Enter the pour and the label strength and read the grams, which need no national convention at all.

How many calories are in a drink?

From the ethanol alone, grams of ethanol multiplied by 7 — that is the energy conversion factor for alcohol set out in Annex XIV of EU Regulation 1169/2011, which also gives 29 kJ/g, alongside 9 kcal/g for fat and 4 kcal/g for carbohydrate and protein. So a 650 mL bottle of 5% beer carries about 180 kcal from its alcohol, and a 750 mL bottle of 13% wine about 538 kcal. Two caveats, both on the page above. The regulation’s own two factors do not quite agree with each other: 7 kcal/g converted at 4.184 kJ/kcal is 29.288 kJ/g, not 29, a 1% difference, and both figures are printed in the rows so neither is hidden. And this is the ethanol’s energy only — it excludes the residual sugars in a beer, the sugar in a liqueur or a mixer, and anything else in the glass, so the drink’s total energy is higher than the figure here and this page does not know by how much.

Can this tell me if I am over the legal limit to drive?

No, and nothing can. Units consumed and blood alcohol concentration are different quantities. Concentration depends on body mass, total body water, sex, whether there was food in the stomach and above all on the time over which the drinks were taken and how long has passed since, because elimination is going on throughout. The Widmark page in the medical set estimates blood alcohol concentration and publishes the range around that estimate, and on its own default inputs that range is wide enough to straddle two legal limits at once — which is the most honest possible answer to this question. Driving limits also differ by country and in several places are zero for some categories of driver. If the question has occurred to you, the answer is not to calculate it.

Why is there no weekly allowance or “units remaining” on this page?

Because it is the one output here that would be actively harmful, and refusing it is a design decision rather than an oversight. Three reasons. It converts a population risk statement into a personal permission slip: “you have 4 units left” reads as an entitlement to 4 units, which is not what any of the published figures mean. It implies a budget that resets, when the harms the figures are derived from accumulate over years and the weekly framing is a communication device rather than an accounting period. And it cannot represent the single-occasion risk, which every one of the four bodies quoted on this page addresses separately — the UK guidance asks you to limit the amount on any one occasion, Australia names 4 standard drinks a day, Canada names more than 2 on an occasion, and NIAAA’s binge definition is about two hours — because a week’s worth in one night is a different kind of harm from the same amount spread out. The weekly rows here report what has been counted and the difference from the published figure. That is reporting. An allowance would be advice, and bad advice.

Does this page work for alcohol-free or low-alcohol drinks?

The arithmetic does, exactly: enter the volume and the percentage on the label and you get the grams, and at 0% you get zero. What the page cannot tell you is what any particular country’s labelling rules allow a word to mean. “Alcohol-free”, “de-alcoholised”, “low alcohol” and “non-alcoholic” are defined differently in different jurisdictions, some of those definitions permit a small residual amount, and this page has not established any of those thresholds and does not quote them. If the figure matters to you — in pregnancy, in recovery, for a medicine interaction, or for any other reason — read the printed percentage rather than the word on the front of the bottle, and put that percentage in the field above.

Related calculators

References

UK Chief Medical Officers, UK Chief Medical Officers’ Low Risk Drinking Guidelines, Department of Health and Social Care, published 25 August 2016. Quoted directly, which this page can do because UK Government content is published under the Open Government Licence version 3.0 and that licence permits commercial use with attribution. The quoted sentences: “To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis”; “If you regularly drink as much as 14 units per week, it is best to spread your drinking evenly over 3 or more days”; “If you are pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all, to keep risks to your baby to a minimum”; and “there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe in relation to some cancers”. The guideline figure of 14 units a week is the same for men and women.
NHS, Calculating alcohol units. The source of the UK unit definition used here: “One unit equals 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol”, and the published formula, strength (ABV) × volume (ml) ÷ 1,000 = units. Also the worked examples reproduced for cross-checking: a 25 mL single measure of 40% spirits is 1 unit; a 175 mL glass of 12% wine is 2.1 units; a pint of 3.6% beer is 2 units; a pint of 5.2% beer is 3 units; a 275 mL alcopop at 4.6% is 1.3 units. This page reproduces all five of those to the printed precision. Open Government Licence.
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, What Is A Standard Drink? and Drinking Levels and Patterns Defined. A United States Government work. One US standard drink contains 14 grams of pure alcohol, about 0.6 fl oz, illustrated as 12 fl oz of regular beer at 5% ABV, 8–10 fl oz of malt liquor or hard seltzer at 7%, 5 fl oz of table wine at 12%, 3–4 fl oz of fortified wine at 17%, or 1.5 fl oz of distilled spirits at 40%. Binge drinking is defined as five or more drinks for a man or four or more for a woman in about two hours; heavy drinking as five or more on any day or 15 or more per week for a man, four or more on any day or eight or more per week for a woman. Those are research and surveillance definitions, not recommendations, and are presented as such on this page.
US Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, published January 2026. VERIFIED, and this is the most important currency check on the page: the current edition gives NO numeric daily or weekly limit for alcohol. Its recommendation is “Consume less alcohol for better overall health”, together with a list of people who should not drink at all, including those who are pregnant, those recovering from alcohol use disorder, those taking interacting medications and those with relevant medical conditions. The figures of up to two drinks a day for men and one for women, which the great majority of online calculators still quote and which the brief for this page assumed, come from the 2020–2025 edition and are superseded.
National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol, finalised 2020, as published by the Australian Government Department of Health. Healthy adult men and women should drink no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 standard drinks on any one day; children and people under 18 should not drink alcohol; women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink, and not drinking is safest while breastfeeding. An Australian standard drink contains 10 g of pure alcohol. NOTE recorded on the page: the 12.5 mL figure commonly printed beside that 10 g implies a density of 0.80 g/mL rather than ethanol’s 0.78924, so the two halves of the published definition are 1.4% inconsistent; this page computes from the 10 g.
Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health (2023), developed over two and a half years with Health Canada funding, replacing the 2011 Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines. Risk is presented as a continuum: 0 standard drinks a week, with benefits noted for not drinking; 1 to 2 a week, low risk of harm; 3 to 6 a week, moderate risk; 7 or more a week, increasingly high risk; and more than 2 standard drinks on any single occasion increasing the risk of injuries and violence. The guidance states that there is no healthy amount of alcohol use. Cited by figure. The standard drink definition of 17.05 mL or 13.45 g of pure alcohol is taken from Health Canada’s own page, a Government of Canada work. SEPARATELY RECORDED: that same Health Canada page still carries the SUPERSEDED 2011 figures of no more than 15 standard drinks a week for men and 10 for women, which are five to seven times the 2023 low-risk band; a Government source is not a current source, and this page quotes the 2023 guidance.
Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the provision of food information to consumers, Annex XIV (conversion factors). Alcohol (ethanol): 29 kJ/g and 7 kcal/g. For comparison, fat 37 kJ/g and 9 kcal/g; carbohydrate except polyols and protein 17 kJ/g and 4 kcal/g. Used for the energy rows. NOTE: 7 kcal/g converted at the thermochemical 4.184 kJ/kcal gives 29.288 kJ/g, so the regulation’s own paired factors differ by about 1%; both are printed rather than reconciled.
Kalinowski A, Humphreys K. Governmental standard drink definitions and low-risk alcohol consumption guidelines in 37 countries. Addiction 2016;111(7):1293–1298. Cited for the general proposition on this page that standard-drink definitions vary widely between governments and that guideline amounts vary more widely still. The four definitions this page computes with are each taken from their own national source above rather than from this survey.
WHAT COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED, stated rather than glossed over. (1) No Government of India standard-drink definition could be found, and no Indian national low-risk weekly or daily figure. The peg (30 mL small, 60 mL large or double, 90 mL patiala) is a pour size carrying no defined alcohol content. This page therefore offers no Indian unit and no Indian guideline figure, and gives the arithmetic in grams instead. (2) No single current figure for “how much is all right” exists across the four countries quoted, and the spread between them in grams of ethanol per week — 110.5, 100, 26.9 and none published — is a factor of four. That is a fact about the question, not a gap in the research for this page. (3) The precise ABV of Indian-made spirits could not be established as a standard; 42.8% is used in the worked comparisons as a commonly encountered bottling strength and the page tells the reader to read the label instead.
LICENSING POSITION, recorded because it determined the sources above. The 2023 statement from the international health body that is most often quoted for “no safe level” is not used on this page, directly or indirectly. Its publications are licensed on NonCommercial terms, this site carries advertising and is therefore commercial, and copyright does not launder by reaching the material through a third party that has reprinted it. The position that there is no risk-free level is instead sourced to the UK Chief Medical Officers’ own wording and to Canada’s 2023 guidance, both of which say it themselves. Separately, no guidance from the UK national institute is used anywhere on this site: its open content licence is United Kingdom-only and forbids displaying the licensed information next to advertising. The UK CMO guidelines and the NHS unit page are different documents under the Open Government Licence, which permits commercial use with attribution, and are the reason this page can quote UK wording directly where it quotes no other body’s.
DERIVATIONS AND VERIFICATION PERFORMED FOR THIS PAGE. (1) The density 0.78924 g/mL was verified against two independent national definitions rather than assumed: the US standard drink of 0.6 fl oz is 17.744 mL, and 17.744 × 0.78924 = 14.00 g against a published 14 g; the Canadian standard drink of 17.05 mL gives 13.456 g against a published 13.45 g. (2) The five NHS worked examples were reproduced in this page’s own engine to the printed precision. (3) The weekly figures were converted to grams for comparison: 14 UK units = 14 × 7.8924 = 110.49 g; 10 Australian standard drinks = 100 g; 2 Canadian standard drinks = 26.90 g. (4) Every input was tested absent, zero, negative, above range and non-numeric on each field: all refuse and the page shows its incomplete message rather than computing from a partial scope. (5) No figure on this page is banded, coloured or compared with a threshold by the engine, and that is deliberate: any band on grams of ethanol would be a safety verdict, and this page does not issue one.
A note on what this page is counting. Grams of ethanol is a quantity of a substance, and that is all it is. It says nothing about how that substance was taken, over what period, by whom, with what else, or what it did. The epidemiology that produces weekly figures is about populations and about averages over years; it cannot be run backwards onto one person and one evening. Nothing on this page is a measurement of anybody, nothing on it is a verdict, and the absence of a safe number is the honest state of the subject rather than a failure of this page to look one up.

CalcEngines health calculators are for education and for checking arithmetic that has already been decided elsewhere. They are not medical advice, they do not decide what to give, and they do not replace the judgement of a doctor, nurse, midwife or dietitian who knows the person in front of them. Every figure depends on the values you enter and on the assumptions stated on the page — check it against the prescription, the product label and your local policy before acting on it.