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Alcohol Units Calculator

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Calculate UK alcohol units across multiple drinks, see grams of ethanol, and compare against the 14-units-per-week low-risk guideline.

UK NHS Formula
Multi-Drink Sessions
100% Client-Side
No Tracking

Enter Drink Details

Pick a preset or enter ABV and volume manually. Set the count for multiple of the same drink.

Drink #1
2.27 units

Your Results

Total UK units across all drinks in this session.

2.3units
18.2 g of pure ethanol
vs. UK weekly low-risk limit16% of 14
Within low-risk weekly range

Under 25% of the UK CMO low-risk weekly guideline of 14 units.

Not medical advice. UK units do not measure BAC — they don't predict whether you're safe to drive. If alcohol use feels difficult to manage, talk to a GP or call DrinkAware on 0300 123 1110 (UK).

100% client-side — nothing leaves your browser.
No network call, no logging, no analytics on your drink entries.

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How to Use

  1. 1 Pick a drink preset (pint of lager, small wine, single spirit, etc.) — ABV and volume auto-fill
  2. 2 Override the ABV or volume if your drink is different — the preset auto-clears to 'Custom'
  3. 3 Set how many of that drink you've had — this lets you stack a session in one row
  4. 4 Click Add Drink to log a different beverage; rows total up automatically
  5. 5 Watch the units total and the weekly-limit bar update as you tweak any number

Features

  • Eight UK preset drinks (pints, wine glasses, shots, alcopops) — one click each
  • Multi-drink sessions: log a pint AND a wine AND a shot in three rows, see the total
  • Shows grams of pure ethanol alongside units (1 unit = 8 g)
  • Weekly-limit progress bar with five risk bands (none / low / moderate / high / exceeds)
  • Risk band labels reference UK Chief Medical Officers' 2016 low-risk guidance (14 units/week)
  • 100% browser-based — no drink entries are sent anywhere

Why it Matters

ABV labels on a bottle don't tell you how much alcohol you've actually drunk — that's a function of volume too. A pint of strong lager (5.2% × 568 ml) is nearly 3 units; a small wine (12% × 125 ml) is 1.5. People consistently underestimate the strong-pint and overestimate the small-wine. A unit calculator turns 'I had a few' into a number you can compare to the 14-unit-per-week low-risk guideline — without ever sending your drink history anywhere.

★★★★★

Use Cases

Weekly Health Check-In

Quickly tally your week's drinks against the UK 14-unit low-risk guideline

Personal Awareness

See how a 'few drinks' converts into actual ethanol grams — often surprising

Health Education

Run scenarios for class or training — what does a 'session' really add up to?

Pre-Event Planning

Map a wedding/party drink list to your weekly budget before the day

What this calculator does

This calculator turns your drink list into two numbers that actually matter:

  1. Total UK units — the standardised measure used by the NHS and CMO guidelines.
  2. Grams of pure ethanol — what your liver actually has to process (1 unit = 8 g).

Then it compares your total to the 14-units-per-week low-risk weekly guideline issued by the UK Chief Medical Officers in 2016. The progress bar lights up in five colour bands so you can see at a glance whether a session was a small share of the weekly limit, or whether one night already exceeded the entire week’s guidance.

What it does NOT do

  • It does not estimate BAC. Units measure how much alcohol you drank, not how drunk you are. BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) depends on your body weight, sex, food, and time — a separate calculation. Use a BAC Calculator for that.
  • It is not medical advice. Limits vary by individual health, pregnancy, medications, and age. The 14-unit guideline is a population-level low-risk threshold, not a personal safety threshold.
  • It does not store your data. Each session you load is fresh — there’s no history, no account, no cloud sync. Privacy is the default, not an opt-in.

Privacy

The math runs entirely in your browser via the pure calculateAlcoholUnits function (src/tools/calculators/alcohol-units.ts in our public repo). Editing a row produces zero network requests — you can verify this in your browser’s Network tab. The page does not store entries in localStorage, does not record them in analytics, and never transmits anything about your drinks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a 'unit' of alcohol?
One UK unit is 10 ml (or 8 g) of pure ethanol. The formula: units = (ABV% × volume in ml) / 1000. So a pint (568 ml) of 4% lager is (4 × 568) / 1000 = 2.27 units. A 25 ml shot of 40% spirit is exactly 1 unit by design — that's where the 'standard single' definition comes from.
Where does the 14-units-per-week limit come from?
It's the UK Chief Medical Officers' 2016 low-risk drinking guideline — a level at which the long-term health risks of alcohol (cancer, liver, cardiovascular) are considered low. The guideline applies to both men and women equally, replaces the previous gender-split guidance, and recommends spreading drinks across 3+ days with at least 2 alcohol-free days per week.
Does this calculator tell me if I'm safe to drive?
No. Driving safety depends on Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC), not units. BAC depends on your body weight, sex, food intake, drinking rate, and time since the last drink — none of which this calculator asks for. For a rough BAC estimate use a dedicated [BAC Calculator](/tools/bac-calculator/), and never drive after drinking — the legal limit in England, Wales, NI is 80 mg/100 ml (35 µg/100 ml breath); Scotland is lower at 50 mg/100 ml.
Why is a pint of 'normal' lager 2.27 units, not 2?
Because the UK pint is 568 ml, not the older 'standard drink' assumption of 500 ml. At 4% ABV, 568 × 4 / 1000 = 2.27 units. Many pubs serve stronger lagers (4.5–5.2%), which push a single pint to 2.6–3 units. This is the most common reason people underestimate their weekly intake.
Is my drink data sent to any server?
No. The math runs entirely in your browser using the open-source `alcohol-units.ts` function in our repo. The tool makes zero network calls when you edit a row — you can confirm this in your browser's Network tab.
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Want to understand the math?

Browse all guides →
UK Alcohol Units, Explained
alcohol

UK Alcohol Units, Explained: The Math Behind '14 a Week'

One UK unit = 10 ml of pure ethanol. Here's where that number comes from, why a pint of normal lager is 2.3 units (not 2), how the 14-unit weekly guideline was set, and what the math doesn't tell you.

16 May 2026

5 min read

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