Tea During Pregnancy: Caffeine, Green Tea and Which Herbal Teas Need Care

Our original Tea 101 guide put it the same way: you can usually keep your cup “if there are no other medical complications,” and it ended with a reminder that still stands, to consult your doctor before switching to something new during pregnancy. That guide was first drafted in May 2017. We have since reread it line by line and taken out every health promise it made about herbal teas.

It helps to split tea into two families. Black, green, white and oolong teas all come from one plant, Camellia sinensis, and all of them contain caffeine; so does masala chai, which is black tea with spices. Herbal teas, or tisanes, are made from other plants such as chamomile, ginger, hibiscus or mint. Most contain no caffeine, but caffeine-free is not the same as suitable in pregnancy.

Herbs have active compounds of their own, and for many of them there is little research in pregnancy. So when people ask what tea is safe during pregnancy, the honest answer has two parts: count your caffeine, and check your herbs with your doctor or midwife. There is no single list of pregnancy-safe teas that suits everyone.

This is also how we answer customers who ask us. We are tea makers rather than doctors, so we ask you to check with your doctor or midwife, and we will gladly send the full ingredient list of any of our blends to take to that appointment.

If the two families are new to you, start with Herbal tea (tisanes) and Black tea vs green tea.

Guidance differs between countries and is reviewed from time to time, and your own doctor or midwife may give you a different figure. Ask them which figure applies to you.

How many cups that is depends on the cup. Tea 101 puts a cup of black tea at about 50 mg and a cup of green tea at roughly 20 to 45 mg, against about 90 to 95 mg for a cup of coffee. On those figures, a few ordinary cups add up quickly, and coffee, cola, energy drinks and chocolate count too.

These are averages: caffeine varies with the leaf, how much you use, the water temperature and how long you steep it. A 2016 piece on our blog gave a sense of the range, putting black tea at around 20 mg when brewed for two minutes and about 50 mg at five. The leaf itself varies too. A review by the Tea Research Association at Tocklai, Jorhat, found that the made teas of North East India contain between 3 and 5 percent caffeine, and that normal brewing draws out around 80 percent of it.

Using our caffeine labels to count

We do not test our teas for caffeine in a laboratory, so we give no milligram figure for any single product. What our product pages do carry is a caffeine rating of High, Medium, Low or Caffeine free. In October 2026 all our chais made with black tea, including the Ayurvedic ones, are rated High (our Instant Chai Latte Mix is Medium); most of our single-estate Assam black teas are rated Medium; and every green tea blend we sell is rated Low.

Low on our labels never means none. Only teas marked Caffeine free contain no tea leaf at all.

The full picture, including how brewing changes the numbers, is in Caffeine in tea.

Our original Tea 101 guide noted that there is no official advice to stop drinking green tea in pregnancy, only to keep its caffeine in mind.

Green tea is brewed cooler and shorter than black tea, at 75 to 80°C (167 to 176°F) for 2 to 3 minutes, and a gentle brew tends to extract less caffeine than a long, hot one. A plain green such as our Darjeeling Green Tea, which has nothing in it but green tea leaf and is labeled low caffeine on its product page, makes it easy to know what you are drinking. More on the tea itself in What is green tea?

Flavored green teas carry both

Many flavored green teas are a different matter: they combine green tea with herbs or flowers, so they carry both the caffeine and the herbs. Our own customers have been caught out by this. In 2022 a buyer of our chamomile green tea had not realized it was made with green tea at all. Our support team’s answer since then has been plain: Pure Chamomile is a caffeine-free tisane, while Chamomile Green blends chamomile with green tea, so it does contain caffeine.

White tea and concentrates

Two other cups catch people out. White tea is often assumed to be caffeine-free; it is not (see What is white tea?). Whites made mostly from buds can start with more caffeine in the leaf: the Tocklai review found caffeine highest in the bud, at 5.30 percent in a shoot of one leaf and a bud against 3.20 percent in a shoot of four leaves and a bud. How much reaches your cup still depends on the cooler, shorter brew white tea gets. Our own ratings reflect the range: our Moonlight white teas are rated Medium, while Silver Needle is rated Low.

Green tea supplements, extracts and powders deliver far more of the leaf than a brewed cup; any of these is one to ask your doctor about before taking.

That is why the careful approach is to ask your doctor or midwife about any herbal tea you plan to drink regularly, and to treat “natural” as a description of where an ingredient comes from, not a promise that it is right for you. A 2016 piece on our blog made the point precisely: in food labeling, natural “just means found somewhere in nature.”

Our own archive has been on both sides of this. The original Tea 101 guide listed ginger, nettle, raspberry leaf, dandelion, peppermint and rooibos as teas you could drink during pregnancy. That 2016 piece took a more cautious view of herbal teas in general. It singled out “dieter” teas and blends with star anise, comfrey, aloe, senna, peppermint or oleander, warning that herbs can cause problems “in combination with each other, medications and laxatives, and through oversteeping and high dosages.”

We no longer publish a “safe list.” What one person’s doctor is happy with may not suit another, so the table below is a starting point for that conversation, nothing more.

For more on how tisanes are made and brewed, see Herbal tea (tisanes).

We cannot tell you it will ease nausea, and if morning sickness is severe or you cannot keep fluids down, that is something to raise with them rather than treat at home with tea.

If your doctor or midwife is happy for you to drink it, ginger tea is simply fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced or grated, simmered in water for a few minutes and strained. On its own it contains no caffeine. Ginger chai is different: it is black tea brewed with ginger, usually with milk, so it carries the caffeine of the tea. Ginger is also in almost every masala chai blend; see Chai spices and chai masala.

That holds for our own range too. Every Teabox blend that lists ginger is built on tea leaf: our masala and Ayurvedic chais, rated High for caffeine, and our Turmeric Ginger Tulsi Green teabags, rated Low. We do not sell a caffeine-free ginger tea, so a plain ginger cup is one to make at home from the root.

One kitchen tip from our blog, for anyone making ginger chai: fresh ginger can curdle hot milk. Its enzymes clot milk proteins most actively above 60°C and are neutralized above 70°C, so either boil the ginger in water before adding milk, or wait until the milk and water are hot enough to sizzle against the pan before adding the ginger. The full story is in The Science Behind My Ginger Chai.

That list is not complete, and your doctor or midwife may add to it. A few further cautions follow from everything above:

• Teas sold for a purpose. Diet, slimming and “detox” teas often mix several herbs, some of them laxative. Many “detox” green teas, including some sold by us, are green tea with herbs, so they bring caffeine as well as the herbs. Our view of what tea can and cannot do is in Tea and weight loss.
• Concentrated products. Extracts, capsules and supplements are not the same as a brewed cup. Writing about herbs and pets, our blog noted that concentrated extracts can run 500 to 2,000 times the strength of the natural leaf.
• Herbs you do not recognize. If a blend lists a plant you have not heard of, ask your doctor, midwife or pharmacist before drinking it.
• Very strong caffeinated cups. The old Tea 101 guide did not ban black, green, oolong or Darjeeling teas; it said to limit them because of their caffeine. How much suits you is a question for your doctor or midwife.

Health claims about tea are everywhere, and many go further than the evidence. We look at the common ones in Tea and health myths.