Green Tea, Earl Grey & Fruit Tea Calories in Singapore: 5 to 345 kcal a Cup

The direct answer: a tea-shop green tea in HPB Singapore's default 500ml medium cup is 5 kcal with no sugar and no topping, and 170 kcal at regular sugar with a topping — a 34-fold difference for what is, underneath, the same tea. Plain unsweetened tea is effectively calorie-free: HPB records brewed green tea at 2 kcal per 100ml and unsweetened black tea at 1 kcal per 100ml.

Earl grey works differently. Earl grey itself is black tea scented with bergamot, so a plain cup is as close to zero as any other black tea. But the earl grey most people order in Singapore is earl grey milk tea, and HPB's 500ml cup of that is 345 kcal — and still 280 kcal with no sugar and no topping, because the calories are in the milk or creamer, not the sugar.

That is the pattern across the whole tea counter: for a clear tea, the sugar and the topping are almost all of the calories; for a milk tea, they are the smaller part.

Tea-Shop Green Tea at Every Sugar Level

How to read this table: the per cup column is the whole drink at HPB's own default portion for tea-shop teas, a 500ml medium cup. The per 100ml column is HPB's raw density figure. The sugar column is for the whole 500ml cup, and the percentage is against the WHO's 50g daily sugar guideline. Nothing here is estimated.

Fruit & Flavoured Teas: Regular vs the Lightest Order

Every row below is a 500ml medium cup, HPB's default for all of these teas. The left pair of columns is the drink as most stalls make it by default (regular sugar, with topping). The right pair is the lightest version of that same tea HPB records — named in each row, because HPB does not list a no-sugar, no-topping version for every flavour.

So if you want a flavoured tea that is genuinely light, the order of preference on HPB's numbers is: plain green tea or oolong (5 kcal each), lemon green tea (15 kcal), jasmine green tea (15 kcal) — all with no sugar and no topping. Sweet-flavoured teas like yakult, peach and mango never get below 90 kcal however you order them.

Earl Grey: Plain Tea vs Earl Grey Milk Tea

Plain earl grey is black tea flavoured with bergamot oil. Brewed without sugar or milk it behaves like any unsweetened black tea, which HPB records at 1 kcal per 100ml (2 kcal for HPB's 200ml cup). Add sugar and it becomes teh O territory — see the kopitiam table further down.

Earl grey milk tea, the bubble-tea-shop drink, is a different product. All figures below are HPB's 500ml medium cup.

Going from the default earl grey milk tea to no sugar and no topping cuts sugar from 36.6g to 7.4g — a genuinely big improvement if sugar is what you are watching. But calories only fall from 345 to 280 kcal, a 65 kcal saving, because the milk or creamer stays. That stripped-down earl grey milk tea is still 275 kcal more than a no-sugar, no-topping green tea.

Green Tea With Milk, Matcha & Thai Green Milk Tea

The same thing happens when milk goes into green tea. Each row states its own HPB portion, because these drinks come in different sizes.

A no-sugar, no-topping green milk tea is 275 kcal against 5 kcal for the same cup without milk. Skipping the whipped cream on a green tea frappuccino saves 108 kcal, though HPB's no-cream version is also a smaller 450ml cup, so part of that difference is size. The 3-in-1 matcha latte looks lightest only because HPB's portion is a 200ml cup, less than half the size of the tea-shop drinks: per 100ml it is 54 kcal, against 34 kcal for a regular-sugar tea-shop green tea.

Kopitiam Tea: Teh O and Iced Lemon Tea

Kopitiam teas come in smaller cups. Teh O is light; iced lemon tea is not. Each row states HPB's own cup size.

Iced lemon tea is the one to watch. At 162 kcal and 39.7g of sugar for HPB's 450ml glass, it is within a few calories of a regular-sugar lemon green tea from a tea shop (160 kcal for 500ml) and carries far more sugar (39.7g against 24.2g) — 79% of the WHO's daily guideline in one glass. A hot teh O is 48 kcal; teh O kosong is 5.

How to Order Tea Without the Calories

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition data sourced from the Health Promotion Board (HPB) Singapore food composition database (April 2026 release). Every per-cup and per-glass figure in this article is HPB's own per-100 value scaled to HPB's own recorded default portion for that drink, which is stated alongside each number; no portion size has been estimated. HPB records these drinks by weight; this article follows NutriKaki's convention of reading the values per 100ml and quoting cup sizes in ml, except where HPB's recorded weight differs from the cup's labelled volume (Thai green milk tea). Where HPB records a value as Trace rather than a number, it is shown as Trace. The 50g daily sugar reference is the World Health Organization's guideline, not an HPB figure, and HPB's sugar column reports total sugars rather than added sugars. Values are approximate and vary by shop, recipe and cup size. This article is for general wellness purposes only and does not constitute medical or dietary advice. Nutrition data referenced in this article is used under licence from the Health Promotion Board (HPB) of Singapore and may not be redistributed, republished, or reused commercially without NutriKaki's prior written permission.