★ FOOD · COFFEE · COMPARISONS
Drip saves $88.50 a year at the defaults: $442.35 for pour-over against $353.85 for drip. Enter your cups, coffee price, and grams per cup to see which brew method costs you more per year.
Pour-over usually uses more coffee per cup than drip, and that gap adds up over a year. This calculator adds coffee, filters, energy, and equipment together so you compare full yearly costs, not just the price of the beans.
Almost the whole gap is the coffee itself. At the defaults, pour-over uses 15 grams a cup against 12 grams for drip, so over 730 cups a year it drinks 10.95 kg of beans against 8.76 kg. At $16 a pound that is $386.25 against $309.00, a $77.25 difference before anything else is counted. Filters add another $14.60 to the gap ($36.50 against $21.90), energy adds $3.65 ($14.60 against $10.95), and equipment partly offsets it: the drip machine costs $7 a year more to amortize ($12 against $5). Add it all up and pour-over lands at $442.35 a year against $353.85 for drip, a difference of $88.50. The model states its key assumption plainly: drip uses less coffee per cup. If your pour-over recipe uses the same 12 grams as your drip, the coffee gap disappears and only the filter and energy differences remain.
Cost is not the whole story. Pour-over gives you control over water temperature, pour speed, and bloom time, which is why it is the choice for single-origin beans where flavor nuance is the point. It also brews one or two cups at a time with almost no cleanup beyond a filter, while a drip machine shines at brewing a full pot for a household or an office. If you drink one cup a day, the whole gap is only $40.75 a year — about 11 cents a day — which most pour-over fans will happily pay for a better cup. The gap only bites at four cups a day, where it reaches $184.00 a year, or with strong 20-gram recipes, where it reaches $217.25. Use this calculator to find your own number, then decide whether the flavor is worth it.
| Output | Formula | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Cups per year | Cups per day × days per year | 2 × 365 = 730 cups at the defaults. |
| Pour-over coffee cost | 730 × 15 g ÷ 453.592 × $16 | 24.14 lb × $16 = $386.25 a year. |
| Drip coffee cost | 730 × 12 g ÷ 453.592 × $16 | 19.31 lb × $16 = $309.00 a year. |
| Pour-over total | $386.25 + $36.50 + $14.60 + $5.00 | $442.35 a year at the defaults. |
| Drip total | $309.00 + $21.90 + $10.95 + $12.00 | $353.85 a year at the defaults. |
| Yearly saving | Pour-over total − drip total | $442.35 − $353.85 = $88.50 a year for drip. |
This is a comparison model, not a meter reading. The grams-per-cup figures are the model's core assumption: real recipes vary, and if your pour-over and drip both use the same dose, the coffee gap shrinks to near zero. Filter, energy, and equipment costs are typical defaults, not your utility bill or your exact gear; a reusable metal filter drops the filter line to zero, and a machine that stays on a hot plate all morning costs more than $0.015 a cup. Equipment is spread evenly over five years, which ignores machines that break early or last a decade. Treat the result as the yearly cost of a brewing habit, not a grocery receipt.
Bright Side Kit. "Pour-Over vs Drip Coffee: Yearly Brewing Cost Calculator." https://brightoolbox.com/pour-over-vs-drip-coffee/ Accessed October 24, 2026.At the defaults — 2 cups a day, 365 days, $16 a pound, 15 grams a cup — pour-over costs $442.35 a year: $386.25 for coffee, $36.50 for filters, $14.60 for kettle energy, and $5.00 for equipment.
At the defaults — 2 cups a day, 365 days, $16 a pound, 12 grams a cup — drip costs $353.85 a year: $309.00 for coffee, $21.90 for filters, $10.95 for machine energy, and $12.00 for equipment.
Mostly the dose: this model assumes pour-over uses 15 grams a cup against 12 grams for drip, so it drinks about 5 pounds more coffee a year. Filters add a smaller gap; equipment slightly favors pour-over.
In this model, yes, as long as drip uses fewer grams per cup. If your pour-over recipe uses the same dose as your drip, the coffee gap disappears and only the filter and energy differences remain.
$184.00 a year: pour-over $879.70 against drip $695.70. The saving grows with every extra cup because the per-cup dose gap is multiplied across more cups.
The gap grows to $127.13 a year: pour-over $635.48 against drip $508.35. Pricier beans magnify the grams-per-cup difference, so the method matters more, not less.
Yes — set the filter cost to $0 for that method and the calculator drops that line entirely. A reusable metal filter removes $36.50 a year from pour-over or $21.90 from drip.
Yes, if you brew with the same dose as drip and use a reusable filter, pour-over can come out cheaper, because its equipment line is only $5 a year against $12 for a drip machine. Enter your own numbers to check.