Coffee drinks fall into a handful of families: straight espresso, espresso with steamed milk, brewed coffee, cold drinks over ice, and dessert or regional specialties. Almost every cafe drink is one of these, built in a different ratio.
scroll →The 14 main drinks, drawn to the same scale.
The chart
How many types of coffee are there?
How many coffee drinks there are depends entirely on how you count. Flavored syrups, milk swaps, and regional names can stretch the list endlessly, but the underlying drinks are far fewer than the menus suggest. Rather than argue over a single number, this chart maps the core drinks and shows how each one is built, so you can see the whole landscape at a glance.
Some lists count around a dozen types, others closer to twenty. This chart maps 18 coffee drinks across 6 families, each drawn to the same scale.
THE COUNT18DRINKS6FAMILIESEach drawn to the same scale.
The visual reference for every coffee drink. Filter the chart by family, milk, temperature, strength, or cup size.
The main types are espresso drinks such as a straight shot, a macchiato, or an americano; espresso-and-milk drinks like the latte, cappuccino, flat white, cortado, and mocha; brewed coffee; cold drinks such as iced coffee and cold brew; and dessert or regional styles such as affogato and Turkish coffee.
How many types of coffee are there?
There is no fixed number, because it depends on whether you count every syrup, size, and milk as its own drink. Most of the everyday variety comes from a small set of base drinks combined with milk, water, ice, or flavor. This chart lays out the core drinks so you can see how they relate.
What's the difference between espresso and brewed coffee?
Espresso is forced through finely ground coffee under pressure in a few seconds, giving a small, intense, concentrated shot. Brewed coffee drips or steeps through coarser grounds with hot water over minutes, giving a larger, lighter cup. Most milk drinks start from espresso, while filter, drip, and cold brew are brewed.
Which coffee drink has the least milk?
Among drinks that contain any milk at all, an espresso macchiato has the least: just a small dollop of foam on top of the shot. Straight espresso, an americano, and black brewed coffee have none at all.
How do I pick a coffee drink?
Start with how much milk you want. For a strong, mostly-coffee cup, reach for espresso, a cortado, or a macchiato; for something milder and creamier, a latte or flat white; for a bold middle ground, a cappuccino. Then decide hot or iced, and use the filters above to narrow by strength and size.
Every number here comes from one place: a single dataset that every diagram, table, and comparison reads from, so a drink shows the same figures site-wide. Caffeine starts from a USDA measurement of the coffee and scales by the recipe each page states, and where a figure is ours rather than USDA's, the page says so. See how the numbers are put together.