Calculate the cost of your coffee habit

Britain is a nation of coffee lovers. We get through around 98m cups a day, and it is a figure that shows no sign of slowing down despite the cost of living crisis.

Four out of five adults now say they regularly drink coffee – in fact, there’s a good chance you are reading this now with a coffee in hand.

But what effect is it having on your bank account? While you can buy a pot of instant coffee very cheaply, regularly buying a freshly ground cup at a high street coffee shop quickly adds up.

According to the British Coffee Association, 80pc of those who visit coffee shops buy coffee once a week, while 16pc visit every day. And the real coffee fiends among you will be buying coffee more than once a day.

Our calculator reveals just how much all those coffees on the way into work or lunchtime pick-me-ups cost over the course of a year. Using our online calculator, you can quickly count the cost of your habit.

Buying a couple of medium lattes a day from Starbucks will set you back £1,976 a year. But what else could you have done with your money?

If you chose to save that money each year into a savings account paying 5pc, you would have £11,198 after five years because of the magic of compound interest. With our coffee calculator, you can choose your preferred caffeine hit from Britain’s five biggest coffee shop chains, select how often you buy your coffee, and see just how much you are spending.

And the price of a cup differs hugely between the five big chains we used for our tool. Buying one flat white every working day at Greggs will cost you £507 over a year. But at Costa the same order will cost you £ 900. Britain remains a tea-loving nation, but the invasion of coffee shop chains on the high street has been steadily rising since the mid-1990s.

Today, there are more than 30,000 cafés, coffee shops and other coffee- serving vendors throughout the country. The industry is a key part of the food and drinks economy, and continues to grow in spite of inflation and the squeeze on personal finances.

Sales grew 11.9pc last year compared with the previous 12 months and the UK’s coffee shop market is valued at £15bn annually.