Knowing how many units of alcohol are in your drinks helps you stay within lower-risk guidelines and understand your intake. The Alcohol Units Calculator converts any drink into UK units and US standard drinks from its volume and alcohol-by-volume (ABV), with presets for common beers, wines and spirits.
How it works
The UK unit is based on pure alcohol: one unit is 10 ml (about 8 g) of ethanol. The core formula is:
UK units = volume (ml) × ABV (%) ÷ 1000
For the US measure, a standard drink contains 14 g of pure alcohol. The tool converts millilitres of ethanol to grams using ethanol’s density of 0.789 g/ml, so one UK unit (about 7.9 g) equals roughly 0.56 US standard drinks. Multiply by the number of drinks for your session total.
Example
A 568 ml pint of 4% ABV beer:
568 × 4 ÷ 1000 = 2.3 UK units (about 1.3 US standard drinks).
| Drink | Volume | ABV | UK units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pint of beer | 568 ml | 4% | 2.3 |
| Glass of wine | 175 ml | 13% | 2.3 |
| Single spirit | 25 ml | 40% | 1.0 |
UK Chief Medical Officers advise no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.