Calculated: K Cup vs Ground Coffee Costs

Keurig has completely revolutionized the coffee-making industry, giving us an easier, faster way to get our cup of joe in the morning.

Gone are the days of waiting 20 minutes for your coffee maker to get warmed up and slowly drip out until you have enough for your first cup. No more being forced to smell that beautiful aroma floating through the kitchen without being able to get your hands on a cup.

Now, with your Keurig, you can go from bed to coffee in under 5 minutes. We love it, and can’t imagine our lives without our Keurig coffee maker. But we’ve been wondering, are we using our Keurig Mini in the most economical way? We’re already saving time, but can we save money too?

We know using a K-cup is by far cheaper than heading to Starbucks every morning. Can we save even more money with a reusable cup? Let’s compare the costs of brewing our morning coffee with the traditional K-cups versus a reusable cup and ground coffee.

The good new is that most Keurig coffee makers will accept either K Cups or My K Cups that allow you to use your own ground coffee. From the newest to now dated k supreme or k elite, the below costs have you covered.

Daily Cost Using K-cup Pods

Say you’re a Starbucks addict, and your favorite morning brew is Starbuck’s Pike Place Roast. If you’re planning ahead, you can buy the bulk packages of K-cups online to keep costs to a minimum.

The largest package we found comes with 96 K-cup pods. They’re currently offering the 96-count box on Amazon for $50 each. That means, for each cup of coffee you make using the individual K-cup pods, you’ll be spending about $0.52 per cup. Not bad at all, considering a grand cup of coffee at Starbucks is $2.10, so you’re getting almost 70 percent off by brewing at home.

Also see: How to Descale a Keurig Mini with Vinegar or Descaling Solution

Daily Cost With the Keurig Reusable Cup

There are many reasons you might be considering using reusable cups. Whether you’re looking to lower your coffee addiction costs even further or want to cut out the extra plastic and packaging, it’s worth checking out the math on reusable K-cups.

This option does come with a small upfront cost but considering you’re purchasing a reusable cup, you can average out this cost over some time. The Keurig My K-Cup Universal Coffee Filter costs about $15 on Amazon.

You can use any coffee you like with the reusable cup, but let’s stick with Starbuck’s Pike Place Roast for the sake of comparing the two. A 28-ounce pack of ground coffee will set you back another $15.

Let’s assume you use about 0.5 ounces of coffee for each cup of java you brew using your reusable K-cup. That means your 28-ounce pack will give you 56 cups of coffee. If you include the cost of your one-time purchase of the reusable cup, you’ll spend $30 on 56 cups of coffee, or $0.53 per cup, which is about the same price.

However, if you take a look at the price considering you can use that cup for a very long time, the price of one cup of coffee gets even cheaper. After you have “paid off” the reusable cup, the price will drop down to $0.26 per cup. Wow! We thought the days of 25 cent coffee were long gone!

Money Saved For the Year

Just to put those savings into long-term perspective for you, let’s take a look at how much money you will save over the course of the year! If you have one cup of coffee every day, you would spend $190 per year on coffee using single-use K-cup pods.

If you switch over to the reusable cup, you will only drop $110 on coffee throughout the entire year. That’s saves you $80 per year!

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that using a Keurig coffee maker saves you tons of time and money compared to swinging by Starbucks or your local coffee shop every day. If saving money is your main goal, it only make sense to try out a reusable K-cup.

Keurig K-cups do offer the most convenience when it comes to your morning brew, however, the reusable cups have quite a few perks as well. Not only will you save yourself some cash, but you’ll be helping out the planet as well. The reusable cups save plastic use as well as packaging. They’re dishwasher safe and super easy to use. Plus, if you have a favorite coffee flavor that doesn’t offer K-cup pods, you can use the reusable one.

We hope this breakdown of the daily and yearly costs of using K-cup pods versus a reusable K-cup will help you make a decision on which is the best option for you!