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Vodka shot

A 40 ml serving of vodka shot carries about 12.6 g of pure ethanol — 1.6 UK units, 0.9 US standard drinks, 1.1 Estonian/Finnish units — and roughly 88 kcal.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

Spirits40.0% (37.5-50.0%)USDA basis: Vodka

A shot of vodka is the simplest drink to compute because there is nothing in it but ethanol and water. There is no residual sugar, so every calorie comes from the alcohol, and the reference row confirms it: the carbohydrate column is zero. That makes vodka the useful reference point for the rest of this section — every other drink is a spirit-equivalent plus something.

EU rules set a minimum strength of 37.5% for vodka, and most brands sit at 40%. Measures differ by country and by venue: 20 or 25 ml in much of the UK, 40 ml as the common Nordic and Baltic pour, 50 ml in many bars elsewhere. The same "one shot" therefore spans a two-and-a-half-fold range in ethanol, which is a bigger swing than any strength difference between brands.

The reason spirits feel different from beer is rate rather than dose. Forty millilitres of 40% vodka is a specific quantity of ethanol, and drinking it in ten seconds delivers it to the bloodstream far faster than the same quantity spread through a half-litre of lager over twenty minutes. The peak is higher; the total is the same. Every clearance estimate on this site models the total and therefore understates the peak for anything drunk quickly.

By serving size

What the strength range does

Where the calories come from

The carbohydrate figure below is the USDA FoodData Central row for Vodka — 0.0 g of carbohydrate (of which 0.0 g sugars) per 100 g — applied to 40 ml of this serving. USDA values are per 100 grams and this page applies them per 100 millilitres. Beer, wine and cider are close enough to the density of water for that to cost a per cent or two; spirits are lighter, so for them the approximation is worth about five per cent.

As a cross-check, the same USDA row reports 231 kcal per 100 g, which scales to about 92 kcal for this serving against the 88 kcal computed above — a gap of about 4%. Two independent routes to the same figure will not land on the same digit: the reference row was measured on one specific product at one specific strength, this page uses the strength you would find on a typical label, and the per-100-g to per-100-ml conversion costs a little more. Where the gap is large, the strength assumption is almost always the reason.

Source: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy (public domain) — row: Vodka · checked 2026-09-02

What it costs in walking

This is an energy comparison and nothing more. Walking does not undo a drink: the ethanol still has to be metabolised, it is still prioritised over other fuels while it is in the system, and the effect it has on sleep that night is not cancelled by exercise the following morning. The number is here because it makes an abstract quantity concrete, not because it is a plan.

See brisk walking for where the MET value comes from, or the whole exercise library for other movements.

Source: 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.) — MET value for brisk walking · checked 2026-09-02

How many reach a weekly guideline

The 112 g line is the UK Chief Medical Officers' 14 units a week, quoted here because it is the guideline most often referenced in English. It is not the only one and it is not necessarily the one that applies to you: national low-risk guidance differs between countries, is written in different unit sizes, and has been revised downward in several places in recent years. Look up the guideline where you live and convert it with the table above.

Source: UK Chief Medical Officers' low risk drinking guidelines — named example only · checked 2026-09-02

Clearance estimate

Read those hours as the earliest plausible figure under a set of assumptions that will not all hold for you. Absorption is treated as instantaneous, so the model starts the clock too early. Elimination is treated as a fixed 0.15 ‰ an hour, when published individual rates run from roughly 0.10 to 0.20 — at the slow end, the last column takes a third longer than it says. And the whole calculation is for one dose taken at one moment, not for three drinks spread across an evening, which is the situation that actually produces a morning-after problem.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

The thing people get wrong

The measure. A UK 25 ml single and a Nordic 40 ml pour are not the same drink.

Frequently asked questions

Other drinks

All drinks and the calculator · Exercise library · Daily calorie needs · Sleep calculator