How Much Nicotine Is in a Vape?

When you switch from smoking to vaping, one of the first things that you’ll want to know is whether you’re using the correct amount of nicotine. If you’re not getting enough nicotine, you’ll obviously end up feeling tired and cranky. Also, there’s a possibility of consuming more nicotine than you need because vaping is so much more enjoyable than smoking that you could end up vaping more often than is actually necessary.

So, how much nicotine is in a vape? How many cigarettes equal a vape, and how many times do you need to puff on a vape to equal a cigarette? In this guide, we’ll answer your questions.

Calculating How Much Nicotine Is in a Vape

To determine how much nicotine is in a vape, multiply the amount of e-liquid in the device by the nicotine strength.

When you look at the specifications for a disposable vape, you’re going to see a nicotine strength expressed by weight or volume. The strength is expressed in milligrams per milliliter if it’s by weight, and it’s expressed as a percentage if it’s by volume. Nicotine strengths of 20 mg/ml and 2% are approximately equal to one another.

To find out how much nicotine is in a vape or a bottle of e-liquid, you need to multiply the nicotine strength by the volume of vape juice in the product. This formula also works for bottled e-liquid. Here are two examples.

• A disposable vape with a nicotine strength of 20 mg/ml and a volume of 2 ml has a total nicotine content of 40 mg.
• A bottle of vape juice with a nicotine strength of 20 mg/ml and a volume of 10 ml has a total nicotine content of 200 mg.

Knowing how much nicotine in a vape is useful, but it’s only half of the equation if you really want to know how many cigarettes are in a vape. That’s a fairly complicated question, and it’s what we’ll address over the remainder of this article.

How Many Cigarettes Equal a Vape? Calculating by Nicotine Content

The reason why we started this article by explaining how to calculate the nicotine in a vape is because using the total nicotine content is the easiest way to compare vapes to cigarettes. You need to start by knowing how much nicotine is in a cigarette, and the answer is that the average cigarette has a nicotine yield of about 1.5 mg – although this varies between brands. Based on that figure, a pack of cigarettes would yield around 30 mg of nicotine in all.

So, how many cigarettes does a vape equal? To answer that question, you can divide a vape’s total nicotine content by 1.5. Here’s an example.

• The Innokin INNOBAR 20000 contains 25 ml of e-liquid and has a nicotine strength of 50 mg/ml. Therefore, its total nicotine content is 1,250 mg.
• If you divide 1,250 by 1.5, you get 833.3.

By that calculation, the INNOBAR 20000 is equal to more than 800 cigarettes – that’s over 40 packs!

Before you get too excited, though, it’s important to remember that you can’t necessarily equate the nicotine in a vape to cigarettes just by simple division. We’ll explain why that is.

Why Comparing a Vape to Cigarettes Based on Nicotine Content Is Difficult?

If you look for information online about how much nicotine a cigarette contains, you’re not going to find just one answer. That’s not only because of the differences between brands – it’s also because there are several ways of actually determining the nicotine content of a cigarette.

• You can measure the nicotine content of the tobacco in the cigarette. This measurement can produce some very high results that sometimes exceed 10 mg of nicotine per cigarette.
• You can measure the nicotine output of the cigarette using an automatic smoking machine.
• You can measure the nicotine output of the cigarette in real-world usage. This can produce different results because people often smoke “low-yield” cigarettes in ways not intended by the manufacturers, for example by covering the perforations in the filters.
• You can measure the blood-nicotine content of a test subject after he or she smokes a cigarette. We’ll discuss that in greater detail shortly.

It’s also important to understand that there’s a difference between the nicotine content of a cigarette and the amount of nicotine that actually reaches the bloodstream. Some of the nicotine is essentially nullified by the body before it enters general circulation; this concept is called bioavailability. The nicotine that you consume by vaping may not have exactly the same bioavailability as the nicotine that you consume by smoking.

How Many Vape Puffs Are Equal to a Cigarette?

Approximately 10-15 vape puffs are equal to a cigarette, although nicotine absorption may differ between smoking and vaping.

Another way to calculate how many cigarettes are in a vape is by comparing vapes to cigarettes on the basis of puff counts. On average, a smoker typically puffs on a cigarette 10-15 times before putting it out. Therefore, you can divide the number of puffs in a disposable vape by 10-15 to determine approximately how many cigarettes it contains.

Let’s use the Innokin INNOBAR 20000 as an example once again. This device delivers up to 20,000 puffs. Dividing that number by 15 to get a conservative estimate, we find that the INNOBAR 20000 is equal to about 1,333 cigarettes on a puff-for-puff basis.

Once again, though, you shouldn’t get too excited because a disposable vape only delivers the number of puffs on the package under absolutely ideal circumstances and only if your average puff length is very short. We discuss this in more detail in our article about how long a disposable vape lasts. So, although a modern high-capacity vape can last a very long time, it probably won’t be the equivalent of more than 1,000 cigarettes.

Many clinical studies have produced results suggesting that cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor do not have the same bioavailability. For example, the journal “Addiction” published a study in 2020 in which the blood-nicotine concentrations of vapers were compared to those of smokers. The study used both “cigalikes” and tank-based vape pens and mods. All of the types of vapes that were included in the final published study produced lower blood-nicotine concentrations than cigarettes.

So, if you need to puff on your vape a few extra times in order to feel satisfied, don’t feel bad about it because many other people do the same thing.

Equating Vape Puffs to Cigarettes the Easy Way

In this article, we’ve given you some starting points for comparing the nicotine in a vape to the nicotine in cigarettes. As you’ve learned, though, there’s no easy way to make an apples-to-apples comparison here because there are different ways of measuring the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, and the absorption of nicotine from vaping may not be exactly the same.

If you want to be absolutely certain that you’re not consuming more nicotine than you require, though, there’s an easy way to do it: You just need to vape in a way that mimics the patterns of a cigarette smoker.

Here’s how to do it.

• You know that a cigarette lasts about 10-15 puffs, and you also know that there are 20 cigarettes in a pack.
• Therefore, to mimic the patterns of a pack-a-day smoker, you can use your vape 20 times a day and puff on it 10-15 times during each session.

Once again, if you need to puff on your vape a few extra times in order to compensate for the difference in bioavailability, that’s not unusual, and there’s no need to feel concerned. If you put your vape down between sessions and avoid keeping it in your hand all day, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to consume more nicotine than you need – and that’s what we’re going to discuss as we bring this article to a close.

How to Make Sure You’re Getting the Right Amount of Nicotine When You Vape?

Your body will always tell you if you’re not consuming the right amount of nicotine for your needs. Pay attention to how you feel, and you’ll have no trouble managing your own nicotine intake.

If you feel like you’re vaping almost constantly and never really putting your device down, you might be searching for information about how much nicotine is in a vape because you’re concerned that you might be consuming more nicotine than you actually need. In that case, we have some good news for you. If you don’t feel like you’re getting too much nicotine, you probably aren’t. Studies have shown that people who use nicotine naturally adjust their usage to meet their own personal needs. In other words, when you don’t need nicotine, you’ll stop using your device – this behavior is usually automatic.

If you’re still concerned that you might be using more nicotine than you need, though, we’ve provided some specific data in this article that we hope will be helpful in answering your question. Based on how much nicotine is in a vape compared to a cigarette – and how many times you’re likely to puff on a cigarette before putting it out – you now have a much better idea of how vapes vs. cigarettes compare in terms of their nicotine delivery. You can use that information to determine whether you’re using about the same amount of nicotine that you would have used if you were still a smoker.

After reading this article, have you come to the conclusion that you’re actually using significantly more nicotine than you did when you were a smoker? If that’s the case, there’s no need to be alarmed because it’s easy to reduce your nicotine intake if you do so gradually. Vaping makes that especially painless since you can choose the nicotine strength of your e-liquid – and since many vaping devices have built-in puff counters, you can reduce your nicotine intake by as little as one puff per day if you like. In fact, you can even use vaping to help yourself quit nicotine if that’s your ultimate goal.