How much CBD should I take?
The regulator advises 10mg a day from food for healthy adults, not the 70mg figure half this industry still prints. We are not going to prescribe you a number, but we will show you how to work out what is actually in the container.
Updated July 2026
If you are asking how much CBD should I take, the only figure with any official standing behind it in the UK is the Food Standards Agency advisory: healthy adults should keep their CBD intake from food to no more than 10mg a day. That advice landed on 12 October 2023 and replaced an earlier position of 70mg, which several well-known UK retailers are still publishing as though nothing changed. We are a stockist, not a clinician, so we will not tell you what to take, and any shop that does is quietly stepping into territory the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency reserves for licensed medicines. What we can do, and what nobody ranking for this question has bothered to do, is show you the arithmetic that turns a percentage on a label into milligrams in your hand.
If you are asking how much CBD should I take, the only figure with any official standing behind it in the UK is the Food Standards Agency advisory: healthy adults should keep their CBD intake from food to no more than 10mg a day. That advice landed on 12 October 2023 and replaced an earlier position of 70mg, which several well-known UK retailers are still publishing as though nothing changed. We are a stockist, not a clinician, so we will not tell you what to take, and any shop that does is quietly stepping into territory the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency reserves for licensed medicines. What we can do, and what nobody ranking for this question has bothered to do, is show you the arithmetic that turns a percentage on a label into milligrams in your hand.
What the FSA actually advises, and when it changed
The Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland updated their consumer advice on 12 October 2023, cutting the recommended intake of CBD from food for healthy adults from 70mg a day to 10mg a day. The change followed advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and a reassessment of the evidence rather than any single new study. The regulator itself expressed the new figure in practical terms, as roughly four to five drops of a five per cent oil.
That is a reduction of more than eighty per cent, and it is not a subtle revision that only the trade needs to know about. It moved the advisory below what a single serving of many products on the market delivers. Which is precisely why it is worth checking who is still quoting the old number.
At the time of writing, two of the six pages ranking for this question in the UK still publish 70mg as current FSA guidance. One of them presents it as a hard ceiling on an interactive calculator. Four of the six cite no regulator at all and simply publish their own ranges. That is the state of the information a UK shopper meets when they ask this question, and it is not good.
One important qualification, because the distinction gets lost: this is advice, not an enforced limit. The FSA has been explicit that it will not mandate the change for products already sitting on its public list, so a legitimate product bought today may well carry serving sizes built around the older figure. The label is not lying to you. It is describing a product formulated under a position the regulator has since moved away from.
| Before 12 October 2023 | Current position | |
|---|---|---|
| Advisory intake for healthy adults | 70mg a day | 10mg a day |
| Basis | Earlier FSA opinion on safe intake | Advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and a reassessment of the evidence |
| Expressed by the regulator as | A milligram figure only | A milligram figure, plus roughly four to five drops of a five per cent oil |
| Legal status | Advisory | Advisory. The FSA has said it will not mandate the change for products already on the public list |
| What it covers | CBD from food and food supplements | CBD from food and food supplements. Not inhaled or topical CBD |
The arithmetic nobody has published as a table
CBD oil is labelled two ways at once, and the two labels do not obviously connect. The front of the container usually gives a percentage or a total milligram figure. What you actually put under your tongue is measured in drops. Almost every guide to this question acknowledges that the conversion matters and then explains it in prose, which is exactly the wrong format for a number you are trying to check while holding a bottle.
The maths is not hard. A percentage on a CBD oil means grams of CBD per hundred millilitres, so a five per cent oil holds 50mg in every millilitre. Multiply by the container volume for the total. Divide by the number of drops in a millilitre for the figure per drop. A standard dropper gives roughly twenty drops to a millilitre, so a five per cent oil works out at about 2.5mg in each drop.
Run that against the FSA advisory and the regulator's own equivalence checks out: 10mg at 2.5mg a drop is four drops. That is a useful sanity test to have in your head, because it means a single drop of a strong oil can carry more than the entire daily figure the FSA advises. A 40 per cent oil delivers around 20mg in one drop, twice the advisory, from a single squeeze of a pipette.
One honest caveat that the table below cannot carry. Drop counts are an estimate, not a measurement. Drop size varies with pipette bore, oil viscosity and temperature, and a thick high-strength oil forms noticeably larger drops than a thin one. Millilitres are exact and drops are not, so if precision matters to you, work in millilitres and use the graduations on the pipette.
| Label strength | Total in a 10ml container | In each ml | In each drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 per cent | 500mg | 50mg | about 2.5mg |
| 10 per cent | 1,000mg | 100mg | about 5mg |
| 15 per cent | 1,500mg | 150mg | about 7.5mg |
| 20 per cent | 2,000mg | 200mg | about 10mg |
| 30 per cent | 3,000mg | 300mg | about 15mg |
| 40 per cent | 4,000mg | 400mg | about 20mg |
Why the same number is not the same number across formats
A milligram figure on a label describes what the manufacturer put into the product. It does not describe how much of that reaches your bloodstream, and the gap between the two is large and format-dependent. Anyone comparing a capsule against an oil against a vape purely on the printed figure is comparing three different things.
Swallowed CBD goes through the digestive system and the liver before it goes anywhere else, and a substantial proportion is broken down on the way. Oil held under the tongue is partly absorbed through the tissue there, bypassing some of that. Inhaled CBD reaches circulation fastest of all. Published estimates for how much survives each route vary widely between studies, which is itself worth knowing: this is not a settled figure that a retailer can quote to two decimal places, and one that does is guessing.
The practical consequence is narrow but real. Two products carrying an identical milligram number can deliver quite different amounts, and swapping format while keeping the same number on the label is not a like-for-like swap. If you have been using one format and you move to another, read the printed figure as a fresh starting point rather than a conversion.
This is also why our category pages state format, strength and spectrum plainly and stop there. The moment a shop starts converting between formats on your behalf, it is making a pharmacological claim it cannot support.
| Format | What the milligram figure describes | What varies |
|---|---|---|
| Oil drops held under the tongue | Total CBD in the container, and by division in each drop | How long it is held, drop size, and how much is swallowed rather than absorbed |
| Capsules | A fixed amount in each capsule | Digestion and liver processing, which vary with the individual and with food |
| Gummies and sweets | A fixed amount in each piece | The same digestive route as capsules, plus how evenly the batch was dosed |
| Drinks | Total in the container | Formulation. Water-compatible preparations behave differently from oil-based ones |
| E-liquid and pods | Total in the tank or pod, not what any one session delivers | Device power, puff length and how much liquid is actually used |
| Balms and topicals | Total in the jar or tube | Applied to skin rather than consumed. Outside the FSA food advisory entirely |
The body weight formulas, and where they come from
Search this question and you will meet a rule of thumb within about thirty seconds: so many milligrams for every ten pounds of body weight, or a figure per kilogram. It appears on retailer guides, in calculators and in comparison articles, usually phrased as a common guideline, which is a form of words that does a lot of quiet work.
We went looking for the source. There is not one. The formula is not in FSA guidance, it is not in Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs advice, and it is not drawn from any UK regulatory document we can find. It appears to have propagated between commercial pages, each citing the fact that other pages say it. That does not make it a bad heuristic, necessarily. It makes it an unsourced one, presented with a confidence nobody has earned.
Body mass is also plainly not the only variable, and probably not the dominant one. Metabolism, what else is in your system, the format you have chosen and how much of it survives digestion all move the answer. A formula with one input, presented to the milligram, is telling you something about the page it appears on rather than about you.
Our position is simply to name this. If a page gives you a number, ask what it is derived from. If the answer is that everyone says so, you have your answer.
Who the FSA says should not take CBD at all
The intake figure gets all the attention, and the rest of the advice gets almost none. The FSA position on who should avoid CBD from food entirely did not change in 2023 and remains in force alongside the 10mg advisory.
The regulator advises that CBD should not be consumed by children, by people who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive, or by anyone taking medication who has not first spoken to a medical professional. That last group is broader than people assume, since it covers routine long-term prescriptions rather than only unusual ones.
That is the regulator's advice and not ours to soften, expand or explain away, and it is the part of this subject where a shop's opinion is worth nothing. If you are in any of those groups, the conversation to have is with a pharmacist or your GP rather than with a retailer, including this one.
Honest caution while we are here, and the one most CBD guides skip: if you drive for a living or you are subject to workplace screening, the format and spectrum you choose matters more than the milligram figure does. Screening looks for THC, not for CBD, and full spectrum products retain THC by design. We cover why on our page about the law, and it is worth reading before you buy rather than after.
| Group | FSA position |
|---|---|
| Healthy adults | Keep CBD from food to no more than 10mg a day |
| Children | Should not consume CBD from food |
| Pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive | Should not consume CBD from food |
| Anyone taking medication | Should speak to a medical professional before consuming CBD from food |
| Anyone using CBD vapes or topicals | Outside the scope of this food advisory. It does not describe inhaled or applied products |
Why we will not give you a number
This is the part where a competitor publishes a chart, and it is worth explaining why we do not, because the reason is legal rather than coy.
A CBD product sold in the UK is a food supplement or a general consumer product. It is not a medicine. The moment a seller pairs a milligram figure with an outcome, whether that is a symptom, a condition or a state of mind, the product is being presented as though it does something medicinal, and under UK rules that makes it an unlicensed medicine in the eyes of the MHRA. The Advertising Standards Authority polices the softer end of the same line. Several pages ranking for this exact question publish tables mapping milligram ranges to named conditions, which is not a grey area.
There is a second reason, less legal and more practical. Nobody selling you a product knows your circumstances, what else you take, or how you respond. A number produced by a retailer's calculator has the shape of personal advice and none of the substance. We would rather hand you the arithmetic and the regulator's position and let you take it to someone qualified.
So the honest version of the answer is this: the FSA advises 10mg a day from food for healthy adults, your product label plus the table above tells you what that looks like in drops or pieces, and any question beyond that belongs with a pharmacist or a GP. If that is less satisfying than a chart, it is also considerably more truthful than one.
How to read your own label in about a minute
Everything above collapses into a short routine you can run on any product, including ours. It takes longer to describe than to do.
Find the total milligram figure and the container size, and check they are consistent with any percentage on the front. A five per cent oil in a 10ml container should say 500mg somewhere. If the two do not reconcile, that is a labelling problem and a reason to put it down.
Then work out the unit. For oil that is milligrams in each millilitre, and by division each drop. For capsules, sweets and drinks the unit is printed for you, which is the main practical advantage of those formats: there is no arithmetic and no drop-size variability. Compare the unit against the FSA advisory and you know immediately whether one serving sits above or below it.
Finally, check the spectrum and look for a batch certificate. Neither affects the milligram maths, but both affect whether the product is what it says it is, and a container total means nothing if the analysis behind it is missing. Our full policy on that is on the lab reports page.
| Step | What to look for | Reason to stop |
|---|---|---|
| Reconcile the numbers | Percentage, container size and total milligrams agreeing with each other | They do not add up |
| Find the unit | Milligrams in each ml or each piece, not just the container total | Only a container total is given for a product taken in servings |
| Compare against the advisory | How one serving sits against the FSA figure of 10mg a day for healthy adults | The label still cites the retired 70mg figure as current guidance |
| Check spectrum | Isolate, broad spectrum or full spectrum stated plainly | The grade is not stated anywhere |
| Check the certificate | A batch-referenced analysis you can actually obtain | No certificate, or one with no batch number |
What is genuinely unsettled
A guide that ends by sounding certain about this subject is overselling. Several parts of it are not resolved, and a reader is better served knowing which.
How much CBD survives each route into the body is the largest open question. Published estimates differ substantially between studies and between formulations, and the honest summary is a range rather than a figure. Any page quoting a precise percentage for how much of a swallowed capsule reaches circulation has picked one study and dropped the error bars.
The regulatory baseline is also incomplete. Because most of the ingestible market sits in the validated but not yet authorised state described on our page about UK CBD law, there is no settled authorised serving size to anchor against. The 10mg advisory is precautionary consumer advice sitting on top of an unfinished authorisation process, which is a stranger situation than either fact sounds on its own.
And the advisory is under review in the ordinary way that all such advice is. It moved once already, by a factor of seven, which is a reasonable prompt to check the date on whatever page is telling you a number. Including this one. It was last checked in July 2026.
Frequently asked questions
- Why will GoCBD not tell me a number of milligrams to take?
- Because a retailer that pairs a milligram figure with an intended outcome is presenting an unlicensed medicine, which UK rules reserve for the MHRA and licensed products. It is also unhelpful, since nobody selling you something knows what else you take or how you respond. The FSA advisory of 10mg a day from food for healthy adults is the figure with standing behind it, and anything more specific belongs with a pharmacist or GP.
- Has the FSA figure for CBD changed recently?
- Yes, and by a large margin. On 12 October 2023 the FSA and Food Standards Scotland cut their advisory intake for healthy adults from 70mg a day to 10mg a day, following advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Several UK retailer guides still publish the 70mg figure as current, including one on an interactive calculator, so check the date on any page that quotes it.
- Does the 10mg figure include CBD I inhale or rub on my skin?
- No. The FSA advisory is specifically about CBD from food and food supplements, which is the only category the agency regulates. Vapes fall under tobacco-related product rules and balms under cosmetics rules, and neither is covered by this advice. That does not mean an inhaled or applied product is unregulated, only that this particular figure was not written about it.
- How do I work out how many milligrams are in my CBD oil?
- Multiply the percentage by ten to get milligrams in each millilitre, since a percentage means grams per hundred millilitres. A five per cent oil therefore holds 50mg in every millilitre and 500mg in a 10ml container. Divide the per-millilitre figure by about twenty for a rough amount in each drop, and take that last step as an estimate only, because drop size varies with the pipette and the oil.
- Do the body weight formulas on other CBD sites have a source?
- Not one we can find. The rule of thumb quoted across UK retailer guides, usually as milligrams per ten pounds of body weight, does not appear in FSA guidance or in ACMD advice, and the pages publishing it cite each other rather than any underlying document. Body mass is also only one of several variables, so a single-input formula presented to the milligram is claiming a precision it does not have.
- Who does the FSA say should avoid CBD entirely?
- Children, people who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to conceive, and anyone on medication who has not first spoken to a medical professional. That position did not change when the intake figure was revised in 2023 and it sits alongside the 10mg advisory rather than being replaced by it. The medication group is wider than most people assume, since it covers routine long-term prescriptions.
- Why do two products with the same milligram figure not deliver the same amount of CBD?
- Because the printed figure describes what went into the product, not what reaches your bloodstream, and that proportion differs by route. Swallowed CBD passes through digestion and the liver first, oil held under the tongue partly bypasses that, and inhaled CBD reaches circulation fastest. Published estimates for each route vary widely between studies, so switching format while keeping the same number on the label is not a like-for-like swap.
- Can a UK retailer legally recommend a dose for a specific condition?
- No. Linking a CBD product and a milligram figure to a named condition presents it as a medicine, and only a product licensed by the MHRA may be marketed that way. The Advertising Standards Authority enforces the same boundary in marketing. Pages that publish charts mapping milligram ranges to conditions are not operating in a grey area, and it is a reasonable signal about how carefully the rest of the site is run.
Updated July 2026