How Much Is Too Much? Drinking Guidelines by Country

Fourteen units. Ten genstande. Two drinks a day. As little as possible. If you have ever tried to find out how much is too much, the answer seems to change with every website you land on. It does change, because each country writes its own advice in its own size of drink, and several have rewritten theirs in the last few years.

Here is the current advice in the US, the UK and the four Nordic countries, checked against each health authority's own pages in October 2026.

Start with the size of a drink. A US standard drink holds about 14 grams of pure alcohol. A UK unit holds 8 grams. Sweden, Denmark and Finland count in 12-gram units, and Norway's unit is 12.8 grams. So "10 a week" in Denmark and "14 a week" in the UK are close in grams, while the old American "two a day" for men came to 196 grams a week. Our guide to what counts as one drink shows what each unit looks like in a glass.

United States: consume less

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025 to 2030, published in January 2026, give no number. Under the heading "Limit Alcoholic Beverages", they say to consume less alcohol for better overall health. The daily limits of earlier editions, two drinks for men and one for women, are gone.

The guidelines say some people should avoid alcohol completely:

• pregnant women
• people recovering from alcohol use disorder, or who can't control how much they drink
• people taking medicines, or living with conditions, that can interact with alcohol

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) still defines heavy drinking. For women it is four or more drinks on any day or eight or more a week. For men it is five or more on any day or 15 or more a week.

United Kingdom: 14 units a week

The UK's chief medical officers set one guideline for men and women in 2016. To keep health risks low, it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis. If you drink that much, spread it over three or more days, because one or two heavy sessions a week raise the risk of death from illness and injury. That is 112 grams of alcohol, or a little under five large glasses of 12% wine by the NHS's figures.

The same report is clear that 14 units is a low-risk line, and no promise. The risk of some cancers rises from any level of regular drinking, so there is no level that can be called completely safe. If you want to cut down, the chief medical officers suggest several drink-free days each week.

Norway: as little as possible

Norway gives no weekly number. Helsedirektoratet, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, says there is no safe lower limit for alcohol from a health point of view, and that intake should be as low as possible. Children, young people and pregnant women should not drink at all. The national dietary advice from August 2024 sums it up as drinking as little alcohol as possible for your health.

Sweden: risk starts at 10 a week

Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare, Socialstyrelsen, revised its limits in autumn 2023. Healthcare now treats it as risky drinking when an adult has either:

• 10 or more standard glasses a week, or
• 4 or more standard glasses on one occasion, once a month or more often

The line is the same for women and men, because at these levels the health risk is about the same for both. A standard glass is 12 grams, so 10 a week is 120 grams. For older people who are more sensitive to alcohol, Sweden's clinical guidance suggests a limit of seven standard glasses a week or fewer.

Denmark: 10 a week, 4 in a day

Since March 2022 the Danish Health Authority, Sundhedsstyrelsen, has advised adults over 18 to drink at most 10 genstande a week and at most 4 on the same day. It applies to women and men alike. Before that, the low-risk limits were 7 a week for women and 14 for men.

The authority adds that no amount of drinking is free of risk, mainly because alcohol causes cancer. People under 18 are advised not to drink, and so are women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant.

Finland: no amount recommended

Finland's national nutrition recommendations from 2024 say that since no safe limit for alcohol can be set, drinking is not recommended. If you do drink, the amount should be as small as possible. Children, young people, pregnant and breastfeeding women and older people are advised not to drink at all.

For spotting risk, Finland's health institute THL uses weekly limits: more than 14 alkoholiannos a week for men and more than 7 for women raises the risk of long-term harm. THL also flags five or more drinks in one sitting, once a month or more, as a risk.

The Nordic recommendations and the WHO

Finland's 2024 advice builds on the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023, a joint review published by the Nordic Council of Ministers. On alcohol it is brief. It finds no beneficial health effects and no safe lower limit, so it recommends avoiding alcohol. If you drink, the amount should be very low. Children, adolescents and pregnant women should not drink.

The World Health Organization took the same line in January 2023. Writing in The Lancet Public Health, WHO staff said no safe amount of alcohol can be set for cancer and health. Alcohol causes seven types of cancer, including bowel and breast cancer. In the EU, drinking under 20 grams a day was linked to almost 23,000 new cancer cases in 2017, and almost half of them were breast cancers.

There is more on how alcohol affects the body in our article on alcohol, the liver, the heart and cancer.

So how much is too much for you?

Put side by side, the lines sit closer than the numbers suggest. The UK's low-risk limit is 112 grams a week, Denmark's 120 grams, and Sweden's risk threshold starts at 120 grams. Norway, Finland's nutrition advice and the Nordic recommendations give no number at all and say less is better. The direction is the same everywhere: less alcohol means less risk. The UK's chief medical officers note that drinking less than the guidelines, or not at all, lowers the risk further.

Your own line also depends on things no table can see: medicines you take, health problems that alcohol could make worse, and how alcohol has affected you before. The drinking self-check asks ten questions from the WHO's AUDIT test and shows which risk zone your pattern falls in. It takes about two minutes.

If you decide to cut down, a weekly budget with drink-free days is a good place to start, and our plan for cutting back or quitting walks through it. If you drink heavily every day, stopping suddenly can be dangerous. Talk to a doctor first.