Working Out How Many Puffs Are in Your E-liquid

The answer isn’t quite as simple, but we can work out an average.

31 October 2022 | Hannah Rubery

Working Out How Many Puffs Are in Your E-liquid (Image)

Since the rise of disposable vapes, some vapers have begun using puff counts as their go-to method for understanding how long a vape will last. Although this works great with disposables that have a set capacity, battery and type of coil, it gets a little more complicated for traditional E-Liquids and vape kits. But, in this article we shall try to let you know approximately how many puffs you can expect from your vape.

How you vape can impact how long an E-Liquid lasts

For those who enjoy vaping constantly and struggle to put their device down, it should be no surprise that your E-Liquid will run out quicker than expected. Similarly, different types of vape styles such as sub-ohm and devices that use higher temperatures which create denser clouds, are more likely to eat through your vape juice quicker. Essentially if you are using a high-powered device, you’re E-Liquid is likely to be used up a lot quicker.

We also have to take into consideration the type of E-Liquid. Those with high VG ratios could have more muted flavours so you may end up vaping more than anticipated. Similarly, if the nicotine strength is lower than you need, you could end up vaping more to get your necessary hit.

Therefore, if you want to get the most out of your E-Liquid, opting for a low-powered device and taking it steady when vaping, will give you the best results. But we know that not all E-Liquids can be vapourised properly by low-powered devices. Making sure you are using the correct setup for your type of E-Liquid is but one of the ways to get the most puffs available. For high VG E-Liquids, Sub-Ohm tanks work best whereas high PG or 50/50 ratios benefit from clearomisers.

What your amount of E-Liquid is worth to cigarettes

Luckily, this is a little easier for us to estimate and may give you more of an idea on how much your E-Liquid is worth.

We know that disposable vapes, with 2ml of E-Liquid and a max of 600 puffs, are designed to be the equivalent of 20 cigarettes. So, a 10ml bottle of vape juice could be equated to roughly 100 cigarettes.

For heavy smokers, who smoke 20 or more a day, a disposable is likely to last them the day (so long as the nicotine cravings at met by a high enough strength). Therefore, you could expect a 10ml bottle to last around 3-4 days depending on how you vape and the strength you use. Shortfills which contain 50ml of E-Liquid will naturally equate to more, but this amount can vary depending on how much nicotine you add to the naturally nicotine-free E-Liquid.

General rule of thumb for how many puffs in your E-Liquid

As mentioned before, it can be difficult to assume an exact number since there are so many variables, so let’s use disposable devices as a baseline. We know that a device with 2ml of E-Liquid (likely 20mg in strength and a 50/50 ratio) typically uses a low-powered battery compared to higher-end kits. This equates to around 600 puffs – give or take varying on how heavy you vape.

Therefore, 10ml of Nic Salts used in a low-powered device could potentially give you around 3000 puffs. Nic Salts lend themselves to low-powered devices due to the increased strength in nicotine and the thickness of the vape juice.

Moving up a notch, a 50ml shortfill (mixed with a Nic Shot) to create a 60ml E-Liquid, could give you around 18,000 puffs. Depending on how you vape, you could essentially have a shortfill bottle that lasts you 25-30 days.

We also have 100ml shortfills which become 120ml E-Liquid bottles once two Nic Shots have been added. Since we know how many puffs you could potentially achieve from a 60ml, we can assume then it must be around double for a shortfill of this size (36,000).

These numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt as we mentioned, as there are simply too many variables with vaping, to be able to get a concrete number of puffs. But generally, if you’re looking to get the greatest number of puffs for your money, going the shortfill route is certainly going to benefit you. Hopefully, this gives you more of an idea of the number of puffs you may get with your E-Liquid.

Do you have any tips for helping maximise your E-Liquid? Let us know in the comments below.

1 Comment(s)

Daniel Engqvist

Mar 08, 2023 15:24

I smoked between 5-10 cigarettes (Red level 100's) every day for 15 years. a few years ago i bought 10kg Burley tobacco with stems before they put tax on it here in Sweden. that tobacco lasted me for like 3 years and that tobacco is the second strongest in the world and is typically filler in Cigars so it is really high in nicotine. I ended up way more addicted to nicotine than i was before but 5 months ago i talked to my twin brothers little girl(then 9 years old) and she wanted me to quit smoking and i promised that. 4 Months ago i bought my first vape (Vaporesso xros nano), the type with refillable pods and gave it a try. to my big surprise it worked great!. But because of my really high tolerance to nicotine i was forced to use undiluted 20mg E-Juice with Freebase Nicotine because it felt like the tobacco i smoked before, with a strong throat hit(Not near the Burley though) and because of the Freebase-Form of the Nicotine it really gets to the brain much faster just like the freebase naturally found in burley due to the relatively high amount of ammonia in the tobacco during curing. I tried Nicotine salts but i found it to be much slower absorbed into the bloodstream and therefore it is really easy to smoke to many puffs or for to long and when the nicotine peaks in the blood i just felt a little sick and slightly depressed(Minimal Nicotine overdose) so i dropped the salts. I believe that the salts is MUCh better for people trying to quit Dip or Chewing tobacco while freebase is better for those trying to quit Cigarettes,cigars och snuff tobacco.
So my answear to maximise the E-liquid is to use stronger nicotine percentage and freferably in freebase form because then you only have to take a few puffs to really feel the nicotine in your throat and how quick it gets to the brain and takes away those nicotine cravings just like a whole cigarette would. So i smoke like 8 real deep puffs while actually holding my breath for a few seconds before exhaling to allow the nicotine to absorb and then i can wait like 45minutes to an hour(sometimes even 2 hours before even feeling the urge to take more nicotine). I strongly recommend everyone who is trying to quit cigarettes to try the undiluted freebase because it really works.
I hope that in the future the tobacco will be criminalized just like Cannabis is right now(and that is for a reason). Cheers from Sweden :)