Truly a strange article, like the author has never tried breakfast tea which has almost as much caffeine as coffee and will definitely keep you awake…
Besides, breakfast tea doesn't have anywhere near "almost as much" caffeine as coffee. At best 45-50mg on average. Coffee starts 20-30 mg above that and the sky is the limit with a large latte or cold brew.
My breakfast tea consists of 3 teaspoons of loose Assam, 2 teaspoons of brown sugar, left to steep for around 5 minutes until it starts to become bitter, then topped with a generous serving of cold milk. I believe the official description would be a 'proper builder's brew'.
The caffiene in that is going to be completely different to an Earl Grey you have after work to chill out. I can't stand the taste of bergamot when it's left to steep, so I usually only let it sit for 30 seconds.
T will stop me from being able to fall asleep, but it does not keep me alert in the same way that coffee does.
Even then, 50 is the upper bound if you seep the tea for 5 minutes, and it's still much less than coffee.
Tea time is a better cultural marker than the drink itself.
And probably why you jumped to breakfast tea, because you're thinking of something occupying the same role as a morning cup of coffee.
Most people wouldn't have a coffee break at 4:30 in the evening, but a tea break at 4:30 is perfectly okay.
But the whole point of a "tea time of the soul" is to contemplate over tea before drinking it. Coffee offers no such moment to wait for it to cool, because a big cup would be too much coffee, but just enough tea.
I thought that's the actual point of the article too.
And then you start back at what you were doing, but a little more deliberate about it.
It's only "in the ballpark" if you used to think it was a quarter. Otherwise, it's a whooping 60% more...
And, of course, you could always drink 20 cups too and have more caffeine than an intravenous shot even. But if we go with just drink the required amount of cups for your target caffeine level, there's no sense in discussing which has more caffeine.