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A teapot labelled "four cups" that pours two and a half is not a broken promise. It simply uses a cup smaller than the one in your hand. Size a pot by the liquid you will actually pour, and three things decide it: how much it really holds once leaves and headroom take their share, how big your cups are, and whether you plan to brew once or keep the session going. Work those out and the choice takes about a minute.
Capacity is measured to the brim. You will never fill a teapot to the brim. Leaves need room to unfurl, and leaving a finger's width of space below the spout stops the lid from launching a wave across the table when you pour. Treat roughly four-fifths of the stated capacity as your working volume. A 600ml pot gives you 450–500ml of drinkable tea, which is a generous mug and a refill for one person, or two proper cups shared.
Big-leaf teas widen that gap. A rolled oolong, a long twisted leaf, or a pot of whole-leaf white tea can occupy 100–150ml of space before it gives up any flavour. Finely cut leaves expand far less. If you brew whole leaf, size up slightly; if you brew broken leaf or fannings, the advertised number is closer to the truth.
So a 400ml pot is "two cups" in teacups and barely one mug. Before you buy anything, fill your usual mug with water and pour it into a measuring jug. That single number will save you more grief than any sizing chart.
Two people can need wildly different pots depending on how they brew. Gongfu style means a small pot, a lot of leaf, short steeps of twenty to forty seconds, and many infusions poured into tiny cups. A 150ml pot can keep two people drinking for half an hour. Western style means a bigger pot, less leaf, one long steep of three to five minutes, and a single round of cups. The same two people would sit down to a 600ml pot.
Decide which of those you are before you look at capacity numbers. Buying a large pot for gongfu brewing gives you weak tea and cold tea. Buying a tiny pot for Western brewing means you are up and down refilling it all afternoon.
If you drink alone, a 300–400ml pot is usually more useful than a small one, unless you enjoy gongfu sessions. You get one full mug and enough for a second, and the tea stays hot long enough to drink both. A 200ml pot suits a single cup and no leftovers.
For two people, 500–600ml is comfortable: two cups each, or one cup each with a refill. For four, go to 800ml–1 litre. Beyond that, consider two medium pots rather than one enormous one — you can brew two different teas, and neither pot goes cold while you work through it.
Heat retention matters as much as volume here. A large pot filled halfway cools faster than a smaller full one, because there is more air and more cold ceramic surface above the water line. Buy for the amount you will genuinely brew, not the maximum you might one day need.
Count your pours before you count your guests. If each person will drink two cups, double the volume you calculated and then apply the four-fifths rule. A group of four drinking two 200ml cups each needs around 1.6 litres of tea — which is either one very large pot, or two 900ml pots brewed in sequence.
For most teas, a rough starting point is one teaspoon of leaf per 200ml of water, adjusted for the tea type and your own taste. Stronger teas, larger leaf and shorter steeps all shift that figure, so taste as you go rather than treating it as fixed.
Measure your mug. Measure the pot you already own by filling it and pouring the water into a jug. Then work backwards from the number of people, the number of cups each will drink, and whether you brew gongfu or Western.
If you are stuck between two sizes, take the smaller one for solo gongfu sessions and the larger one for everything else. Underfilling a big pot is easy; making a small pot serve four people is not.
Check the pour before you commit. A narrow spout on a heavy pot is awkward when full, and a lid that wobbles will annoy you every single day. Fill the pot with water at home or in the shop, tip it, and watch for drips down the outside.
One last practical note: tea brewed and left standing for hours tastes flat, so buy a capacity you will finish within an hour or so rather than one you imagine drinking all day. Match the pot to your real routine and you will reach for it constantly.
