Cups to Grams Converter

What the converter does

This tool converts US recipe amounts (cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, fluid ounces, sticks of butter) into grams — and back. Unlike a plain volume converter, it accounts for the fact that each ingredient has its own density: 1 cup of flour weighs 125 g, 1 cup of honey weighs 340 g, 1 cup of packed spinach weighs just 30 g.

The database covers 50+ pantry staples — flour types, sugar types, fats, dairy products, sweeteners, baking ingredients, salts, grains, nuts, dried fruit, vegetables. A custom-density mode lets you enter g/cup manually for rarer items.

Why cups don’t translate 1:1 to grams

A cup is a volume. A gram is a weight. The same volume weighs different amounts depending on the ingredient — that’s density (g per mL). Pure water has a density of roughly 1 g/mL, so 1 cup of water (236.6 mL) weighs about 237 g. Flour is far lighter because air is trapped between grains — 1 cup of flour weighs only 125 g. Honey is heavier than water because it contains less air and more sugar — 1 cup of honey weighs 340 g.

That’s why any honest cups-to-grams converter needs an ingredient-density lookup. A single factor (“1 cup = 240 g”) only gets you the right answer for water and fails on everything else.

Densities in this tool come from the King Arthur Baking Ingredient Weight Chart, the USDA FoodData Central, and Cook’s Illustrated kitchen tests, cross-checked against several large food blogs. Where sources disagree (120 vs. 125 g/cup for flour), we default to the widest-used value — 125 g/cup for all-purpose.

Which cup are we talking about, anyway?

The United States actually uses two cup definitions side-by-side:

Variant	Volume	Used for
US customary cup	236.588 mL	Baking recipes, cookbooks, food blogs
US legal cup (FDA)	240 mL	Nutrition Facts labels on packaging

The two differ by about 1.4 % — negligible for almost any recipe. This converter uses the older customary cup at 236.588 mL because every major recipe database calibrates its density charts to that number. The historical UK Imperial cup (284 mL) is well-documented but effectively dead in modern recipes.

US tablespoons and teaspoons are exact fractions of the cup:

• 1 cup = 16 tablespoons (tbsp) = 48 teaspoons (tsp) = 8 fluid ounces (fl oz)
• 1 tbsp ≈ 14.79 mL
• 1 tsp ≈ 4.93 mL
• 1 fl oz ≈ 29.57 mL

If you’re using an Australian or European tablespoon: most are 15 mL — slightly larger than the US tablespoon. For most recipes the gap is smaller than the noise from levelling the spoon.

Which cup-to-gram values come up most often?

The reference table below covers the ingredients that show up in US recipes most often. The tool at the top of this page returns exact figures for any amount you type in — these are just the headline values you’ll memorize after a year of US baking.

Ingredient	1 cup in grams	Note
All-purpose flour	125 g	Spoon-and-level method
Bread flour	130 g	Higher protein, slightly denser
Cake flour	120 g	Lower protein, lighter
Whole-wheat flour	130 g	Comparable to bread flour
Rye flour	116 g	German Type 1150
Spelt flour	130 g	About the same as wheat
Almond flour	100 g	Gluten-free baking
Coconut flour	112 g	Soaks up 4× more liquid than wheat
Granulated white sugar	200 g	Caster sugar same value
Packed brown sugar	220 g	Press firmly into cup!
Powdered sugar (confectioners’)	120 g	Spoon in loosely
Vanilla sugar	200 g	Like granulated
Butter	227 g	Two sticks at 113 g each
Margarine	224 g	Treat like butter
Shortening (Crisco)	205 g	Look for trans-fat-free
Vegetable oil (canola, sunflower)	218 g	Liquid — density ≈ 0.92 g/mL
Olive oil	216 g	Marginally lighter
Water	237 g	Reference: density 1.0 g/mL
Whole milk	245 g	Slightly heavier than water
Buttermilk	242 g	Cultured
Heavy cream	232 g	More fat = lighter
Yogurt	240 g	All thicknesses similar
Sour cream	240 g	”Schmand” in German
Cream cheese	240 g	Block, not whipped
Ricotta	246 g	Italian fresh cheese
Cheddar, shredded	113 g	Loose — packed: 130 g
Parmesan, finely grated	100 g	Lots of air
Honey	340 g	Viscous, dense
Maple syrup	322 g	Grade A
Molasses	332 g	Viscous like honey
Corn syrup	328 g	Clear or dark
Cocoa powder (unsweetened)	100 g	Lots of air
Chocolate chips	170 g	Standard semisweet
Cornstarch	120 g	Same as cake flour
Baking powder	192 g	Rarely used by the cup
Baking soda	220 g	Pure NaHCO₃
Active dry yeast	144 g	Almost never sold by the cup
Table salt, fine	273 g	Very dense crystals
Diamond Crystal kosher salt	142 g	Half the weight of table salt
Morton kosher salt	240 g	Roughly 2× DC density
Rolled oats (old-fashioned)	90 g	Standard porridge oats
Quick oats	80 g	Slightly lighter
White rice, uncooked	200 g	Before cooking
Brown rice, uncooked	195 g	Almost identical
Quinoa, uncooked	170 g	Pseudo-grain
Lentils, uncooked	200 g	Like beans
Dry beans	200 g	Before soaking
Breadcrumbs, dry	108 g	German Paniermehl
Panko breadcrumbs	50 g	Very airy
Dry pasta, short shapes	100 g	Penne, rotini
Peanut butter	258 g	Smooth or crunchy
Almond butter	256 g	Like peanut butter
Tahini	240 g	Slightly thinner
Walnuts, chopped	100 g	Loose
Almonds, whole	145 g	Almonds add up fast
Pecans, chopped	113 g	Loose
Hazelnuts, whole	135 g
Raisins	165 g	Heavier than other dried fruit
Dried cranberries	120 g	Loose
Shredded coconut	85 g	Desiccated
Berries, fresh	150 g	Blueberries, raspberries
Frozen fruit	150 g	Mixed berries
Apple, chopped	125 g	Medium dice
Banana, mashed	230 g	Banana-bread headline
Carrots, shredded	110 g	Loose — packed: 130 g
Spinach, packed	30 g	”1 cup spinach packed” is tiny!
Tomato, diced	180 g	Includes juice
Onion, chopped	160 g	Medium dice
Coffee, ground	90 g	Pour-over: 60 g for 1 L water
Tea leaves, loose	60 g	Very airy

What exactly is a stick of butter?

A “stick” of butter is a US bar with exact dimensions: 4 ounces (113 g, ½ cup, 8 tablespoons). The wax paper wrapper is printed with tablespoon marks down the side — most US bakers slice rather than weigh. A stick is the smallest retail unit; four sticks make a 1-pound brick.

For non-US bakers that means:

• 1 stick = 113 g = ½ cup = 8 tbsp = 4 oz
• 2 sticks = 226 g — almost exactly a German 250 g pack
• 4 sticks = 1 lb = 453 g — about two German 250 g packs

When a recipe says “1 stick of butter, softened”, weigh 113 g or generously cut a 250 g pack in half — the 12 g gap is invisible in most recipes. For shortbread and laminated pastry it matters; pull out the scale then.

How should you measure flour — spoon-and-level or scoop-and-sweep?

The biggest single error source in US recipes is the flour-measuring method. Two techniques are widespread — and they disagree by up to 30 %.

Spoon-and-level is the professional method: scoop flour with a spoon into the cup until it overflows, then strike off the top with the flat side of a knife. Result: 120 to 125 g per cup. King Arthur Baking, Cook’s Illustrated, and most cookbook editors calibrate to this method.

Scoop-and-sweep is the fast method: plunge the cup straight into the flour bag and strike. The flour compresses on impact, yielding 135 to 150 g per cup. A recipe written for spoon-and-level baked from scoop-and-sweep flour gives dry cookies and dense bread.

This converter defaults to 125 g per cup for all-purpose flour — the international median. If you’re following a recipe that explicitly cites King Arthur (120 g) or Bob’s Red Mill (140 g), use the custom-density input and enter the right figure.

Why does kosher-salt brand change the recipe?

US recipes are often calibrated to a specific brand of salt — and that’s not brand worship, it’s math. Diamond Crystal kosher salt weighs 142 g per cup. Morton kosher salt weighs 240 g per cup. Fine table salt weighs 273 g per cup.

What does that mean in practice? If a US recipe calls for “1 tsp Diamond Crystal” and you substitute table salt, you’re over-salting by roughly 2×. Cook’s Illustrated and Serious Eats have published salt amounts in grams for years for exactly this reason. When you see salt in a US recipe, use the converter, get the grams, then weigh.

What baking failures come from cup-conversion mistakes?

Dense cookies from scoop-and-sweep flour. Pulling 20 g of extra flour per cup adds up: a 2½-cup recipe lands at 50 g overweight. Cookies turn out dry, crumbly, and pale.

Brown sugar that’s too sweet, or not sweet enough. “1 cup brown sugar, packed” demands that you press the sugar into the cup. Spooned loosely, you get 180 g instead of 220 g — the caramel notes vanish and the dough goes dry.

Honey overdose. “½ cup honey” is 170 g. A baker without a chart who thinks “1 cup = 240 g” pulls 120 g — the gingerbread tastes thin.

Salt disasters. Diamond Crystal vs. Morton (see above) decides whether the recipe is edible. Substituting table salt 1:1 for Diamond Crystal is the most common “what went wrong with my brisket” Reddit story.

Summing cups across ingredients is meaningless. Adding flour, sugar, and butter cups to a single “total volume” gives a physically nonsensical number. Always convert per ingredient.

How do I enter a custom density?

Some ingredients aren’t in the list — regional flour types (Italian 00, Type 1370, Manitoba), specialty sweeteners (yacón syrup, date syrup), niche grain flours, or ethnic ingredients. The custom-density mode lets you enter g/cup manually. If the ingredient’s density is listed in g/mL (commonly on technical data sheets), multiply by 236.6 to get g/cup.

Example: Grade-A maple syrup has a density of 1.36 g/mL. 1.36 × 236.6 ≈ 322 g/cup — the same value the “Maple syrup” entry uses.

What about Imperial and Australian cups?

Australian recipes use a 250 mL cup (a rounded metric figure). UK recipes occasionally use the historical Imperial cup of 284 mL — effectively extinct in modern publications but still found in grandmother-era cookbooks. If a recipe is Australian or British, expect 5 to 20 % more flour/sugar/butter per cup than the US value.

This converter uses only the US customary cup (236.6 mL) because that’s what worldwide food blogs default to. Coming from Australia? 1 AU cup ≈ 1.057 US cups.

How do tablespoons, teaspoons, and fluid ounces convert?

US recipes mix cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons in a single ingredient list. The tool accepts all four units (cup / tbsp / tsp / fl oz) and does the conversion in one step.

• 1 tablespoon (tbsp) of any liquid ≈ 14.79 mL
• 1 teaspoon (tsp) ≈ 4.93 mL — handy benchmark: 1 tsp of water weighs 5 g
• 1 fluid ounce (fl oz) ≈ 29.57 mL = 2 tablespoons
• 1 dash, pinch, smidgen: not legal units. Treat as “1/16 tsp” if you must.

For dry ingredients the same units work — but density still drives the gram count. 1 tbsp of all-purpose flour ≈ 8 g (125 / 16). 1 tbsp of granulated sugar ≈ 12 g. 1 tbsp of honey ≈ 21 g. The converter handles this automatically once an ingredient is selected.

What background facts are worth knowing?

• The tradition of US cup measurement traces back to Fannie Farmer, who published “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” in 1896 with standardized volumes. Before her reform, recipes called for “a knob of butter” or “a teacupful of flour”.
• The US legal cup of 240 mL is a separate definition used only for Nutrition Facts labelling — see the FDA’s notes on the cup unit. It’s not the cup in your cookbook.
• King Arthur Baking publishes density values for around 250 ingredients as an open table. If you bake mostly from US recipes, calibrate your scale against that chart for maximum recipe-to-result consistency.
• “Kosher salt” isn’t named for being kosher-certified (it usually is, but that’s incidental). It’s the salt used for koshering — drawing blood out of meat. The coarse flakes stick to meat surfaces better than fine table salt.

Which tools are related?

More converters from the kittokit toolkit:

• Millilitres to fluid ounces — smaller liquid amounts.
• Litres to gallons — large-volume conversion for fuel, brewing, aquariums.
• Grams to ounces — generic mass conversion without ingredient context.