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Cooking Converter

Convert cups, spoons and ounces to grams for flour, sugar, butter and other common ingredients.

Maintained by BrowserTools · Last updated 2026-09-29

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Recipes from different countries measure the same ingredients in different ways. An American recipe asks for a cup of flour, a British one for grams, an Australian one for tablespoons that hold a third more than elsewhere. Converting between volume and weight is not a fixed ratio: a cup of flour weighs about 120 g, a cup of sugar almost 200 g and a cup of honey more than 330 g, because each ingredient has its own density. This converter holds gram-per-cup values for more than thirty common ingredients, from all-purpose, bread and whole wheat flour to white, brown and icing sugar, butter, milk, cream, oil, honey, rice, oats, cocoa, cornstarch and several kinds of salt, taken from King Arthur Baking's published ingredient weight chart and the USDA's food composition data. Pick the ingredient, type an amount in cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, millilitres, litres, fluid ounces, grams, kilograms, ounces, pounds or sticks of butter, and read the result in any other unit.

Frequently asked questions

How many grams are in a cup of flour?
One US cup (236.6 ml) of all-purpose flour weighs about 120 g when the flour is spooned into the cup and levelled, which is the value King Arthur Baking uses. If you scoop the cup straight into the bag the flour is packed down and can weigh 140 g or more. A 250 ml metric cup holds about 127 g, and a Japanese 200 ml cup about 101 g.
Why is a cup of sugar heavier than a cup of flour?
Grams measure weight and cups measure volume, and different ingredients have different densities. Sugar crystals are dense and pack closely, so a US cup of white sugar weighs about 198 g, while flour is light and full of air, about 120 g per cup. That is why there is no single cups to grams conversion: you always need to know the ingredient.
What is the difference between a US cup and a metric cup?
A US customary cup is 236.6 ml (8 US fluid ounces). The metric cup, used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, is 250 ml, about 6% larger. The old British imperial cup is 284 ml and a Japanese cup is 200 ml. For a single cup the difference is small, but in a recipe with several cups of flour and sugar it adds up.
How many grams are in a tablespoon?
It depends on the ingredient and the spoon. A US tablespoon is 14.8 ml and a metric tablespoon 15 ml, so a tablespoon of water weighs about 15 g, a tablespoon of butter about 14 g, a tablespoon of flour about 8 g and a tablespoon of honey about 21 g. Australian tablespoons hold 20 ml, a third more, so check where the recipe comes from.
How much is a stick of butter?
A US stick of butter weighs 4 ounces, about 113 g, and equals 1/2 cup or 8 tablespoons. Four sticks make a pound. Outside the United States butter is usually sold in 250 g or 200 g blocks, so a recipe that calls for 1 cup of butter needs about 227 g.
How do I convert oven temperatures for a fan oven?
Fan (convection) ovens circulate hot air and cook faster, so the usual rule is to set them about 20 °C (roughly 25 °F) lower than a recipe written for a conventional oven. The table shows both. Some modern ovens already make this adjustment on their own, so check the manual if your baking comes out dark.
What are gas marks?
Gas marks are the numbered settings on gas ovens in the United Kingdom and Ireland, still used in many British recipes. Gas mark 4 is about 180 °C or 350 °F, and each step up adds roughly 10 to 15 °C. The lowest settings are fractions, 1/4 and 1/2, and the highest is usually 9, about 240 °C.
How does the recipe scaler work?
It reads the number at the start of each line, including whole numbers, decimals, fractions like 3/4, mixed numbers like 1 1/2, fraction characters like ½ and ranges like 2-3, and multiplies it by the ratio between the servings you want and the servings the recipe makes. Cup and spoon quantities are shown as kitchen fractions. It does not change units, and things like eggs or baking times may still need common sense.
Are the conversions exact?
The unit definitions are exact, but ingredient weights are averages. Flour, cocoa and icing sugar vary with how they are filled and whether they were sifted, brown sugar depends on how firmly it is packed, and brands differ slightly. For baking where precision matters, use the gram weights with a kitchen scale.

About Cooking Converter

The cup itself is not the same size everywhere, so the tool lets you choose. The US customary cup is 236.6 ml, the metric cup used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many modern recipes is 250 ml, the old British imperial cup is 284 ml and the Japanese cup is 200 ml. Spoons differ too: a US tablespoon is 14.8 ml, the metric tablespoon is 15 ml and the Australian one is 20 ml, and US and UK fluid ounces are 29.6 ml and 28.4 ml. A table beside the converter shows what one cup of your chosen ingredient weighs in each standard, which is often the fastest way to see why a recipe did not come out as expected. For baking, weighing is always more accurate than measuring by volume, since the way a cup is filled can shift the weight of flour by 10 to 20 percent.

Below the converter you will find an oven temperature table with Celsius, Celsius for fan (convection) ovens, Fahrenheit and the gas marks still printed in British recipes, and a recipe scaler. Paste an ingredient list, one item per line, enter how many servings the recipe makes and how many you need, and every line that starts with a quantity is multiplied, including fractions such as 1 1/2 or ¾ and ranges like 2-3. Lines without a number, such as a pinch of salt, are left unchanged. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere.

Fannie Farmer and the level cup

Before the late nineteenth century, recipes were full of vague measures: a teacup of this, butter the size of an egg, flour enough to make a stiff dough. In 1896 Fannie Merritt Farmer, principal of the Boston Cooking School, published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, which insisted on standard measuring cups and spoons and, above all, on level measurements. She was so associated with the idea that she became known as the mother of level measurements.

Her book was a huge success and helped make the cup the everyday unit of American home cooking, which is why US recipes still measure flour by volume while most of the world weighs it. Europe followed a different path: the metric system spread through kitchens along with everything else, and a kitchen scale became standard equipment.

The gap persists today. Even the cup itself was never fully standardised worldwide: the US settled on 8 fluid ounces, Commonwealth countries adopted a round 250 ml when they went metric, and Japan chose 200 ml, while rice cookers there still use an older measure, the gō, of about 180 ml.

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