How to Use the Cooking Converter

Enter the amount

Type the quantity from your recipe — whole numbers or decimals both work, so "1.5" or "0.25" are fine. The result updates as you type.

Choose the units

Pick what you are converting from and to — cups, tablespoons, millilitres, grams, ounces, and more. Use the swap button to flip the direction instantly. Volume-to-volume and weight-to-weight conversions work for any ingredient.

Pick the ingredient when needed

To convert between a volume (like cups) and a weight (like grams), the tool needs to know what you are measuring, because a cup of flour weighs far less than a cup of honey. An ingredient selector appears automatically for these conversions.

Read the result

The converted amount appears instantly, with a note showing which ingredient density was used. Try the quick-conversion buttons for the most common baking conversions in one tap.

Why a Cup of Flour Isn't a Cup of Water

Volume, Weight, and the Density in Between

Most recipe-conversion confusion comes from mixing up two fundamentally different things: volume and weight. A cup measures volume — how much space something takes up — while a gram measures weight, how heavy it is. Converting between units of the same kind is just arithmetic: a litre is always a thousand millilitres and a pound is always sixteen ounces, regardless of what is being measured. (Spoons are the exception — a tablespoon is three teaspoons almost everywhere, but the Australian tablespoon is 20 mL, which is four.) But the moment you cross from volume to weight — "how many grams is a cup of flour?" — the answer depends entirely on the ingredient, because different ingredients pack different amounts of mass into the same space. That property is called density. Water is the reference point at almost exactly one gram per millilitre, so a cup of water (237 ml) weighs about 237 grams. Flour is light and airy at roughly 0.51 grams per millilitre, so the same cup holds only about 120 grams. Honey is dense at 1.42, so a cup of it weighs around 336 grams. This is why a converter that ignores the ingredient — and many do — will happily give you a wrong answer for everything except water.

This tool keeps a table of typical densities for common cooking and baking ingredients and uses the right one whenever you convert across the volume/weight line. It is the single most important feature for baking, where accuracy matters most: bread and pastry are chemistry as much as cookery, and a few spoonfuls of flour more or less change the dough. It is also why serious bakers increasingly weigh ingredients in grams rather than scooping cups — a gram of flour is always a gram, whereas a "cup" varies with how tightly you pack it, whether you sifted, and even the humidity. When you convert a cup-based recipe to grams here and then weigh the ingredients, you remove that variability entirely.

"Teaspoons to tablespoons is arithmetic. Cups to grams is chemistry — the answer changes with the ingredient, because density does."

A Note on Cups, and Accuracy

One more wrinkle worth knowing: "a cup" is not universal. This tool uses the US customary cup of about 237 millilitres; the metric cup used in Australia and much of the world is 250 millilitres, and an imperial cup is different again. The differences are small but real, and they compound in larger recipes. For that reason, and because the density of a packed versus a sifted cup of the same flour genuinely differs, treat any volume-to-weight result as an excellent close estimate rather than a laboratory measurement — which is exactly what cooking needs. The densities used here are standard published references; your specific brand, grind, or packing may shift them by a few percent. For everyday cooking and most baking that precision is more than enough, and it is vastly better than the ingredient-blind conversions that assume everything weighs the same as water. Whether you are scaling a recipe, swapping between a US and a metric kitchen, or just trying to weigh out what a recipe wrote in cups, a density-aware converter gets you the number you actually need.

A cup of flour weighs half a cup of water

01

A cup of flour (~120 g) weighs barely half a cup of water (~237 g).

02

Density — grams per millilitre — is what links a volume to a weight.

03

There are always 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, for any ingredient.

04

A US cup is ~237 ml; a metric cup is 250 ml — they are not the same.

05

Honey is denser than water (1.42 g/ml), so a cup of it weighs ~336 g.

06

Serious bakers weigh in grams because a "cup" varies with packing.

07

King Arthur's chart assumes flour is spooned and levelled: 120 g a cup.

08

Scooped flour packs more into the same cup than spooned, which is why bakers weigh.

09

Volume-to-volume and weight-to-weight conversions ignore the ingredient.

10

This converter is density-aware, so cross conversions use the right weight.

Frequently Asked Questions

About 120 grams for all-purpose flour, because flour is light and airy (a density of roughly 0.51 grams per millilitre). Flour is the one ingredient where the number depends on technique as much as on the flour: spooning it into the cup and levelling gives about 120 g, which is what King Arthur's published weight chart assumes, while dipping the cup into the bag packs more in. This is very different from a cup of water, which weighs about 237 grams. Select "cup" to "gram" with flour as the ingredient and the tool gives the exact figure — and you can switch the ingredient to sugar, butter, honey, and more.
Only when converting between a volume (like cups or millilitres) and a weight (like grams or ounces). The same volume of different ingredients weighs different amounts — a cup of flour is far lighter than a cup of honey — so the tool needs to know what you are measuring to give the right weight. For volume-to-volume or weight-to-weight conversions, the ingredient does not matter and the selector is hidden.
There are 16 tablespoons in a US cup, and 3 teaspoons in each tablespoon (so 48 teaspoons per cup). These are volume-to-volume conversions, so they hold true for any ingredient. One caveat that catches people: the Australian tablespoon is 20 mL rather than 15, making it four teaspoons rather than three. Enter the amount, choose cup and tablespoon, and the tool shows it instantly.
It uses the US customary cup of about 237 millilitres. The metric cup used in Australia and elsewhere is 250 millilitres, and an imperial cup is different again. The gap is small but real, so if your recipe specifies a metric cup, expect results to be a few percent off. For millilitre and litre conversions there is no ambiguity.
They use standard published densities for each ingredient, which makes them an excellent estimate for cooking and baking. Real-world weight varies a little with how tightly an ingredient is packed, whether flour is sifted, brand, grind, and humidity — typically within a few percent. That is far more accurate than ingredient-blind converters that treat everything as water, and ample for almost all home cooking.
By weight, whenever you can. A gram of flour is always a gram, but a "cup" varies with how you scoop and pack it, which is why professional and serious home bakers weigh ingredients. Use this tool to convert a cup-based recipe into grams once, then weigh from then on for consistent results — especially important in bread and pastry where ratios are precise.
Yes — choose millilitre as the "from" unit, gram as the "to" unit, and pick the ingredient. For water they are nearly equal (1 ml ≈ 1 g), but for oil, syrup, flour, or anything else the tool applies that ingredient's density to give the correct weight. The same works in reverse from grams to millilitres.
No. The converter runs entirely in your browser — every calculation happens on your device and nothing is uploaded, stored, or tracked. It also works offline once the page has loaded, which is handy in a kitchen with patchy signal.
You can convert each ingredient's units one at a time, which is the usual need when moving a recipe between a cup-based and a gram-based kitchen. To scale quantities up or down (say, doubling a recipe), multiply the amounts yourself before converting, or convert first and then multiply — the result is the same.
Completely free, with no account, sign-up, or limit. It runs entirely in your browser and collects no data. Convert as many measurements as your recipes need.

Method & sources

How it computes

Volume and mass by exact unit factors; volume to weight via grams per US cup (236.588 mL) for the chosen ingredient. All factors from KitchenPetKernel.cooking (VOL_ML, MASS_G, CUP_G), shared with the cooking unit converter and tested.

What this tool implements

Kernel corrected against King Arthur's chart, its own cited source: rolled oats 113 g/cup was KA's own-brand row; the generic old-fashioned/quick-cooking row is 89 g (now used). Diamond Crystal kosher salt was 144 g/cup; KA gives 8 g per tablespoon, 128 g/cup.
Verified in this pass: flours 120/113, sugars 198/213/113, cocoa 84, cornstarch 112, butter 226, honey 336, baking powder 192, table salt 288 (King Arthur); rice 185, rice flour 158, canned coconut milk 226 (USDA FoodData Central); US customary units (NIST HB 44); the 240 mL label cup (21 CFR 101.9). Removed as unsourced: 'packed flour can reach 145 g', '30 g off wrecks a loaf', 'sifted vs packed differ 20%'.

Sources

King Arthur Baking. Ingredient Weight Chart, spooned and levelled: all-purpose flour 120 g per cup, honey 21 g per tablespoon (336 g per cup), granulated sugar 198 g, cocoa 42 g per 1/2 cup. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart
U.S. Department of Agriculture, FoodData Central (SR Legacy) cup portion weights: rice, white, long-grain, raw (fdcId 168877) 185 g; rice flour, white (169714) 158 g; coconut milk, canned (170173) 226 g. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii): for nutrition labelling a teaspoon is 5 mL, a tablespoon 15 mL, a cup 240 mL, 1 fl oz 30 mL. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/101.9
NIST Handbook 44 (2026), Appendix C, General Tables of Units of Measurement: US gallon 231 in3 = 3,785.411784 mL, measuring cup 8 fl oz, avoirdupois ounce 28.349523125 g, pound 453.59237 g. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.HB.44-2026

Pick up where you left off

Stored only in this browser — never sent to our servers.

Cooking Measurement Converter