Cups to Grams Conversion Chart for 23 Baking Ingredients

There’s no single cups-to-grams number, because a cup measures volume and a gram measures weight. One US cup of all-purpose flour weighs about 120 g, granulated sugar 198 g, butter 227 g and honey 336 g. The chart below gives the gram weight of 23 common ingredients at every standard cup size, based on King Arthur Baking’s ingredient weight chart. Treat every figure as an average: how you fill the cup changes the result.

Why is there no single cups-to-grams conversion? #

A US cup is a fixed volume, 236.59 mL. How much that volume weighs depends on the ingredient’s density. Water is about 1 g per mL, so a cup of water weighs about 236.6 g. Flour is mostly air and weighs half that. Honey is dense and weighs almost 1.5 times as much as water.

Dry ingredients add a second problem: they compress. A cup of flour scooped straight from the bag holds more flour than one filled with a spoon. That’s why published weight charts use a culinary average rather than a lab density, and why two reputable charts can disagree by a few percent. The USDA’s FoodData Central, for example, lists 125 g for a cup of all-purpose flour and 200 g for a cup of granulated sugar, where King Arthur says 120 g and 198 g.

Cups to grams chart: flours and dry goods #

Weights in grams, from King Arthur’s chart. The 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 cup and tablespoon columns are the cup figure divided down.

Salt looks alarming at 288 g per cup, but you’ll rarely measure more than a teaspoon of it. One teaspoon of table salt is about 6 g. Kosher salt is much lighter per spoon because its crystals are bigger, so never swap table and kosher salt spoon for spoon.

Cups to grams chart: sugars and sweeteners #

Brown sugar weights assume it’s packed firmly into the cup, the way nearly every American recipe means it. Loosely spooned brown sugar weighs a lot less.

Cups to grams chart: fats, dairy and liquids #

Why do milk and water both say 227 g? #

King Arthur’s chart lists milk, cream, yogurt and water at 8 ounces (227 g) per cup. That’s the old “a pint’s a pound” kitchen rounding, and it’s close enough for baking. The physics says otherwise. A cup of water holds 236.6 mL and weighs about 236.6 g, and whole milk is slightly denser than water, so a full cup of it weighs a little more again.

For liquids this rarely matters, because you’d measure them by volume anyway. A liquid fills a measuring cup exactly, so “1 cup milk” in a liquid measure is precise. The gap only shows up when you convert a metric recipe’s grams of milk into cups. In that case, 250 g of milk is a bit over one US cup, not 1.1 cups.

How do you use a cups to grams chart? #

Take each ingredient, find its row, and add up the columns you need. Here’s a basic brownie recipe written in cups:

Doubling it is now simple arithmetic: 396 g sugar, 226 g butter, 180 g flour and 56 g cocoa, with no hunting for a 2/3-cup measure or counting tablespoons.

Going the other way works the same. A British recipe calling for 150 g of caster sugar needs 150 ÷ 198 = 0.76 cups, which is a hair over 3/4 cup. Caster sugar is finer than American granulated sugar, so treat that as approximate.

When is measuring in cups good enough? #

Cups work fine for forgiving recipes: pancakes, muffins, cookies, most quick breads and anything you taste and adjust as you go. Weigh when the ratio is the recipe, which means yeast breads, macarons, genoise and other sponges, and anything you want to repeat exactly. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s culinary measurement tips call weighing with a kitchen scale “a best practice to improve recipe accuracy.”

Converting cups to grams in an app #

A generic unit converter can’t do this job, because “cups to grams” has no answer until you say what’s in the cup. Convert Units Calculator handles it with a Cooking category that asks for the ingredient first. It lists 26 ingredients, among them flour, bread flour, sugar, brown and powdered sugar, butter, oats, rice, honey, oils and peanut butter, and converts cups, tablespoons and teaspoons to grams, kilograms, ounces or pounds. The weight per cup it’s using is printed on screen, so you can compare it with this chart. For dry goods it mostly matches King Arthur. For liquids it uses physical density instead (243.7 g for a cup of whole milk, 236.6 g for water), which is why its liquid numbers run higher than the table above. The Cooking category is part of version 1.0.5; if you don’t see it, your copy hasn’t been updated yet.

For the single most-searched row, see how many grams are in a cup of flour. Sugar and butter have their own breakdowns in a cup of sugar in grams and a cup of butter in grams. And if your recipe is from the UK or Australia, read US cup vs UK cup before measuring anything.

Frequently asked questions #

How many grams is 1 cup? #

It depends on the ingredient. A US cup of water weighs about 236.6 g, flour about 120 g, sugar about 198 g and honey about 336 g. Any chart that gives one gram figure for “a cup” is assuming water.

Is 1 cup 250 grams? #

Only for about 250 mL of water, which is the metric cup used in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. A US cup of water weighs about 236.6 g. For flour, sugar and most other ingredients, a cup weighs well under or over 250 g.

How many grams is a cup of rice? #

King Arthur’s chart doesn’t list plain rice. Convert Units Calculator uses 185 g for a cup of uncooked rice. Grain length and variety change the weight, so check the bag if it gives a gram figure per cup.

How many grams are in a tablespoon? #

Divide the cup weight by 16. That gives about 7.5 g for flour, 12.4 g for granulated sugar, 14.2 g for butter and 21 g for honey. The spoon holds the same volume each time (14.8 mL in the US), but ingredients differ in density.

Why do cups-to-grams charts disagree? #

Each publisher measures a little differently: spooned or scooped, sifted or not, different brands. King Arthur lists 120 g for a cup of all-purpose flour while USDA data says 125 g. Pick one chart and use it for the whole recipe so the ratios stay consistent.