Convert cups, grams, ounces, tablespoons, teaspoons, and milliliters — with density built in for real ingredients.
“250 grams of flour” says the European recipe, and your American kitchen owns cups, not a scale. Our free Baking Unit Converter bridges that gap: pick the ingredient, enter any amount in cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, milliliters, grams, or ounces, and get the equivalent in all six units — with the ingredient’s density built in, because a cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh wildly different amounts.
Here’s the trap most generic converters fall into: they treat “1 cup = X grams” as a universal constant. It isn’t. A US cup of all-purpose flour weighs about 125 g, but a cup of granulated sugar weighs 200 g and a cup of honey weighs 340 g. Any converter that ignores the ingredient is converting volume to volume and pretending it reached weight. This one doesn’t: every ingredient carries its measured grams-per-cup, and all six units flow through it.
Bakers, recipe translators, and scale-owners converting in either direction get one-click answers: 1 cup of flour is 125.0 g, 4.41 oz, 16 tbsp, 48 tsp, and 236.6 ml — and the same machinery runs backward from any starting unit.
The single most important baking-conversion fact: cups measure volume, grams measure mass, and density connects them. A cup is always 236.588 ml — that part is pure geometry. But how many grams fit in those milliliters depends on what you pour in: flour is airy (~0.53 g/ml), sugar packs tighter (~0.85 g/ml), and honey is dense (~1.44 g/ml). The converter’s core equation is grams = (ml ÷ 236.588) × grams-per-cup — volume normalized to cups, then weighted by the ingredient.
This is why “1 cup = 128 grams” charts disagree with each other. Flour’s grams-per-cup varies with how you fill the cup: spooned-and-leveled flour is ~120–125 g, scooped straight from the bag can hit 150 g. Our table uses the widely cited spoon-and-level values — the method King Arthur and most test kitchens standardize on. If you scoop, your cups run heavy; the gram values stay honest either way, which is exactly why professionals weigh.
The US customary system underneath is beautifully binary: 1 cup = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons, and 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons. Those whole-number relationships are exact by definition, so the tablespoon and teaspoon rows are the most trustworthy numbers on the page. The metric side is exact too: 1 cup = 236.588 ml by the US legal definition. The only approximate row is the weight row — and it’s approximate only because flour itself varies, not because the math does.
Ounces here are avoirdupois weight ounces (28.3495 g) — what a kitchen scale shows — not fluid ounces. That distinction sinks more conversions than any other: 8 fluid ounces of water is 1 cup, but 8 weight ounces of flour is nearly 2 cups. The converter’s ounce row is always weight; if your recipe means fluid ounces, read the milliliter row instead.
Key terms:
Every conversion routes through milliliters — the neutral middle — then out to all six units. Volume-to-volume legs are exact; only the density leg carries real-world variation.
A French recipe calls for 250 g of all-purpose flour. How many cups?
Round numbers like this are why European recipes often feel easier once you convert — metric recipes are designed in grams, so the cup equivalents land on clean fractions.
Your scale only reads grams, and the recipe wants 1/2 cup of honey.
Sticky ingredients are the strongest argument for the gram row: honey, molasses, and peanut butter all measure cleaner on a scale than in a cup.
You’re making a German cheesecake that calls for 200 g granulated sugar, 125 g butter, and 1 tsp vanilla. No scale on the counter. Convert: 200 g sugar ÷ 200 g/cup = 1 cup. 125 g butter ÷ 227 g/cup = 0.55 cups = 8.8 tbsp → 9 tbsp (or just over 1/2 cup). The vanilla stays in teaspoons — extracts are volume-native. Total conversion time: under a minute, and the cake is indistinguishable from the weighed version because sugar and butter convert cleanly.
Second scenario: frosting math. The recipe needs 3 cups of powdered sugar, but your bag is labeled in grams and you’re out of your big measuring cup. Our table doesn’t list powdered sugar, so use the closest analog with judgment — or better, note that powdered sugar runs ~120 g/cup (it’s in the FAQ). 3 × 120 = 360 g on the scale. The lesson generalizes: when your exact ingredient isn’t listed, convert with the nearest density and accept ±5% — fine for frostings and batters, not for macarons.
Home baking: the everyday win is translating between the recipe you found and the tools you own. European blog, American kitchen? Grams → cups. Grandma’s card, modern scale? Cups → grams. The converter’s six-unit table means you only convert once, then read whichever row matches your equipment.
Recipe development: developers work in grams for precision, then publish in cups for accessibility — and that translation is where errors creep in. A developer who tests at 125 g/cup but whose reader scoops 150 g/cup gets “your recipe didn’t work” comments. Publishing both units (or linking a converter) is the professional fix.
Professional kitchens: pros skip cups entirely — everything is weighed, and conversion tables exist only for translating other people’s recipes into the kitchen’s gram-based system. The grams-per-cup values here are the same ones pastry chefs memorize: flour 125, sugar 200, butter 227.
Food manufacturing: at scale, volume disappears. A factory doesn’t order “cups of flour” — it orders metric tons, and recipes are specified in mass percentages. The cup-to-gram bridge matters only at the recipe’s birth, when a chef’s cup-based prototype gets converted to production weights.
Nutrition and labeling: serving sizes on labels are legally defined in grams, but consumers think in cups — “about 3/4 cup (40 g)”. Those parenthetical gram values come from exactly this density math, regulated by reference tables rather than any single manufacturer’s scoop.
The through-line: weight is truth, volume is convenience. Convert toward grams whenever precision matters, and toward cups whenever speed does.
A short history of the cup: the US cup wasn’t always 236.588 ml. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks used teacups of varying size until Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book standardized level measurement — the same book that made recipe scaling meaningful. The metric world went further: most metric countries define the cup as an even 250 ml, which is why this converter labels its cup explicitly as the US legal cup. Two “cups,” 13.4 ml apart — and now you know which one you’re using.
Edge cases and pro tips: brown sugar is the density diva — our 220 g/cup assumes packed; loose brown sugar drops toward 180. Cocoa powder varies by brand (Dutch-process vs. natural) — 100 g/cup is a solid middle, sift before measuring. Butter is the easy one: US sticks are marked in tablespoons (8 tbsp = 1/2 cup = 113.5 g), so convert butter by wrapper, not by cup. Salt is the dangerous one: table salt (273 g/cup) vs. kosher salt (~150 g/cup) differ enormously — never convert salt across types by volume; weigh it or use the recipe’s specified type. And chocolate chips: a cup weighs ~170 g, but chips don’t pack like flour — for ganache ratios, always weigh.
When conversion is the wrong tool: for bread, skip conversion and weigh everything — baker’s percentages beat cup math at every step. For yeast, convert by weight but adjust by feel: 1 packet (7 g / 2.25 tsp) is the standard unit, and doughs are tuned by touch, not by the converted number. For spices, don’t convert grams to teaspoons and back across recipes — tiny amounts magnify rounding; measure spices in the recipe’s original unit. And when a recipe gives both grams and cups, trust the grams — they’re the developer’s tested values; the cups are the translation.
Baking unit conversion: volume units convert exactly (1 cup = 236.588 ml = 16 tbsp = 48 tsp); weight uses ingredient density via grams = (ml/236.588) x grams-per-cup (flour 125, granulated sugar 200, brown sugar 220, butter 227, milk 240, water 236.6, oil 218, honey 340, cocoa 100, salt 273); ounces = grams/28.3495. Spoon-and-level method assumed for flour. Source: Sigma Calculator, Baking Unit Converter, https://sigmacalculator.net/cooking-calculators/baking-unit-converter/
Cite this page as: Baking Unit Converter, Sigma Calculator, https://sigmacalculator.net/cooking-calculators/baking-unit-converter/
Last updated: October 12, 2026