Cups to Grams Converter

Why a cup does not have a single weight

A cup measures how much space an ingredient fills; a gram measures how heavy it is. Because ingredients differ in density, one cup can hold very different weights: a level cup of ground almonds weighs about 115 g, a cup of water 240 g and a cup of runny honey 336 g.

That is why the converter asks for an ingredient first. It holds a typical bulk density for 19 common ingredients and multiplies it by the volume of the cup you choose. Two cup sizes are offered:

• US Legal Cups are exactly 240 ml, the cup used on American nutrition labels.
• Imperial Cups are about 284.13 ml, one sixteenth of an imperial gallon, as found in older British recipes.

The traditional US customary cup (236.59 ml) and the 250 ml metric cup are not on the list. They sit about 1% below and 4% above the legal cup, so you can use the legal cup as a close stand-in.

How to convert cups to grams

1. Choose the ingredient you are measuring.
2. Type the number of cups in the Convert box (decimals such as 0.75 are fine) and select the cup type.
3. Choose MilliGrams, Grams or KiloGrams in the To menu. The answer updates as you type.

grams = cups × cup volume (ml) × density (g/ml)Cup volume is 240 ml for a US legal cup and 284.130625 ml for an imperial cup.

Density is the weight of one milliliter: 1.0 for water, 0.52 for flour, 0.895 for granulated sugar. Answers in grams and milligrams are rounded to whole numbers, and kilograms are shown to three decimals.

Worked examples

• 1 cup of water: 1 × 240 × 1.0 = 240, so the converter shows 240 g.
• 2 cups of flour: 2 × 240 × 0.52 = 249.6, which is rounded to 250 g.
• 1.5 cups of granulated sugar: 1.5 × 240 × 0.895 = 322.2, shown as 322 g.
• 3/4 cup of runny honey: 0.75 × 240 × 1.4 = 252, so 252 g.
• 1 imperial cup of butter: 284.130625 × 0.959 = 272.48, shown as 272 g.

Grams per cup chart

Why your own cup may give a different weight

Any cups-to-grams chart uses typical densities, not measurements of the bag in your cupboard. Flour scooped straight from the bag and packed down can weigh well over 10% more than flour that was spooned in and levelled. Brown sugar is meant to be packed, icing sugar is lighter once sifted, and cocoa clumps. Brand, humidity and grind all move the number.

When a recipe matters, such as bread or a delicate cake, weigh the ingredients and use the gram amounts the author gives. Use this converter for rough planning and for recipes that only list cups.

To go the other way, try the grams to cups converter. For volume-only conversions see cups to milliliters, and to resize a whole recipe use the recipe scaler.