Milliliters to Cups Converter

Milliliters and cups in recipes

A milliliter (ml) is a thousandth of a liter, the metric unit that measuring jugs, drink bottles and food labels use for liquids. A cup is an older kitchen measure whose size depends on the country the recipe comes from. This converter covers the two that readers ask about most.

• US legal cup: exactly 240 ml. This is the rounded cup used on American nutrition labels and in most modern US recipes.
• Imperial cup: about 284.13 ml, which is one sixteenth of an imperial gallon or ten imperial fluid ounces. It turns up in older British and Commonwealth cookbooks.

Two other cups are worth knowing even though the converter does not list them: the traditional US customary cup of 8 US fluid ounces (about 236.59 ml) and the 250 ml metric cup common in Australia and New Zealand. The US legal, US customary and metric cups sit within a few percent of one another, which rarely matters in a soup but can show up in bread, cakes and pastry.

How to convert ml to cups

1. Type the amount into the Convert box and choose MilliLiters or Liters in the menu beside it.
2. In the To menu choose US Legal Cups or Imperial Cups.
3. Read the answer in the second box. It refreshes as you type or change a menu, so no button press is needed.

The Ingredient menu appears on every recipe converter here, but it only matters when one of the two units is a weight. Milliliters and cups are both volumes, so the ingredient does not change this result. When you need a weight, use the milliliters to grams converter.

US legal cups = milliliters ÷ 240

imperial cups = milliliters ÷ 284.130625Liters are multiplied by 1,000 first. Answers are rounded to three decimals.

Worked examples

500 ml of water. 500 ÷ 240 = 2.0833, so the converter shows 2.083 US cups. In imperial cups, 500 ÷ 284.130625 = 1.7598, shown as 1.76 cups.

200 ml of milk. 200 ÷ 240 = 0.8333, which is 0.833 cup. That is three quarters of a cup (180 ml) plus a little over a tablespoon.

2.5 liters of stock. 2.5 liters is 2,500 ml, and 2,500 ÷ 240 = 10.4167, so you need 10.417 US cups, or 8.799 imperial cups.

Milliliters to cups conversion table

Handy fractions of a US legal cup: 60 ml is ¼ cup, 80 ml is ⅓ cup, 120 ml is ½ cup, 160 ml is ⅔ cup and 180 ml is ¾ cup.

Check which cup your recipe means

Recipes seldom say which cup they use. A recipe from an American site that also lists sticks of butter or ounces almost certainly means the US cup. One from Australia or New Zealand will use the 250 ml metric cup. Very old British books may mean the imperial cup. Picking the wrong one changes the total by up to 18%, so it is worth a moment's thought before you scale a cake.

For baking, weighing is more reliable than any cup. Try the grams to cups converter or the cups to milliliters converter to move in the other direction.