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Cooking Measurement Converter

Converters · Added 15 August 2026

Cups to grams is not a unit conversion — it depends entirely on what is in the cup. A cup of flour is about 125 g and a cup of honey about 336 g, so this converter asks which ingredient before it will give you a weight. Thirty ingredients are included, along with an oven temperature and gas mark chart.

Direction

Standard in American recipes.

Density 0.53 g/ml. The ingredient matters — a cup of flour and a cup of honey differ by nearly three times in weight.

How to use the cooking measurement converter

  1. 1Choose the direction: volume to weight, or weight to volume.
  2. 2Enter the amount and pick the unit. Cup sizes differ by country, so check which one your recipe uses.
  3. 3Choose the ingredient — this is what makes the conversion possible.
  4. 4Press Convert. The result shows the quantity in every common volume and weight unit.
  5. 5Open the oven temperature panel for gas mark, Celsius, fan Celsius and Fahrenheit equivalents.

Examples

Flour

Input
1 US cup of plain flour
Result
About 125 g

The most-searched cooking conversion there is, and the one most often given wrongly as 240 g.

Honey, same volume

Input
1 US cup of honey
Result
About 336 g

Nearly three times the weight of flour for an identical cup. This is why a single cups-to-grams number cannot exist.

Working backwards

Input
500 g of plain flour
Result
About 3.99 US cups

Recipes written in grams scale precisely; the same recipe in cups depends on how you scoop.

About the cooking measurement converter

Why cups and grams are not interchangeable

A volume measurement asks how much space something occupies; a weight measurement asks how much matter it contains. Converting between them needs to know how tightly packed the substance is — its density — and that varies enormously across a kitchen.

The range is wider than most people expect. Rolled oats sit around 0.38 g/ml, plain flour around 0.53, granulated sugar around 0.85, water at 1.0, and honey at about 1.42. That is nearly a fourfold spread between the lightest and heaviest common ingredients, so a recipe converted with a single average figure will be badly wrong for most of them.

There is a second layer of variability that no table can fix. Flour compresses: a cup packed by dipping the measure into the bag can hold 20–25% more than one filled by spooning flour in and levelling the top. That difference alone is enough to turn a tender cake dense, and it is why professional recipes stopped using cups for dry ingredients.

The measurements that quietly differ by country

A recipe crossing a border carries assumptions with it. The cup is the worst offender — American recipes mean about 237 ml, Australian and New Zealand recipes mean 250 ml, and older British recipes may mean 284 ml. Following an Australian recipe with American cups leaves you about 5% short on every ingredient, which is survivable; following an old imperial recipe with American cups leaves you 17% short, which is not.

Tablespoons hold a similar trap. Most of the world uses 15 ml, defined as three teaspoons. Australia uses 20 ml, defined as four. A recipe calling for four tablespoons of a strong ingredient — baking powder, salt, spice — behaves very differently depending on which spoon the writer meant.

Oven temperatures add their own layer. Gas marks are a British scale with no direct arithmetic relationship to degrees, so they have to be looked up rather than calculated. Fan ovens run effectively hotter than conventional ones at the same setting, conventionally by about 20 °C. The chart here puts all four side by side, which is faster than converting Fahrenheit to Celsius and then guessing at the fan adjustment separately.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the ingredient matter?
Because a cup measures volume and a gram measures mass, and converting between them requires density. Flour is light and full of air at about 0.53 g/ml; honey is dense at about 1.42. The same cup therefore holds 125 g of one and 336 g of the other. Any converter offering a single 'one cup = 240 grams' rule is giving you the answer for water and nothing else.
How accurate are these conversions?
Good enough for cooking, not good enough for a laboratory. Densities are typical published values, and real ingredients vary — how flour is scooped changes its weight by 20% or more, since a packed cup holds far more than a spooned-and-levelled one. This variability is precisely why serious baking recipes are written in grams, and why a kitchen scale improves results more than any technique.
Are all cups the same size?
No, and this catches people out. A US customary cup is about 237 ml, the US legal cup is 240 ml, a metric cup is 250 ml, and an old imperial cup was 284 ml. The two US figures are close enough to ignore in cooking; the metric and imperial ones are not. Australian tablespoons are another trap at 20 ml against the usual 15 ml — four teaspoons rather than three.
Why do fan ovens need a lower temperature?
Because moving air transfers heat to food far more efficiently than still air, so a fan oven at the same dial setting cooks hotter and faster. The usual adjustment is to reduce the temperature by about 20 °C, which the chart shows alongside each gas mark. Some recipes suggest shortening the time instead; both work, and reducing the temperature is generally safer for baking.
Should I use weight or volume?
Weight, whenever the recipe allows it, especially for baking. A gram is a gram regardless of technique, while a cup of flour depends on whether it was scooped, spooned, sifted or packed. Volume is fine for liquids, where density is consistent and a millilitre is reliable.

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