Cups to Grams
There is no single cups-to-grams conversion, because grams measure mass and cups measure space. Find your ingredient below.
Weight of One Cup, by Ingredient
| Ingredient | 1/2 cup | 1 cup | 1 cup (oz) | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flours | ||||
| All-Purpose Flour | 60 g | 120 g | 4.23 | 120–145 g |
| Bread Flour | 60 g | 120 g | 4.23 | 120–145 g |
| Whole Wheat Flour | 57 g | 113 g | 3.99 | reliable |
| Sugars | ||||
| Granulated Sugar | 99 g | 198 g | 6.98 | reliable |
| Brown Sugar | 107 g | 213 g | 7.51 | 145–213 g |
| Powdered Sugar | 57 g | 113 g | 3.99 | reliable |
| Fats | ||||
| Butter | 114 g | 227 g | 8.01 | reliable |
| Dry ingredients | ||||
| Rolled Oats | 45 g | 89 g | 3.14 | reliable |
| Cocoa Powder | 42 g | 84 g | 2.96 | reliable |
| Rice | 99 g | 198 g | 6.98 | reliable |
| Chocolate Chips | 85 g | 170 g | 6 | reliable |
| Liquids | ||||
| Honey | 168 g | 336 g | 11.85 | reliable |
| Water † | 118 g | 236 g | 8.32 | reliable |
| Milk † | 122 g | 244 g | 8.61 | reliable |
Why There Is No Single Answer
Every other conversion on this site is exact by definition. This one is not, and any site that gives you one number without saying so is misleading you. A cup measures volume; grams measure mass. What connects them is density, and density varies with the ingredient, how finely it is milled, how humid the kitchen is, and above all how the cup was filled.
Flour is the clearest case. Dipping the cup into the bag compresses it and can yield 145 grams where spooning and levelling gives 120 — a 20 percent difference in the single most important ingredient in most baking recipes. Sugar barely compresses at all, so its figure is dependable. Butter is sold by weight, which makes it exact.
How to Measure Dry Ingredients Properly
- Stir the flour in its container to loosen it.
- Spoon it into the measuring cup — never dip the cup into the bag.
- Level the top with the back of a knife, without tapping or pressing.
- For brown sugar, do the opposite: press it in firmly, because recipes assume packed.
Or skip all of it and use a scale. A digital kitchen scale costs less than a cake's worth of wasted ingredients and removes the variable entirely — which is why professional recipes are written in grams.
Where These Weights Come From
Most of them follow the King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart, the reference most American recipes are written against.
Water and milk are the exception, marked † above. That chart lists a cup of each as 8 ounces, which equates 8 fluid ounces of volume with 8 ounces of weight — the old "a pint's a pound" rule of thumb. It is a useful kitchen shortcut and about 4 percent low. A cup is 236.588 mL; water is roughly 0.997 g/mL, giving 236 grams, and whole milk is about 1.03 g/mL, which USDA FoodData Central puts at 244 grams per cup. On a site that spends four pages explaining that a fluid ounce is not an ounce, we are not going to publish 227 here.
For the exact, defined conversions used elsewhere on this site, see how we calculate. Spotted a weight that looks wrong? Tell us — with a source, if you have one.