Article — Grams to Cups Converter
Grams to cups: ingredient-specific conversion for 15 baking staples
Grams measure mass; cups measure volume. The link between them depends on the ingredient. One US cup of all-purpose flour is 125 g. One US cup of granulated sugar is 200 g. One US cup of butter is 227 g. One US cup of honey is 340 g. The same cup can hold a 2.7x weight difference depending on what is inside it.
The calculator at the top covers 15 of the most-used baking ingredients with their standard densities. The defaults follow USDA FoodData Central and the King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart, which together form the reference set most US cookbooks use. Click an ingredient, type grams or cups, and read the other side.
How many grams are in a cup?
There is no single answer. A cup is a fixed volume - 236.6 mL in the US legal system. Grams are a unit of mass. The conversion between them depends on how heavy a given material is per millilitre, which is the definition of density. Water is the reference at 1.00 g/mL, so a cup of water is 237 g. Honey, denser than water at 1.42 g/mL, comes in at 340 g per cup. Flour, light and full of air pockets, is only 0.53 g/mL, so a cup weighs 125 g.
The practical consequence is that you cannot convert grams to cups without knowing what ingredient you are weighing. A recipe that calls for "250 g" of an unspecified ingredient is meaningless for cup math; the same 250 g is 2 cups of flour, 1.25 cups of sugar, 1.10 cups of butter, or 0.74 cups of honey.
Grams per cup by ingredient
The standard values used in the calculator, sorted by what shows up in baking recipes most:
- All-purpose flour = 125 g per US cup (spoon and level)
- Bread flour = 130 g per cup (slightly denser, more gluten)
- Cake flour = 115 g per cup (lower-protein, fluffier)
- Granulated sugar = 200 g per cup
- Brown sugar (packed) = 220 g per cup (loose brown sugar is only 140 g)
- Powdered sugar = 120 g per cup (unsifted)
- Butter = 227 g per cup (one cup = 2 standard US sticks, half a pound)
- Rolled oats = 90 g per cup (very low density)
- White rice, uncooked = 185 g per cup
- Honey = 340 g per cup (densest common baking liquid)
- Cocoa powder = 85 g per cup
- Milk = 245 g per cup (slightly heavier than water)
- Water = 237 g per cup (the 1 mL = 1 g reference)
A US cup of butter weighs exactly half an American pound. The reason is historical: butter in the US is sold in 4-ounce (113 g) sticks, four to a pound. Two sticks fill exactly one cup. The US butter wrapper printed with tablespoon markings is a coincidence of the same packaging - 8 tablespoons per stick, 16 tablespoons per cup, 32 tablespoons per pound.
Why density matters for baking
Baking is closer to chemistry than to cooking. Bread, cakes, and pastries depend on precise ratios between flour, fat, sugar, and liquid. Getting any of those proportions wrong by 20% changes the texture noticeably; 30% can ruin the product. A cup of flour that should weigh 125 g but actually weighs 150 g - because you scooped instead of spooned - is a 20% error in the dry side of the recipe. Multiply across three or four cups of flour and the cake collapses.
Bread is even more sensitive. The "hydration percentage" used by professional bakers is the weight of water divided by the weight of flour. A 60% hydration dough is firm; 70% is wet and stretchy. Get those numbers wrong by even a few percent and the gluten development changes completely. This is why every commercial bakery weighs, never measures by cup.
A digital kitchen scale costs $15 to $40 and will improve your baking more than any other purchase. Set it to grams (or grams plus tenths), zero it after each ingredient, and you get repeatable results regardless of humidity, brand, or scoop technique.
US, Metric, Imperial - which cup?
"Cup" means different volumes in different countries. The calculator defaults to the US legal cup, which is the most common worldwide for English-language baking recipes:
The differences are small but compound across multiple cups. A four-cup recipe from a UK Imperial source measures 1,136 mL of dry material; the same recipe in US cups is only 946 mL - a 20% gap. There is also a fourth cup definition: the FDA uses 240 mL for nutrition labelling, a rounded version of the US legal cup, used on Nutrition Facts panels. The calculator on this page uses the recipe-standard 236.6 mL US cup.
The flour scoop problem
The single largest source of inconsistency in cup-based baking is how flour is measured. Three methods give three different weights for the same one-cup measure:
Sifted, then spooned drops flour density to about 110 g per cup. Sifting fluffs the flour and traps more air.
Spoon-and-level (the standard) gives 125 g per cup. Spoon flour from the bag into the measuring cup, then sweep off the excess with a knife. Most US cookbooks assume this method.
Dipped from the bag compacts the flour and gives 140-150 g per cup - 20% more than spoon-and-level. This is what most home bakers do, and it is the reason "the recipe never works for me" is so common.
If a cookie recipe calls for 3 cups of flour at the standard 125 g/cup (375 g total) and you scoop straight from the bag (150 g/cup, 450 g total), you have added an extra 75 g of flour. The dough is now dry, the cookies cakey, the texture wrong. Switch to weight and the recipe works on the first try.
A short history of the cup
The level-cup system in US cooking is younger than you might think. Before 1896, US recipes called for "a handful of flour", "butter the size of an egg", or "a teacup of sugar". Fannie Farmer, principal of the Boston Cooking School, published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896 with one revolutionary rule: every measurement had to be levelled off with a knife. "A level cupful" became the new US standard, and it stuck.
The metric system, designed in 1795 France, took a different approach: define units so that 1 mL of water weighs exactly 1 g. That equivalence made grams a natural choice for cooking; you can weigh or measure by volume and the conversion is built in. By 1900, 35 countries had adopted metric. Only three countries today have never officially adopted it: the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar. (Source: NIST, US Metric Association)
Common 250 g, 500 g, 1 kg conversions
The most-searched grams-to-cups conversions, across the main baking ingredients:
250 g flour = 2 cups250 g sugar = 1.25 cups250 g butter = 1.10 cups500 g flour = 4 cups500 g sugar = 2.5 cups1 kg flour = 8 cups1 kg sugar = 5 cupsCommon grams-to-cups mistakes
Using one universal conversion. No such number exists. The grams-per-cup value is different for every ingredient, and the gap between the lightest (cocoa, 85 g) and the densest (honey, 340 g) is 4x.
Mixing US and metric cups. An Australian "3 cups of flour" recipe (3 metric cups, 750 mL) is not the same as an American "3 cups of flour" (3 US cups, 710 mL). The 5.6% gap shows up in the finished product.
Packed vs loose brown sugar. Packed brown sugar is 220 g per cup; loose brown sugar can be as little as 140 g. A 57% difference. Recipes almost always mean packed unless they say otherwise.
Ignoring the scoop method. Dipping the measuring cup into the flour bag compresses the flour. The recipe was written for spoon-and-level; using the dip method adds 20-30% extra flour.