Recipe Measurement Converter
Convert recipe ingredients between volume and weight units across 30 common cooking and baking staples. Liquids and uniform dry goods are recipe-accurate. Flour and packed ingredients sit within about 15 percent, which is standard recipe tolerance. For exact unit math like teaspoons to tablespoons or ounces to kilograms, use our Cooking Measurement Converter or Weight Converter instead.
Volume and weight are often treated the same in most home kitchens, but they're measuring different properties. A cup of flour and a cup of honey occupy the same amount of space, but the honey weighs almost three times more. That's why any conversion between a volume unit and a weight unit has to account for what you're actually working with.
This calculator covers every combination of volume and weight units across 30 common kitchen ingredients. It's useful for scaling recipes up or down. It also handles the conversion between metric European recipes and the cup-based American ones. And most honestly, it covers the nights when every measuring cup is in the dishwasher and you have to weigh the flour instead.
Need exact unit math? For pure volume conversions (teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, fluid ounces, milliliters, liters) use the cooking measurement converter. For pure weight conversions (grams, kilograms, ounces, pounds, stone) use the weight converter. This tool is for bridging the two, which requires the ingredient.
How accurate is this, really?
Liquids are within 1 to 2 percent of reality. Water, milk, cream, oil, honey, and syrup all have well-characterized densities that reproduce from one reference table to the next.
Pure unit math is exact. A tablespoon is exactly 3 teaspoons. A pound is exactly 453.59 grams. Those are not estimates.
Volume to weight for dry goods is where it gets fuzzy. One cup of all-purpose flour can be anywhere from 110 to 160 grams depending on whether you scoop, spoon, or sift. We use 125 grams (King Arthur spoon-and-level standard), which is dead center of that range. Brown sugar varies by how tightly you pack it. Chocolate chips and chopped nuts settle differently depending on piece size. Expect ±10 to 15 percent on those, which is standard recipe tolerance. No cup-based converter can do better than that, because the variance lives in the ingredient, not the math.
If you need tighter than ±15 percent, you need a scale.
How the math works
When both units are in the same family, the conversion is a fixed factor. The ingredient doesn't change the answer whether you're going between two volume units or two weight units. A tablespoon is exactly 3 teaspoons. A pound is exactly 453.59 grams.
Mixing volume and weight is where it gets interesting. The calculator has to factor in the ingredient's density, because density is the only thing that bridges the two measurement systems. Water is the reference point at 237 g per US cup. Flour is considerably lighter at about 125 g per cup. That's mostly because it packs with air gaps unless you tamp it down. Honey runs heavy at 340 g per cup for the opposite reason: it's a dense liquid with almost no air.
Common reference weights
Grams and ounces for 1 US cup of common baking ingredients:
| Ingredient | Grams | Ounces |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 125 | 4.4 |
| Bread flour | 130 | 4.6 |
| Cake flour | 114 | 4.0 |
| Granulated sugar | 200 | 7.1 |
| Brown sugar (packed) | 220 | 7.8 |
| Powdered sugar | 120 | 4.2 |
| Butter | 227 | 8.0 |
| Water | 237 | 8.3 |
| Whole milk | 244 | 8.6 |
| Honey | 340 | 12.0 |
| Maple syrup | 322 | 11.4 |
| Peanut butter | 258 | 9.1 |
| Cocoa powder | 86 | 3.0 |
| Rolled oats | 90 | 3.2 |
Per tablespoon (1/16 of a US cup):
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 7.8 |
| Granulated sugar | 12.5 |
| Butter | 14.2 |
| Honey | 21.3 |
| Peanut butter | 16.1 |
When to measure by weight
Weight is more accurate than volume for baking. Scooping flour straight from the bag can pack in 20 to 30 percent more than spooning it into the cup, enough to turn cookies dry or cakes dense. If you have a kitchen scale, use it for anything that needs to rise or hold structure.
Volume is fine for wet ingredients, savory cooking, and anything measured in small amounts. A teaspoon of salt is a teaspoon of salt whether you weigh it or not.
A note on cup sizes
This calculator uses the US customary cup of 236.6 mL. The metric cup (used in Australia and New Zealand) is 250 mL. The imperial cup (older UK recipes) is 284 mL. If your recipe specifies metric or imperial cups, convert to mL first or use our cooking measurement converter, which supports all three cup standards.