Converting cups to grams for baking: the table that actually works

Recipes in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia routinely call for cups. Recipes from anywhere else — and modern recipes from the same countries — call for grams. The conversion isn’t a single number; it depends entirely on the ingredient, and for compressible ingredients like flour it depends on how the cup was filled. This guide gives the accepted gram weight for the 30 most common baking ingredients, then explains how to handle the edge cases.

Flours and starches

Densities below assume the “spoon-and-level” method — spoon flour into the cup, then sweep level without tapping. The scoop-and-sweep method packs more flour and gives 15-25% higher gram weights.

Sugars and sweeteners

Fats

Liquids

For water and water-based liquids the conversion is almost flat — 1 ml ≈ 1 g. Volumetric measurement is fine here, which is why measuring cups for liquids have a spout and graduated markings rather than a flat rim.

Solids and chunks

Why pro bakers stopped using cups

Three reasons:

1. Reproducibility.A cup of flour can vary 25% between cooks depending on technique. A gram is a gram. King Arthur Baking, Cook’s Illustrated, and most modern bread schools publish recipes in grams for this reason.
2. Scaling. Doubling 240 g of flour is obvious. Doubling ⅔ cup + 2 tablespoons is painful and error-prone.
3. Speed. Place the bowl on a scale, tare to zero, add the next ingredient to the target weight. Repeat. One bowl, no measuring cups to wash. Faster than the cup-by-cup workflow once you get the hang of it.

The cup size also matters

A US cup is 237 ml. A UK metric cup is 250 ml. An imperial UK cup (old recipes) is 284 ml. An Australian cup is 250 ml. A Japanese cup is 200 ml. The gram weights above assume US cups. For a UK or Australian recipe, multiply the gram weight by 1.055; for a Japanese recipe, multiply by 0.844.

See our US vs UK cup comparison for the full history of why these measurements diverged.

What to do with an old American recipe

If the recipe predates the 1960s, the cup is likely already a US customary cup (237 ml) but the ingredient densities may have shifted (modern flour is more refined and slightly denser; modern sugar is a finer grind). Don’t overthink it — use the modern gram weights from this table and adjust by feel after the first attempt.

For older British recipes that use ounces by weight (not volume), an ounce is 28.35 g. Sixteen ounces in a pound. Skip the cups entirely and use the original ounce measurements with a scale.

Pragmatic workflow

1. Buy a $20 kitchen scale that reads to 1 g.
2. For any cup-based recipe, look up the gram weight from this table or the source author’s preferred conversion.
3. Place the bowl on the scale, tare, add the ingredient to the target weight, repeat.
4. For liquids, use a measuring cup with a spout — the gram conversion is fine but the spout is cleaner.

Convert specific cup amounts directly in our cooking converter, which applies the density values above. For deeper background on why volumetric measurement is unreliable, see the cooking methodology page.

Sources: King Arthur Baking Company ingredient weight chart (2025), USDA FoodData Central, America’s Test Kitchen ingredient density reference.