Cups to Grams Converter
American recipes still list flour and sugar in cups while your scale reads grams. Pick the ingredient, enter how many US cups the card calls for, and get a weight you can tare on the counter — plus ounces and tablespoons when you are splitting a partial cup.
Spoon into cup, level off — do not scoop the bag.
US legal cup · 240 ml
Weight on a scale
125 g
1 cup of All-purpose flour
≈ 4.41 oz · 16 tbsp
Reference: 125 g per 1 level US cup for this ingredient
Cup-to-gram charts are ingredient-specific — flour scooped from the bag can weigh 20% more than flour spooned and leveled. For pan scaling after you weigh batter, try the baking pan converter.
Why grams beat cups for baking
Two people can fill the same one-cup measure with flour and be a full tablespoon apart in actual flour — enough to dry out a cake or collapse cookies. Grams remove that guesswork because the scale measures mass directly. Cups remain useful for liquids and for recipes you already muscle-memorize; grams shine when you are doubling a batch, adapting European formulas, or matching a blogger who weighed everything.
Brown sugar is the other classic trap: most US cards assume packed cups unless they say “lightly packed.” This converter labels packed versus spooned styles in the dropdown hints so you are not comparing unlike scoops.
Quick reference — 1 US cup to grams
Use the calculator above for any amount. These one-cup anchors are handy when you are reading a chart on your phone mid-bake.
| Ingredient | About |
|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 125 g |
| Granulated sugar | 200 g |
| Brown sugar (packed) | 220 g |
| Butter | 227 g |
| Unsweetened cocoa powder | 85 g |
| White rice (uncooked) | 185 g |
Pair with other kitchen tools
Resizing a cake tin after you convert weights? Use the baking pan converter for a single ingredient multiplier by pan area. Planning starch for the same meal? The rice portion calculator shares the same dry-rice grams-per-cup reference as this tool. For proteins and timing, see the meat thaw calculator and air fryer conversion calculator.
FAQ
- Why does 1 cup of flour not weigh the same as 1 cup of sugar?
- A cup is a volume measure. Granulated sugar packs with less air than spooned flour, so a level cup of sugar weighs about 200 g while a properly spooned cup of all-purpose flour is closer to 125 g. That is why serious bakers weigh dry ingredients.
- Should I scoop flour straight from the bag?
- Scooping compacts flour and can add 20% or more weight per cup compared with spoon-and-level. This tool assumes spoon-and-level for wheat flours unless noted otherwise. If you scoop, expect heavier grams than shown here.
- Is this the same as a metric cup (250 ml)?
- No. These numbers use the US legal cup (240 ml). Australian and some Canadian recipes may use 250 ml cups — multiply results by about 1.04 if you are converting from a 250 ml cup chart.
- Can I use this for liquids like milk or oil?
- Yes for rough shopping and scaling. Liquids belong in a clear liquid measuring cup at eye level. Water is about 240 g per US cup; oils are slightly lighter per volume.
Elsewhere on Kitchen Calculators
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