How the cups to grams conversion works
A cup is a unit of volume: how much space something takes up. A gram is a unit of weight: how much matter is packed into that space. Those are different questions, so the honest answer to "how many grams in a cup" is always "it depends what's in the cup." A cup of honey is a dense, air-free liquid and weighs 340 grams; a cup of flour is full of tiny air pockets between the particles and weighs only 120 grams, less than half as much, even though both fill the same measuring cup to the same line. This calculator asks which ingredient first, then does the arithmetic for it specifically.
The formula
Here cups is the US customary cup, and grams per cup is a fixed figure specific to each ingredient (this page uses standard spooned-and-leveled US baking references, current as of July 2026). Get that figure right and the rest is one multiplication or one division.
Worked example
Cups → grams: 1 1/4 cups of butter. 1.25 × 227 g/cup = 283.75 g (about 10.01 oz).
Grams → cups: 340 g of honey. 340 ÷ 340 g/cup = exactly 1 cup.
Weighing beats measuring, especially for flour
Spoon flour gently into a measuring cup and level it with a knife, and you land close to 120 grams: the figure this calculator, and most US baking references, build around. But scoop the cup directly into the flour bag instead (the way most people actually measure), and the flour compresses under its own weight as it fills the cup. That scooped cup commonly weighs closer to 150 grams. Do the math on what that means for a recipe: 150 g against the 120 g the recipe meant is 30 g too much, a 25 percent flour overdose, in every single cup the recipe calls for. In a cake, that shows up as dense, dry, gummy results, and the baker usually blames the recipe instead of the scoop. A digital kitchen scale sidesteps the whole problem: you weigh exactly what the recipe intends, no technique required, and one bowl to wash instead of a stack of cups.
Full ingredient reference (grams and ounces per cup)
| Ingredient | Grams per cup | Ounces per cup |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 120 g | 4.23 oz |
| Bread flour | 120 g | 4.23 oz |
| Cake flour | 114 g | 4.02 oz |
| Granulated sugar | 200 g | 7.05 oz |
| Brown sugar, packed | 220 g | 7.76 oz |
| Powdered sugar | 120 g | 4.23 oz |
| Butter | 227 g | 8.01 oz |
| Milk | 245 g | 8.64 oz |
| Water | 237 g | 8.36 oz |
| Vegetable oil | 218 g | 7.69 oz |
| Honey | 340 g | 11.99 oz |
| Cocoa powder | 85 g | 3.00 oz |
| Rolled oats | 90 g | 3.17 oz |
| Uncooked white rice | 185 g | 6.53 oz |
| Chocolate chips | 170 g | 6.00 oz |
| Chopped nuts | 115 g | 4.06 oz |
| Salt | 273 g | 9.63 oz |
| Peanut butter | 258 g | 9.10 oz |
These values follow common US baking references, spooned and leveled, as of July 2026. If your kitchen scale reads ounces instead of grams, the ounces column already does that conversion for you.
Converting a whole recipe, not just one ingredient
This page converts one ingredient at a time on purpose: mixing several ingredients into a single "cups to grams" box is exactly how measuring mistakes happen. If you're scaling a whole recipe up or down, pair this with the recipe scaler. If you only need volume-to-volume math (tablespoons, teaspoons, ounces, milliliters) rather than weight, the cooking measurement converter handles that without needing an ingredient at all. Converting butter specifically, sticks and tablespoons included, has its own page: the butter converter. And if a recipe hands you fluid ounces instead of cups, ml to oz covers that swap.