How Many Grams Are in a Cup?
There's no single answer — a cup of flour weighs about 125g, a cup of sugar weighs 200g, and a cup of butter weighs 227g. The ingredient decides the weight.
- Cups (US Customary)
- 0.80 (¾)
- Tablespoons
- 12.8
- Teaspoons
- 38.4
- Milliliters
- 189 ml
Common Cups to Grams Conversions
| Ingredient | Grams | Cups | Fraction | Tablespoons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Honey | 50g | 0.15 | ⅛ | 2.4 |
| Butter | 50g | 0.22 | ¼ | 3.5 |
| Cream Cheese | 50g | 0.22 | ¼ | 3.6 |
| Brown Sugar | 50g | 0.23 | ¼ | 3.6 |
| Olive Oil | 50g | 0.23 | ¼ | 3.7 |
| Granulated Sugar | 50g | 0.25 | ¼ | 4.0 |
| White Rice | 50g | 0.27 | ¼ | 4.3 |
| Honey | 100g | 0.29 | ⅓ | 4.7 |
| All-Purpose Flour | 50g | 0.40 | ⅜ | 6.4 |
| Butter | 100g | 0.44 | ½ | 7.0 |
| Cream Cheese | 100g | 0.44 | ½ | 7.1 |
| Brown Sugar | 100g | 0.45 | ½ | 7.3 |
| Olive Oil | 100g | 0.46 | ½ | 7.4 |
| Granulated Sugar | 100g | 0.50 | ½ | 8.0 |
| White Rice | 100g | 0.54 | ½ | 8.6 |
| Rolled Oats | 50g | 0.56 | ½ | 8.9 |
| Cocoa Powder | 50g | 0.59 | ⅝ | 9.4 |
| Honey | 200g | 0.59 | ⅝ | 9.4 |
| All-Purpose Flour | 100g | 0.80 | ¾ | 12.8 |
| Butter | 200g | 0.88 | ⅞ | 14.1 |
| Cream Cheese | 200g | 0.89 | ⅞ | 14.2 |
| Brown Sugar | 200g | 0.91 | ⅞ | 14.5 |
| Olive Oil | 200g | 0.93 | ⅞ | 14.8 |
| Granulated Sugar | 200g | 1.00 | 1 | 16.0 |
| White Rice | 200g | 1.08 | 1⅛ | 17.3 |
| Rolled Oats | 100g | 1.11 | 1⅛ | 17.8 |
| Cocoa Powder | 100g | 1.18 | 1⅛ | 18.8 |
| All-Purpose Flour | 200g | 1.60 | 1⅝ | 25.6 |
| Rolled Oats | 200g | 2.22 | 2¼ | 35.6 |
| Cocoa Powder | 200g | 2.35 | 2⅓ | 37.6 |
A Worked Example
Picture three cups sitting on a counter: one filled with flour, one with granulated sugar, one with honey. They look identical in volume, but a kitchen scale tells a different story — 125g, 200g, and 340g respectively. That's a 215-gram spread across the exact same one-cup measurement, driven entirely by how densely each ingredient packs into the same space. Flour's fine particles trap air; sugar's crystals sit more tightly; honey is a viscous liquid with no air pockets at all. This is the core reason a recipe that says '1 cup' is really giving you a rough volume instruction, not a precise weight one.
How to Convert Cups to Grams
- 1Pick your ingredient from the selector below.
- 2Enter how many cups your recipe calls for.
- 3Read the gram weight instantly, calculated from that ingredient's real density.
Common Mistakes
- Assuming a cup always weighs the same regardless of what's in it.
- Using an online 'universal' converter that defaults to water density for every ingredient.
- Not leveling dry ingredients before measuring, which changes the real weight per cup.
- Ignoring brand differences — some flours and sugars are milled or processed differently.
Where This Shows Up
This is one of the most-searched cooking questions because so many recipes list quantities as a plain cup measurement without specifying the ingredient's weight, leaving readers to either trust the volume or look up the density themselves before converting to a scale.
Meal-prep and nutrition tracking apps require gram-accurate ingredient data to calculate calories and macros correctly, which is why most nutrition databases, including the USDA's own, list both a cup measurement and its corresponding gram weight for each food entry.
Recipe scaling for commercial kitchens depends on this conversion at scale — a bakery converting a home recipe's '2 cups flour' into a 50-loaf batch needs the precise gram-per-cup figure multiplied out, since even a small per-cup error compounds significantly across dozens of batches.
Grocery shopping and meal planning benefit from knowing rough gram-per-cup figures too — estimating how many cups a 1kg bag of flour or a 2lb bag of sugar will yield helps home cooks judge whether they have enough of an ingredient on hand before starting a recipe.
Standards and Sources
USDA FoodData Central maintains gram-per-cup figures for thousands of raw ingredients, derived from standardized lab measurements rather than kitchen estimates, making it the most cited reference for questions like this one.
Butter is one of the few ingredients with an unusually precise, universally agreed-upon weight: 227 grams per cup, because US butter is manufactured and packaged in standardized 4-ounce sticks marked with tablespoon lines, unlike loose dry ingredients that vary with packing.
The difference between a cup of flour (125g) and a cup of honey (340g) — nearly a 3x gap — illustrates why density, not volume, is the deciding factor in ingredient weight. Flour traps air between its fine particles; honey is a dense, air-free liquid.
King Arthur Baking's independently tested ingredient chart lists all-purpose flour at 120g per cup using its fluff-and-sweep method, a few grams lighter than some USDA-derived figures that assume a firmer spoon-and-level pack — both are considered accurate for their respective techniques.
Weight per Cup Across Common Ingredients
| Ingredient | Grams per Cup | |
|---|---|---|
| Water (baseline) | Liquid | 236g |
| All-purpose flour | Dry, spooned & leveled | 125g |
| Granulated sugar | Dry, loose | 200g |
| Butter | Solid, standardized stick | 227g |
| Honey | Liquid, dense | 340g |
| Rolled oats | Dry, loose | 90g |
Related Conversions
Grams to Cups Converter
The main grams to cups converter for 400+ ingredients.
Cups to Grams Converter
Cups to grams flips the same density math used in grams to cups. Multiply your cup amount by the ing
How Many Cups Are in a Quart?
One quart equals exactly 4 cups. Unlike weight-based conversions, this one is fixed — quarts and cup
How Many Ounces Are in a Cup?
Convert cups to fluid ounces.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many grams are in a cup of flour?+
About 125g for all-purpose flour, when spooned and leveled rather than scooped.
How many grams are in a cup of sugar?+
Granulated sugar is about 200g per cup, consistent across most brands.
How many grams are in a cup of butter?+
227g, since butter is sold in standardized 4-tablespoon sticks that add up to a full cup.
Where can I find the gram weight for an ingredient not listed here?+
USDA FoodData Central's public database covers thousands of foods and is the most reliable free source for cup-to-gram figures beyond the common baking staples covered on this page.