Cooking Volume Converter
Convert between cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, ounces, and milliliters.
Conversion sheet
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Recipes rarely speak one language: a sauce calls for tablespoons, a baking sheet wants cups, and an imported cookbook lists milliliters. This converter moves cleanly between cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, fluid ounces, milliliters, liters, pints, and quarts so you can scale or substitute without guessing.
How it works
Every volume converts through milliliters as the base unit.
Every unit is anchored to milliliters as a shared base, using the US customary definitions: 1 cup = 236.588 mL, 1 tablespoon = 14.7868 mL, 1 teaspoon = 4.92892 mL, and 1 US fluid ounce = 29.5735 mL. Because each unit carries an exact factor to milliliters, any pair converts in one step with no rounding pile-up.
These are volume measures, not weight. A cup of flour and a cup of honey occupy the same volume but weigh very differently, so use this tool for liquids and loose volume measures — not as a substitute for a kitchen scale when a recipe specifies grams or ounces by weight.
Result = input amount × (milliliters per source unit ÷ milliliters per target unit). Each unit's milliliters-per-unit factor is fixed, so converting is just multiplying by the ratio of those two factors.
Worked examples
Convert 1 cup to tablespoons. → 16 tablespoons
1 cup is 236.588 mL and 1 tablespoon is 14.7868 mL, so 236.588 ÷ 14.7868 = 16 tablespoons exactly.
Convert 2 cups to milliliters. → 473.176 mL
Milliliters is the base unit, so 2 × 236.588 = 473.176 mL — which is also exactly 1 US pint.
Tips & gotchas
- These factors are US customary. A US cup (236.588 mL) is smaller than a metric cup (250 mL) and an imperial cup (284 mL) — check which standard a non-US recipe uses before converting.
- For dry ingredients measured by weight (flour, sugar, cocoa), convert by weight with a scale instead. Volume-to-weight depends on the ingredient's density and how it is packed.
- When halving or doubling a recipe, convert to the smallest practical unit first (teaspoons or milliliters) so awkward fractions like 'half of three-quarters of a cup' become clean numbers.
- Three teaspoons make one tablespoon and sixteen tablespoons make one cup — memorizing these two anchors lets you sanity-check any conversion the tool gives you.
FAQ
Is a US cup the same as a metric cup?
No. This converter uses the US customary cup of 236.588 mL. A metric cup is 250 mL and an imperial (UK) cup is about 284 mL, so the same recipe written abroad can be off by 5 to 20 percent if you assume the wrong standard.
Can I use this to convert grams to cups?
Not directly. Grams measure weight and cups measure volume, and the relationship changes with each ingredient's density. Use a weight-based conversion or a kitchen scale for those.
Why does 1 cup equal exactly 16 tablespoons here?
By US definition a tablespoon is one-sixteenth of a cup, and the milliliter factors (236.588 and 14.7868) preserve that ratio exactly, so the result is a clean 16.
Are US and UK fluid ounces the same?
No. This tool uses the US fluid ounce of 29.5735 mL. The UK (imperial) fluid ounce is about 28.413 mL, so liquid measures from British recipes differ slightly.
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