Cups to Grams Converter
Cups-to-grams is the conversion home bakers reach for most often when adapting an American recipe to a digital kitchen scale, and it is the one that trips people up the hardest because the answer changes with the ingredient. A cup of all-purpose flour weighs about 120 grams, a cup of granulated sugar weighs about 200 grams, and a cup of honey weighs about 340 grams. The same volume measure produces wildly different masses depending on what you are scooping, so any honest converter has to ask which ingredient you mean before it can answer. Choose an ingredient from the dropdown below and the calculator switches its density factor accordingly.
Calculator
Conversion depends on ingredient density
1 × 120 = 120.0000
Formula
Multiply cups by the density of the ingredient in grams per cup. Flour at 120 g/cup means 2 cups = 240 g; granulated sugar at 200 g/cup means 2 cups = 400 g; butter at 227 g/cup means 2 cups = 454 g (almost exactly one pound). The densities shipped here are the King Arthur Flour ingredient weight chart values, the most widely cited reference among American baking authorities — your specific brand of flour or method of measuring (sifted vs spoon-and-leveled) can shift the gram weight by 5 to 10 percent.
Where You'll Use This
European baking blogs use grams almost exclusively, so any American attempting a French macaron, German stollen, or Italian panettone recipe needs to translate cups in their head to the gram quantities the recipe assumes. Sourdough bread baking — where a 1% shift in flour-to-water ratio changes the dough behavior visibly — practically requires a scale. Specialty diet baking (gluten-free flour blends, keto-flour mixes) prints exclusively in grams because the substitutes have wildly different densities than wheat flour. Even confident American home cooks who 'just know' that a cup of flour is 120 grams use a converter to spot-check unfamiliar ingredients like almond flour (96 g/cup) or rolled oats (90 g/cup).
Reference Table
| From (Cups) | To (Grams) |
|---|---|
| 0.25 | 30 |
| 0.5 | 60 |
| 1 | 120 |
| 1.5 | 180 |
| 2 | 240 |
| 3 | 360 |
| 4 | 480 |
A Bit of History
American volumetric measuring with the standardized 8-fluid-ounce cup dates to the late nineteenth century when Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book formalized recipe units that had until then been recorded as handfuls, pinches, and pieces of butter the size of an egg. The cup-and-spoon system is uniquely American — every other major baking culture (European, Japanese, modern professional pastry) measures by mass for the simple reason that mass is unambiguous. The migration toward kitchen scales in American homes accelerated when Cook's Illustrated and serious baking blogs began publishing both volume and gram weights in their recipes in the early 2000s.
FAQ
How many grams in a cup?
It depends on the ingredient. A US cup of all-purpose flour is about 120 g, granulated sugar is about 200 g, brown sugar (packed) is about 220 g, butter is about 227 g, and honey is about 340 g. Choose your ingredient from the dropdown above to get the exact factor.
Why does the same cup measure give different gram weights?
A cup is a unit of volume, but gram is a unit of mass. Different substances have different densities — honey is denser than flour, so the same volume of honey weighs nearly three times as much. The dropdown selects the right density factor for your ingredient.
What is the most accurate way to measure baking ingredients?
Use a digital kitchen scale and weigh in grams. Volume measuring with cups can vary by 20% or more depending on whether you scoop, pour, sift, or pack the ingredient. Most professional bakers and serious home bakers measure exclusively by mass for repeatable results.