Why is a cup of flour a different weight from a cup of sugar?

Because a cup measures how much space something takes up, not how much it weighs. Granulated sugar packs into a cup at about 200 g. Flour, which is far finer and traps air, comes in at about 125 g spooned. Honey, which is denser than water, reaches 340 g. There is no single grams-per-cup number, which is why this converter asks for the ingredient before it will answer.

How many grams are in 1 cup of flour?

125 g if the flour was spooned into the cup and levelled off, and 140 g if the cup was dipped straight into the bag. Both are listed here as separate ingredients rather than averaged. Bread flour is 127 g a cup, cake flour 114 g and whole wheat 120 g, so the type of flour matters too.

What is the difference between spooned and scooped flour?

Scooping compresses the flour. Dipping the measuring cup into the bag packs roughly 15 g more into the same cup than spooning flour in with a separate spoon and levelling the top, a difference of about 12 percent. Most modern recipes assume the spooned method. If a cake comes out dry and heavy, this is usually why, and it is the single strongest argument for weighing flour instead of measuring it.

Is a US cup the same as a metric cup?

No. A US cup is 236.588 mL and a metric cup, used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, is 250 mL, so the metric cup holds about 5.7 percent more. There is a switch above for it, and it also moves tablespoons to 15 mL and teaspoons to 5 mL. One further catch this tool does not guess at: Australian recipes use a 20 mL tablespoon, so an Australian tablespoon is four teaspoons rather than three.

Are ounces and fluid ounces the same thing here?

No, and they are kept strictly apart. An ounce is a weight of 28.3495 g. A fluid ounce is a volume of 29.5735 mL, exactly an eighth of a US cup. For water they land close together, which is where the confusion comes from, but a fluid ounce of cocoa powder weighs 10.6 g against an ounce's 28.3 g. Both are in the unit list, labelled.

How exact are these conversions?

The unit arithmetic is exact: a US cup is 16 tablespoons and 48 teaspoons, and converting a value out and back returns it unchanged. The densities are the part that is a convention rather than a measurement. Each one is a published cup weight given to the nearest gram, water to a tenth of one, and it is shown beside every result with its source so you can see what the answer rests on. Your own flour on a humid day will not match it exactly, which is what a scale is for.

Why does the tool offer rounding to the nearest 1/8 cup or 5 g?

Because a measuring cup cannot hold 1.04 cups and most kitchen scales step in whole or half grams. The rounding modes snap the whole amount once, then show every unit from that single snapped quantity, so the cups line and the grams line always describe the same amount of flour rather than two independently rounded ones.

Grams to Cups Converter

Convert grams to cups and cups to grams for 92 ingredients, in both directions, with tablespoons, teaspoons, millilitres, ounces and fluid ounces shown alongside. A cup is a volume and a gram is a mass, so the answer depends entirely on what is in the cup: this tool names the density it used and where that density came from, and lists spooned and scooped flour separately instead of averaging them into one misleading number.

From

To125

Ingredient

Cup size

Round

All-purpose flour, spooned: 125 g in one US cup, a density of 0.5283 g per mL. Source: Spooned and levelled convention.

Spooned into the cup and levelled off. This is what most modern recipes mean.

1 cup of all-purpose flour, spooned, in every unit

Tablespoonstbsp
16
Teaspoonstsp
48
MillilitresmL
236.6
Fluid ounces (US)fl oz
8
Gramsg
125
Ounces (weight)oz
4.409
Kilogramskg
0.125
Poundslb
0.2756

Common ingredients

What one US cup of each weighs, and what your amount comes to in each. Pick a row to convert it.

Grams per cup	1 cup in g	Source
236.6	236.6	1 g/mL
125	125	Spooned
140	140	Scooped
127	127	Spooned
114	114	Spooned
120	120	Spooned
200	200	USDA
220	220	Packed
120	120	Spooned
227	227	USDA
245	245	USDA
238	238	USDA
218	218	USDA
340	340	USDA
322	322	USDA
85	85	Spooned
128	128	USDA
90	90	Spooned
185	185	USDA
170	170	USDA

There is no single answer to “how many grams in a cup”. A cup measures volume and a gram measures mass, so the two only meet through a density, and the density belongs to the ingredient. A cup of cocoa powder is 85 g, a cup of honey is 340 g, and both are correct. That is why the ingredient is a required choice here rather than an optional refinement, and why the number used is printed under every result with the source it came from. Accuracy. Cups measure volume and grams measure mass, so the answer depends on the ingredient; the density used is shown beside every result with its source. Flour differs by about 12 percent between spooned and scooped, and both are listed.

Grams per cup, by ingredient

The twenty cup weights people look up most, per US cup of 236.588 mL. Grams per tablespoon is that divided by 16, rounded to a tenth.

Ingredient	Grams per cup	Grams per tbsp	Source
Water	236.6	14.8	Water at 1 g per mL
All-purpose flour, spooned	125	7.8	Spooned and levelled convention
All-purpose flour, scooped	140	8.8	Scooped and levelled convention
Bread flour	127	7.9	Spooned and levelled convention
Cake flour	114	7.1	Spooned and levelled convention
Whole wheat flour	120	7.5	Spooned and levelled convention
Granulated sugar	200	12.5	USDA FoodData Central
Brown sugar, packed	220	13.8	Packed and levelled convention
Powdered (icing) sugar	120	7.5	Spooned and levelled convention
Butter	227	14.2	USDA FoodData Central
Milk, whole	245	15.3	USDA FoodData Central
Heavy cream	238	14.9	USDA FoodData Central
Vegetable oil	218	13.6	USDA FoodData Central
Honey	340	21.3	USDA FoodData Central
Maple syrup	322	20.1	USDA FoodData Central
Cocoa powder	85	5.3	Spooned and levelled convention
Cornstarch	128	8	USDA FoodData Central
Rolled oats	90	5.6	Spooned and levelled convention
White rice, uncooked	185	11.6	USDA FoodData Central
Chocolate chips	170	10.6	USDA FoodData Central

Common questions

Why is a cup of flour a different weight from a cup of sugar?: Because a cup measures how much space something takes up, not how much it weighs. Granulated sugar packs into a cup at about 200 g. Flour, which is far finer and traps air, comes in at about 125 g spooned. Honey, which is denser than water, reaches 340 g. There is no single grams-per-cup number, which is why this converter asks for the ingredient before it will answer.
How many grams are in 1 cup of flour?: 125 g if the flour was spooned into the cup and levelled off, and 140 g if the cup was dipped straight into the bag. Both are listed here as separate ingredients rather than averaged. Bread flour is 127 g a cup, cake flour 114 g and whole wheat 120 g, so the type of flour matters too.
What is the difference between spooned and scooped flour?: Scooping compresses the flour. Dipping the measuring cup into the bag packs roughly 15 g more into the same cup than spooning flour in with a separate spoon and levelling the top, a difference of about 12 percent. Most modern recipes assume the spooned method. If a cake comes out dry and heavy, this is usually why, and it is the single strongest argument for weighing flour instead of measuring it.
Is a US cup the same as a metric cup?: No. A US cup is 236.588 mL and a metric cup, used in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, is 250 mL, so the metric cup holds about 5.7 percent more. There is a switch above for it, and it also moves tablespoons to 15 mL and teaspoons to 5 mL. One further catch this tool does not guess at: Australian recipes use a 20 mL tablespoon, so an Australian tablespoon is four teaspoons rather than three.
Are ounces and fluid ounces the same thing here?: No, and they are kept strictly apart. An ounce is a weight of 28.3495 g. A fluid ounce is a volume of 29.5735 mL, exactly an eighth of a US cup. For water they land close together, which is where the confusion comes from, but a fluid ounce of cocoa powder weighs 10.6 g against an ounce's 28.3 g. Both are in the unit list, labelled.
How exact are these conversions?: The unit arithmetic is exact: a US cup is 16 tablespoons and 48 teaspoons, and converting a value out and back returns it unchanged. The densities are the part that is a convention rather than a measurement. Each one is a published cup weight given to the nearest gram, water to a tenth of one, and it is shown beside every result with its source so you can see what the answer rests on. Your own flour on a humid day will not match it exactly, which is what a scale is for.
Why does the tool offer rounding to the nearest 1/8 cup or 5 g?: Because a measuring cup cannot hold 1.04 cups and most kitchen scales step in whole or half grams. The rounding modes snap the whole amount once, then show every unit from that single snapped quantity, so the cups line and the grams line always describe the same amount of flour rather than two independently rounded ones.

Cups measure volume and grams measure mass, so the answer depends on the ingredient; the density used is shown beside every result with its source. Flour differs by about 12 percent between spooned and scooped, and both are listed.