Liters to Cups (L to cups)

Common questions

How many cups are in a liter?

4.2268 US cups, a little over four. The converter prints 4.22675283773 as the headline, because a US cup is 236.5882365 mL and a liter is 1,000 mL, so the two do not divide evenly. The amounts asked for next most often: 250 mL is 1.0567 cups, 330 mL is 1.3948 cups, 500 mL is 2.1134 cups, 750 mL is 3.1701 cups, 1.5 L is 6.3401 cups, 2 L is 8.4535 cups and 3 L is 12.6803 cups. Type a liter figure into the From box and the answer appears without pressing anything. For the milliliter amounts pick Millilitre (mL) in the From menu first, or type them as liters instead, so 250 mL goes in as 0.25.

Which cup is this, and where does 236.5882365 mL come from?

The US customary cup, which the menu lists as Cup (US). It is 8 US fluid ounces and a sixteenth of a US gallon, that gallon is exactly 231 cubic inches, and an inch is exactly 2.54 cm, so 236.5882365 mL is a definition rather than a measurement and the page carries all of its digits. The liter is spelled Litre (L) in the unit menus, the same unit under the British spelling.

What about a metric cup, or the 240 mL cup on food labels?

Neither is a separate unit in this converter, so do one more division. The metric cup used in Australia and New Zealand is exactly 250 mL, and the list under the answer gives 1 L as 1,000 mL, so a liter is exactly 4 metric cups and 2 L is exactly 8. The cup rounded to 240 mL for US nutrition labels makes a liter 4.1667 of those. Older British recipes treat a cup as half an imperial pint, 284.130625 mL: the imperial pint is in the unit menus and the switch marked Show 5 more adds it to the list under the answer, where 1 L reads 1.75975398639 imperial pints, so a liter is 3.5195 of those cups.

How many cups in a 2 liter bottle?

Type 2 and the headline reads 8.45350567546, which is 8.4535 cups. In kitchen terms that is eight full cups plus about 7.26 tablespoons, since eight cups is 1.892705892 L and the list under the answer puts 2 L at 135.256090807 US tablespoons against 128 for those eight cups. A 1.5 L bottle is 6.3401 cups and a 750 mL bottle is 3.1701 cups.

How do I convert cups back to liters?

Press the swap button between the two fields and the pair reverses to cups into liters, or multiply cups by 0.2365882365, which is the same operation as dividing by 4.22675283773. One cup is 0.2365882365 L, two cups is 0.473176473 L, four cups is 0.946352946 L, eight cups is 1.892705892 L and sixteen cups is 3.785411784 L. The field takes digits, one decimal point and an optional minus sign, so type a fraction as a decimal: 0.5 rather than 1/2.

Is a liter the same as a quart?

No, and the gap is the reason a liter is not a round number of cups. A US quart is exactly 4 cups and exactly 0.946352946 L, so a liter is 1.05668820943 quarts, about 5.7 percent more. That extra is where the 0.2268 of a cup comes from. A US gallon is exactly 16 cups and 3.785411784 L, and both the quart and the gallon sit in the list under the answer for whatever amount you typed.

Does this work for cups of flour or sugar?

As a volume, yes: liters and cups both measure the space something takes up, so half a liter of flour and half a liter of water are both 2.1134 cups. If the recipe gives grams and you want cups, that is a density question rather than a unit conversion, and the grams to cups tool answers it: it names the density it used and lists spooned and scooped flour separately. Water is the case where the two line up, since a milliliter of water weighs about a gram.

Does anything I type leave my browser?

No. The conversion is one multiplication against a table of factors that ships with the page, so there is no upload and no account, and it keeps working with no network connection once the page has loaded. Results print to twelve significant digits with trailing zeros dropped, the Copy result button copies the figure without the digit grouping so it pastes straight into a spreadsheet, and the amount you typed is kept in your own browser storage. Start over at the top of the page clears it, and opening this page on liters to cups does not disturb the pair the main converter remembers.