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How Many Grams Are in a Cup?
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It depends entirely on what you're measuring. A cup is a measure of volume, while a gram is a measure of weight, so the answer changes with every ingredient. A cup of water weighs 240 grams, but a cup of flour weighs about 125 grams and a cup of popcorn weighs about 8.
This is the single most common source of baking failures — treating "a cup" as a fixed weight.
Conversion table for common ingredients (1 US cup):
| Ingredient | Grams | Ounces |
|---|---|---|
| Water | 240 g | 8.5 oz |
| Milk | 240 g | 8.5 oz |
| All-purpose flour | 125 g | 4.4 oz |
| Bread flour | 130 g | 4.6 oz |
| Cake flour | 115 g | 4 oz |
| Whole wheat flour | 130 g | 4.6 oz |
| Granulated sugar | 200 g | 7 oz |
| Brown sugar (packed) | 220 g | 7.8 oz |
| Powdered/icing sugar | 120 g | 4.2 oz |
| Butter | 227 g | 8 oz |
| Vegetable oil | 218 g | 7.7 oz |
| Honey | 340 g | 12 oz |
| Rice (uncooked, long grain) | 185 g | 6.5 oz |
| Rolled oats | 90 g | 3.2 oz |
| Cocoa powder | 85 g | 3 oz |
| Chocolate chips | 170 g | 6 oz |
| Grated cheese | 100 g | 3.5 oz |
| Chopped nuts | 120 g | 4.2 oz |
How many grams in a cup of flour? About 125 grams for all-purpose flour — but this is the ingredient where technique matters most, and published figures range from 120 to 145 grams.
The difference comes from how you fill the cup:
- Scooping the cup directly into the bag compacts the flour and can give you 145–150 g, up to 20% too much.
- Spoon and level — spooning flour into the cup, then levelling the top with a knife — gives the intended 120–125 g.
That 20% overage is why home bakes come out dry and dense while the same recipe works in a bakery. If a recipe doesn't say, assume spoon-and-level.
Why water is the easy one: by definition, 1 millilitre of water weighs 1 gram. A US cup is 236.6 ml, so a cup of water weighs about 237 g, usually rounded to 240 g. Milk, stock, and most thin liquids are close enough to treat the same way.
Watch out — cups aren't the same everywhere:
| Cup standard | Volume |
|---|---|
| US customary cup | 236.6 ml |
| US legal cup (nutrition labels) | 240 ml |
| Metric cup (UK, Australia, NZ, Canada) | 250 ml |
| Japanese cup | 200 ml |
So an Australian recipe's cup is about 6% larger than an American one. It rarely matters for soup; it matters a lot for pastry.
The reliable fix: use a kitchen scale. Weighing is faster (no levelling, fewer dishes), far more accurate, and it's why almost every professional and European recipe is written in grams. A basic digital scale is inexpensive and eliminates this entire problem.
Quick reference for the ones people look up most:
- 1 cup water = 240 g
- 1 cup all-purpose flour = 125 g
- 1 cup granulated sugar = 200 g
- 1 cup butter = 227 g (2 sticks)
- 1 cup brown sugar, packed = 220 g
A note on "cups" of solids: for anything chunky — chopped vegetables, berries, shredded cheese, nuts — cup measurements are inherently loose, because how the pieces pack together varies. Treat those figures as approximate; in savoury cooking that's fine.