Cooking Volume Converter
Convert between cups, tablespoons, ml, litres and more.
Results update as you type.
How it works
A cooking volume converter restates a kitchen measurement in a different unit, moving between millilitres and litres on the metric side and US teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons on the customary side. It reduces your figure to millilitres, a convenient base, then scales out to the unit you choose, so one mechanism handles scaling a recipe up or down and translating between metric and US measurements alike. This matters because recipes travel across borders and measuring systems, and a mistranslated quantity can ruin a dish. A European recipe lists millilitres and grams; an American one lists cups and tablespoons; a quick bake needs teaspoons. Baking in particular is sensitive to ratios, so getting the liquid volumes right is the difference between a batter that works and one that does not. A converter removes guesswork and the temptation to eyeball an unfamiliar unit. The convert-through-millilitres method is used because every volume unit has a fixed ratio to the millilitre — a US cup is about 236.6 ml, a tablespoon about 14.79 ml, a teaspoon about 4.93 ml — so pivoting through that base keeps results consistent and needs only one factor per unit. Note that these are US customary measures; the UK and Australia use slightly different cup and tablespoon sizes, so check your recipe's origin. Home cooks, bakers, students following international recipes and anyone halving or doubling a dish all rely on a cooking volume converter for dependable results.
Convert to millilitres via known factors, then to the target unit
The input is multiplied by its unit's fixed number of millilitres to express the volume in millilitres, then divided by the target unit's millilitre value to complete the conversion. The units here are US customary measures, each defined as a constant number of millilitres, so chaining through that single base is exact for those definitions. Because ratios are fixed, the converter stores just one factor per unit rather than a rule for every pairing.
Source:International System of Units (SI) — NIST
We review all our tools from time to time to ensure accuracy.
Worked example
How to use this calculator
- 1
Enter your values
Enter value, from and to.
- 2
Adjust the options
Fine-tune any options to match your situation.
- 3
Read your result
Converted volume updates instantly as you type — no button to press.
Frequently asked questions
How many millilitres are in a US cup?
A US customary cup is about 236.6 millilitres. This differs from the metric cup used in Australia and some recipes, which is a round 250 ml, and from the UK, which historically used a 284 ml cup. Because the difference is small but real, always check whether a recipe is US, metric or imperial before converting, especially for baking where precise liquid ratios matter to the result.
How many tablespoons are in a cup?
In US measures there are 16 tablespoons in a cup, since a US cup is about 236.6 ml and a tablespoon about 14.79 ml. There are also 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, so a cup holds 48 teaspoons. These clean whole-number relationships make US recipes easy to scale by hand, and the converter reproduces them exactly to the decimals shown when you convert between the units.
Are US and UK cups the same?
No. This converter uses US customary units, where a cup is about 236.6 ml and a fluid ounce about 29.57 ml. UK and Australian recipes commonly use a 250 ml metric cup, and the UK fluid ounce is about 28.41 ml. The differences are small per unit but add up in larger quantities, so match the converter's US basis to a US recipe, or adjust if your recipe is metric.
Can I convert dry ingredients like flour with this?
This tool converts volume to volume, so it works for the volume of any ingredient, wet or dry. What it cannot do is turn a volume into a weight, because that depends on the ingredient's density — a cup of flour and a cup of sugar weigh different amounts. For volume-to-gram conversions you need an ingredient-specific density, not a pure volume converter like this one.
How do I halve or double a recipe?
Convert each ingredient's volume to a single common unit such as millilitres, then multiply by your scaling factor — 0.5 to halve, 2 to double — and convert back to the units you prefer to measure in. Working through millilitres avoids awkward fractions of cups and tablespoons. This converter handles the unit changes, and the arithmetic in between is a simple multiplication by your chosen factor.