Grams to Cups (g to cups)

Divide the grams by the weight of one cup of the same ingredient. The divisor above is the one for water, and flour, sugar and butter each have their own in the table below. The cups to grams page covers the reverse trip.

Say a British sponge recipe asks for 175 g of sugar. With USDA's cup of granulated sugar at 200 grams, that is 175 ÷ 200 = 0.875 cup, or 7/8 cup. The same recipe's 225 g of flour comes to 1.8 cups, just over 1 3/4 cups.

Round to the nearest fraction your measuring set has. If the set has no 1/8 cup measure, use 2 tablespoons for that last bit.

Cups in British, Australian and Canadian recipes are usually the 250 ml metric cup, while US recipes use the smaller US cup. This page gives US cups. With a metric cup set, the cup count comes out slightly lower for the same grams.

For example, 125 g of all-purpose flour fills exactly one US cup by USDA figures, but only about 0.95 of a metric cup. Check which set you own before you measure.

The same number of grams fills very different amounts of cup. Take 300 g: as granulated sugar it fills 1.5 cups, as all-purpose flour 2.4 cups, and as shredded cheese 2.65 cups.

The lighter and fluffier a food is, the more room each gram needs. That is why a metric recipe converted with the water divisor comes out wrong for almost everything except water, milk and other thin liquids.

When you have to use cups for a recipe written in grams, how you fill the cup matters as much as the math. Stir the flour in its bag to loosen it, spoon it into the cup until it mounds, then sweep the top flat with the back of a knife.

Scooping straight from the bag presses flour into the cup, so you end up with more flour than the conversion expects. USDA does not say how its cups were filled, so treat any cup figure for flour as a close guide rather than an exact match.