If a recipe says “1 cup of flour” and another says “1 cup of honey,” don’t expect the same number on your kitchen scale. A cup measures volume — how much space an ingredient takes up — while grams measure weight. Depending on what’s actually filling the cup, those two numbers can be wildly different.
The short answer
For the ingredients bakers reach for most, 1 US cup (240 ml) weighs approximately:
- Flour: 120g
- Granulated sugar: 198g
- Butter: 227g
- Milk: 244g
That’s already a big range — from 120g to 244g in the same “1 cup.” If someone tells you a cup is simply 244 grams, they’re only right if you happen to be measuring milk or another liquid close to the density of water. Open the flour grams to cups converter or the sugar grams to cups converter and enter the same weight in both — you’ll get a different number of cups every time.
Why there’s no single number
Grams are a unit of mass. Cups are a unit of volume. The only thing that connects them is density — how tightly packed an ingredient’s mass is inside that volume. Flour is light and full of trapped air, so a cup of it doesn’t weigh very much. Honey is thick and has almost no air in it, so a cup of honey weighs a lot more than a cup of flour, even though they take up the same amount of space in your measuring cup.
This is also why “1 cup = 240 grams” only works for water-like liquids. The moment you swap in a dry, powdery, or fatty ingredient, that shortcut breaks down — sometimes by more than 100 grams per cup.
Grams per cup for common ingredients
| Ingredient | 1 cup in grams |
|---|---|
| Flour | 120g |
| Granulated sugar | 198g |
| Butter | 227g |
| Milk | 244g |
| Cocoa powder | 84g |
| Rolled oats | 89g |
| Honey | 339g |
These are standard US-cup (240 ml) values for common preparations — spooned-and-leveled flour, firmly packed butter, and so on. Brand, humidity, and how firmly you pack the cup can shift the real number slightly, which is why a kitchen scale is always the most accurate option. For more ingredients and more gram amounts side by side, see the full grams to cups conversion chart.
How to convert grams to cups
The formula is the same no matter which ingredient you’re measuring — you just need that ingredient’s own grams-per-cup value:
cups = grams ÷ grams per cup
Reverse direction: grams = cups × grams per cup
So 100 grams of flour is 100 ÷ 120 ≈ 0.83 cups, while 100 grams of sugar is 100 ÷ 198 ≈ 0.51 cups — same weight, different volume, because their grams-per-cup values are different.
Try it yourself
Pick an ingredient and convert any gram amount to cups instantly.
Examples
- 100g of flour is about 0.83 cups — a little less than ⅚ cup.
- 100g of granulated sugar is about 0.51 cups.
- 100g of butter is about 0.44 cups — a bit less than half a cup.
- 250g of milk is about 1.02 cups, since milk sits so close to water’s density.
When a recipe's accuracy matters — bread, macarons, laminated dough — weigh your ingredients on a scale instead of scooping cups. It removes packing and humidity as variables entirely. See our full conversion methodology for how we measure and verify each ingredient's grams-per-cup value.
Frequently asked questions
Is 1 cup always 240 grams?
No. 244 grams per cup is only accurate for water and liquids with a very similar density, like most milk. Dry and fatty ingredients weigh a different amount per cup because they're less dense (flour, cocoa powder) or denser (butter, honey) than water.
How many grams is a cup of flour?
About 120 grams, when the flour is spooned into the cup and leveled off rather than scooped straight from the bag. See the flour grams to cups page for a full conversion table and measuring tips.
How many grams is a cup of sugar?
About 198 grams for granulated white sugar. Brown sugar and powdered sugar weigh different amounts per cup because they pack differently — see the sugar grams to cups page for the exact numbers.
What if my recipe just says "grams" with no ingredient listed?
Check the ingredient in context — a recipe listing "120g flour" is telling you the weight directly, so you don't need to convert at all. Conversion only matters when a recipe gives you cups and your scale only reads grams, or vice versa. Use the cups to grams calculator to go either direction.