🧪 Cups to Ml Converter
Convert US cups to millilitres and back. The exact factor, a table of the values people look up most, and what each unit is actually used for.
Converting US cups to millilitres
One US cup is 236.5882365 millilitres, and one millilitre is 0.004226752838 US cups.
millilitres = US cups × 236.5882365
Getting the precision right
A US customary cup is 236.588 ml, a US legal cup used on nutrition labels is 240 ml, a metric cup is 250 ml and an imperial cup was 284 ml. Worse, a cup is a volume: a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 150 g depending on whether it was scooped or spooned, which is why serious baking recipes give weights.
Where each unit is used
Cup measures dominate American and Canadian home recipes. Most of the rest of the world weighs dry ingredients in grams instead, which is why a European cook following a US recipe hits this conversion immediately and then discovers it only half solves the problem.
Values worth knowing
| cup | ml |
|---|---|
| 0.25 | 59.1471 |
| 0.33 | 78.0741 |
| 0.5 | 118.294 |
| 0.75 | 177.441 |
| 1 | 236.588 |
| 1.5 | 354.882 |
| 2 | 473.176 |
| 3 | 709.765 |
| 4 | 946.353 |
| 8 | 1892.71 |
1 cup is 237 ml. Half a cup is 118 ml. A cup of water weighs 237 g; a cup of flour is about 125 g; a cup of sugar is about 200 g.
Where the two units came from
Cup measures spread through American home cooking in the late nineteenth century, largely through Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook, which standardised level measuring in a kitchen where recipes had previously said things like a teacup of butter. It solved a real problem for its time: scales were expensive and volume cups were cheap. The cost is precision, because volume depends on how the ingredient is packed, which is why professional and European baking stayed with weight.
Round the result to the precision your own work needs. These converters carry the full factor, which is useful for checking but rarely what you want to write down.
Most people arrive here on the way to something else, so it is worth knowing the liters to gallons, which handles the next part, and the ml to oz, which covers the case just beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How many millilitres are in a cup?
236.588 ml for a US customary cup. Nutrition labels use a 240 ml legal cup, metric recipes often mean 250 ml, and the old imperial cup was 284 ml, so check which convention the recipe follows.
Why do my baking results vary with cup measures?
Because a cup measures volume, not weight, and how you fill it changes the amount. A scooped cup of flour can hold 25% more than a spooned and levelled one, which is enough to make a cake dense.
Should I convert cups to grams instead?
For baking, yes. Weight removes the packing problem entirely. Use roughly 125 g per cup of flour, 200 g per cup of granulated sugar and 227 g for a cup of butter, and bear in mind every ingredient has its own figure.