A cup of flour in grams, and every other flour conversion
One US cup of all-purpose flour weighs 120 grams spooned in and levelled off. Scoop it straight from the bag and the same cup holds far more. The number you want depends on how you fill the cup and which country the recipe came from, and this page gives each one from the authority that measured it.
What a cup of flour weighs, and why two charts disagree
Open two baking charts and you find two weights for one cup of flour. Neither is a typo. A cup measures volume, and flour has no fixed density, so each chart reports the weight its author got with the method its author used.
| Authority | A US cup, all-purpose |
|---|---|
| King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart | 120 g |
| USDA FoodData Central | 125 g |
We publish 120 g, the King Arthur figure, because American recipes are written against it and King Arthur states its own recipes assume it. The USDA reads 125 g on the same cup, from a laboratory rather than a test kitchen. The gap is small here and large for other ingredients, and the reasoning behind every such choice sits on our methodology page.
The full flour conversion table
Grams, ounces and millilitres for the amounts a recipe calls for. The gram column assumes the spooned-and-levelled cup of 120 g; the millilitre column is a straight volume, the same for any ingredient.
| Flour | Grams | Ounces | Millilitres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 teaspoon | 4.9 ml | ||
| 1 tablespoon | 14.8 ml | ||
| 1/4 cup | 30 g | 1.1 oz | 59.1 ml |
| 1/3 cup | 40 g | 1.4 oz | 78.9 ml |
| 1/2 cup | 60 g | 2.1 oz | 118.3 ml |
| 3/4 cup | 90 g | 3.2 oz | 177.4 ml |
| 1 cup | 120 g | 4.2 oz | 236.6 ml |
| 2 cups | 240 g | 8.5 oz | 473.2 ml |
| 3 cups | 360 g | 12.7 oz | 709.8 ml |
Density used: 0.51 g per ml.
The same cup, spooned or scooped
How you fill the cup moves the weight more than any disagreement between charts. King Arthur measured both ends:
| How you fill it | A US cup |
|---|---|
| fluffed, spooned and levelled | 120 g |
| condensed | 160 g |
That is a 40 gram swing on a single cup, against the 5 grams the two authorities argue over. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it with a knife, and you land on the lighter, published number.
How to measure flour so it matches this page
Our 120 gram cup assumes the method King Arthur recommends, and it takes three moves. First loosen the flour in its bag or tub with a spoon, because flour compacts as it sits and a settled bag weighs heavier per cup. Then spoon the loosened flour into the measuring cup until it heaps above the rim, without shaking the cup or pressing down. Last, sweep the back of a knife across the rim to level it. Skip the loosening and scoop the cup through the bag instead, and you are back at the heavier packed weight, which is the single commonest reason a loaf comes out dry. A scale sidesteps the whole routine, and it is the one tool that reads the same in anyone's kitchen. The same argument runs on a smaller scale with spoons, where a level tablespoon of flour spans threefold across published charts: heaped versus level spoons collects them, and measuring without scales ranks how much a cup costs you on each of our twenty ingredients.
A cup of flour outside America
A recipe from Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo or a Spanish-language kitchen does not mean the American cup, and the foreign weights are measured, not scaled from ours.
| Cup | Flour |
|---|---|
| US customary (236.6 ml) | 120 g |
| Metric (250 ml) | 125 g |
| Japanese (200 ml) | 110 g |
A European bag also carries a type number, 550 or T55, which grades a different property entirely: flour types explained works through what those numbers measure, and German recipe measurements puts it in the context of a whole German recipe. Those recipes weigh flour in Pfund steps, and 500 grams of flour in cups translates the unit. Which vessel a recipe means is worth settling before the grams, and cup sizes around the world lists every one we hold. The metric cup is where Australia and New Zealand stop agreeing: both use 250 millilitres, yet New Zealand charts weigh a cup of flour at 125 g and Australian ones at 150, a split Australian recipe measurements takes apart beside the 20 millilitre spoon. The Japanese cup is smaller at 200 millilitres and reads 110 g, and that figure comes from the Japanese standard tables. Scale the US cup down by volume and you would predict a lighter cup than the tables measured, which is the trap the methodology page takes apart.
Why we leave the flour tablespoon blank
Most converters will hand you a tablespoon of flour in grams. We do not, because no US authority publishes one. King Arthur and the USDA both weigh flour by the cup and stop there. Deriving a tablespoon by dividing the cup by sixteen would look precise and be wrong, since flour settles differently in a spoon than in a cup. Where the number exists, in European kitchen tables, a level tablespoon runs from 7 to 10 grams, and even that spread says more about the hand holding the spoon than about the flour.
Flour types you will meet in foreign recipes
A European recipe names flour by a number, not by "all-purpose". German and Polish flours carry an ash-content type such as 405 or 550, where 405 is a soft cake flour and 550 sits close to US all-purpose. French flours run T45 through T150 on the same idea, T55 being the everyday white. Italian recipes ask for 00, a fine grind rather than a protein grade, which Italian recipe measurements decodes. The grams-per-cup on this page hold for a US all-purpose or a German 550, and the full map of the type numbers is on flour types.
Questions bakers ask about flour weight
- Is a cup of flour 120 or 125 grams?
- Both. King Arthur measures 120 g and the USDA 125 g for the same cup, because they filled it differently. We publish 120 g, the King Arthur figure, since US recipes are written to it.
- Why does my cup of flour weigh more than 120 grams?
- You are scooping instead of spooning. Dragging the cup through the bag packs the flour down, and King Arthur reports the same cup then holds up to 160 g, a third more than the recipe wants.
- How many grams is a Japanese cup of flour?
- 110 g, from the Japanese standard tables, for their 200 ml cup. It is not the US cup scaled down: the tables measured it, and the measured number is lower than the arithmetic predicts.
- How much does a tablespoon of flour weigh?
- No US authority publishes a tablespoon of flour by weight, so we do not print one. European tables put a level tablespoon between 7 and 10 g, but on a spoon that small the scooping method moves the number more than the chart does.
Sources
King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart and its guide to measuring flour, for the 120 g cup and the 160 g scooped cup. USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy, for the 125 g cup. The Kagawa Nutrition University standard tables, as reproduced by Benricho, for the Japanese cup. Edmonds, Chelsea, Sanitarium and Australian Women's Weekly for the metric cup. Every figure is listed on the sources page.