A cup is a container, not a quantity. Four of them are in common use in recipe writing, they are not the same size, and almost no recipe says which one it means. If you have ever followed a recipe carefully and got a noticeably different result, this is one of the two usual reasons — the other is how you fill the cup.
| Standard | Cup | Tablespoon | Teaspoon |
|---|---|---|---|
| US cup United States — 240 ml cup, 15 ml tablespoon. |
240 ml | 15 ml | 5 ml |
| Metric cup UK, Canada, New Zealand — 250 ml cup, 15 ml tablespoon. |
250 ml | 15 ml | 5 ml |
| Australian cup Australia — 250 ml cup, and a 20 ml tablespoon (the odd one out). |
250 ml | 20 ml | 5 ml |
| Japanese cup Japan — 200 ml カップ, 15 ml 大さじ. |
200 ml | 15 ml | 5 ml |
The Australian row is the one that catches people. Australia uses the same 250 ml cup as the rest of the metric world, but its tablespoon is 20 ml rather than 15 — the only one of that size anywhere. Four tablespoons of butter in a Sydney recipe is a third more butter than four tablespoons anywhere else.
Millilitres are abstract. Here is the same "one cup" in grams, for three ingredients that behave differently:
| Ingredient | US cup | Metric cup | Australian cup | Japanese cup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 125 g | 130 g | 130 g | 105 g |
| Granulated sugar | 200 g | 210 g | 210 g | 165 g |
| Butter | 225 g | 235 g | 235 g | 190 g |
A Japanese cup of flour is around a sixth lighter than an American one. In a stew that is nothing. In a cake it is the difference between a crumb that works and one that doesn't, which is why baking recipes written in grams travel and ones written in cups don't.
Weigh, if you have a scale — a gram is a gram in every kitchen on earth, and this whole problem disappears. If you don't, work out which standard the recipe was written in and stay in it: American sites and cookbooks mean 240 ml, British, Canadian and New Zealand ones mean 250, and a Japanese recipe's カップ means 200.
Gather's converter lets you pick the standard, and every number on the page follows it — the headline answer, the reference table and the spoons. Unless a page says otherwise, we quote US cups.
Convert an amount with the kitchen converter →