Volume Converter

Convert between litres, millilitres, cups, pints, gallons and spoons, in both US and UK measures.

Common conversions

US and UK measures are not the same

The same words describe different quantities on either side of the Atlantic. A US gallon is 3.785 litres and a UK gallon is 4.546 litres, a difference of twenty percent. Pints follow the same pattern: 473 ml in the US, 568 ml in the UK.

This matters most for fuel economy and for recipes. A car rated at 30 miles per US gallon does 36 miles per UK gallon for exactly the same consumption.

Cooking measures

MeasureMillilitresNote
1 US teaspoon4.93
1 US tablespoon14.793 teaspoons
1 US cup236.616 tablespoons
1 metric cup250Australia, New Zealand
1 US pint473.22 cups
1 UK pint568.320 imperial fl oz

Why weight beats volume in baking

A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 150 grams depending on whether it was scooped or spooned and how much it settled. That is a twenty percent swing in the main ingredient, which is enough to change the result.

Liquids are more forgiving because they do not compress, so a cup of milk is reliably 236 ml. If a recipe gives weights for dry ingredients and volumes for wet ones, that is deliberate rather than inconsistent.

Common questions

No. A US cup is 236.6 ml and a metric cup, used in Australia and New Zealand, is 250 ml. The difference is about 5 percent, which is enough to matter in baking but rarely in cooking.
They are built from different ounces. A US pint is 16 US fluid ounces at 473 ml, while a UK pint is 20 imperial fluid ounces at 568 ml. The imperial fluid ounce is also slightly smaller, so the gap is not simply four ounces.
Sixteen in the US system. A US tablespoon is 14.79 ml and a cup is 236.6 ml. Australian tablespoons are 20 ml rather than 15, so an Australian recipe calling for tablespoons needs care.
Not without knowing what the ingredient is. A cup of flour and a cup of honey have very different weights because their densities differ. Recipes that give weights are more reliable than ones that give volumes, which is why professional baking works in grams.

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