Cooking Weight Converter

Why weigh ingredients?

In baking, weight is more reliable than volume. A "cup of flour" can vary by 20% or more depending on how it is scooped, the humidity, and the flour brand. A digital scale removes that guesswork: 120 g of flour is always 120 g. Professional bakeries weigh everything; home bakers increasingly do too. Our cooking weight converter lets you move between ounces, pounds, grams, kilograms, and the common "cup of flour/sugar" shortcuts so any recipe works on any scale.

Ounces, pounds, and grams

The US customary system uses ounces and pounds (16 oz = 1 lb), while most of the world and every kitchen scale uses grams and kilograms. The exact link is 1 oz = 28.3495 g and 1 lb = 453.592 g. A recipe saying "8 oz butter" is 226.8 g; "1 lb sugar" is 453.6 g. The converter handles this in one step and shows metric alongside customary.

The base-unit method

We convert every unit into grams (the base), then divide by the target unit's gram factor. Because the cup-of-flour and cup-of-sugar entries are defined as fixed gram amounts (120 g and 200 g per US cup), the conversion is exact and reproducible. For example, 1 cup flour = 120 g and 1 oz = 28.3495 g, so 1 cup flour = 120 ÷ 28.3495 = 4.233 oz.

Key conversion factors (to grams)

• 1 ounce = 28.3495 g
• 1 pound = 453.592 g
• 1 gram = 1 g (base)
• 1 kilogram = 1000 g
• 1 cup flour (AP) ≈ 120 g
• 1 cup sugar (granulated) ≈ 200 g

Why "cup of flour" is approximate

Unlike spoons and ounces, a "cup of flour" is not a fixed volume-to-weight link — it depends on the ingredient's density and how you fill the cup. The widely used baking convention is 1 US cup all-purpose flour = 120 g when spooned lightly (not scooped and packed). Granulated sugar is denser: 1 US cup ≈ 200 g. Brown sugar, packed, is about 220 g/cup; powdered sugar about 120 g/cup. Our tool uses 120 g for flour and 200 g for sugar as the standard references; for other ingredients, weigh directly.

Real-world examples

A cookie recipe needs 2 cups flour = 240 g = 8.47 oz. A cake calls for 1 cup sugar = 200 g = 7.05 oz. A stick of butter is 4 oz = 113.4 g (and 1/2 cup). A loaf might use 1 lb bread flour = 453.6 g. Converting a British recipe's "500 g" to "17.6 oz" or an American "10 oz" to "283 g" is instant with the converter, and the cup-of-flour row keeps volume bakers oriented.

Common mistakes

The main error is assuming 1 cup of any dry ingredient weighs the same — flour (120 g) and sugar (200 g) differ by 67%. Scooping flour straight from the bag packs it denser, pushing a cup toward 140–150 g and making baked goods tough; spoon-and-level instead. Another mistake is confusing weight ounces with fluid ounces; in cooking they rarely match. Finally, treat "cup of flour/sugar" as approximations — for serious baking, always weigh in grams.

Frequently asked questions