Why "cup" sizes actually differ by country
This converter uses the US customary cup (236.588 mL), which is the standard in US recipes. But "a cup" isn't globally standardized — a metric cup (used in Australia, New Zealand, and some other countries) is defined as exactly 250 mL, and the UK's older imperial cup differs again. The difference between a US cup (236.6 mL) and a metric cup (250 mL) is small per cup — about 13.4 mL, or roughly 2.7 teaspoons — but compounds across a recipe with multiple cup-measured ingredients, which is why an Australian recipe followed with US measuring cups can come out slightly different than intended. If a recipe's origin isn't specified, US recipes almost always mean the US customary cup.
When this conversion matters most
This page is for liquid ingredients — water, milk, oil, stock — where volume-to-volume conversion is all you need. For dry ingredients like flour or sugar, converting to grams by weight is more reliable than converting cups to milliliters, since a recipe that gives a liquid ingredient in milliliters almost always wants a matching volume measurement back, not a weight one.
Quick reference chart
| Milliliters | US Cups |
|---|---|
| 60 mL | ¼ cup |
| 120 mL | ½ cup |
| 240 mL | 1 cup |
| 480 mL | 2 cups |
FAQ
Is a US cup the same as a metric cup? No — US cup is 236.588 mL, metric cup (Australia/NZ) is 250 mL. This calculator uses the US cup.
Can I use this for dry ingredients? Technically yes for the volume, but the resulting weight will differ by ingredient — use the cups-to-grams converter with the specific ingredient selected for dry-goods accuracy instead.