Cups to Ounces Converter

It depends which ounce you mean, and this is the whole problem. 8 fluid ounces are in a US cup, always, for every ingredient, because that is the definition of a cup.

Weight ounces are a different question. A cup of all-purpose flour weighs 4.41 oz, a cup of granulated sugar weighs 7.05 oz, and a cup of honey weighs 11.99 oz. If your recipe lists ounces for a dry ingredient, it means weight, and you need the ingredient before you can answer.

Only for water and other thin, water-like liquids, and even then only approximately. A cup of water is 8 fluid ounces of volume and weighs about 8.32 ounces on a scale.

For anything else it is not true and the error can be huge. If a recipe asks for 8 oz of flour by weight and you measure 1 cup, you are about 45% short, because a cup of flour weighs only 4.41 oz. Eight ounces of flour is closer to 1¾ cups.

About 4.41 oz by weight, using the standard 125 g per cup for spoon-and-leveled all-purpose flour. It is also 8 fluid ounces, since that is true of every cup, but nobody weighing flour cares about that number.

The honest range is 4.2 oz to 5.1 oz depending on how the cup is filled. Spooning flour loosely into the cup and leveling gives about 125 g, or 4.41 oz. Dipping the cup straight into the bag compacts it to about 145 g, or 5.11 oz, which is 16% more flour in the same cup. This is the strongest argument there is for weighing flour rather than scooping it.

The volume is identical. A liquid cup and a dry cup both hold 8 fluid ounces. The shapes differ because of how you use them.

A liquid jug has headroom above the top mark so you can carry it without slopping, and you read it at eye level on a flat surface. A dry cup is filled to the brim so you can level it off with a straight edge, which you cannot do with a liquid. Using a liquid jug for flour tends to leave you short, because you cannot level it and end up eyeballing the line.

Those are weight ounces, so switch this tool to weight mode and pick the ingredient. Chocolate chips run about 6 oz per cup, so a standard 12 oz bag is about 2 cups. Shredded cheese is lighter and looser, and a common rule is 4 oz per cup, which is why an 8 oz block grates into roughly 2 cups.

Baking chocolate is usually sold in 4 oz bars, and most American recipes that call for ounces of chocolate expect you to use the bar weight directly rather than convert it at all.

No, and confusingly the UK one is smaller even though the imperial pint is larger. A US fluid ounce is 29.57 ml and an imperial fluid ounce is 28.41 ml, a difference of about 4%.

The pints go the other way. A US pint is 16 fl oz, or 473 ml. An imperial pint is 20 fl oz, or 568 ml. So an imperial pint is 20% larger than a US pint despite each of its ounces being slightly smaller. If a British recipe gives you fluid ounces, treat 20 fl oz as a pint rather than 16.

That is a weight, and one standard American block of cream cheese is exactly 8 oz, or 227 g. In cups that is about 1 cup, since a cup of cream cheese weighs about 232 g.

This is one of the cases where the package is the measurement. If a recipe says one 8 oz block, use the block. Softening and scooping it into a cup introduces air and gives you slightly less cream cheese than the recipe expects.

For dry and sticky ingredients, yes. A weight is a fixed quantity that does not change with how you fill a cup, how settled a bag is, or how humid the kitchen is. It also saves washing up, because you can tare the bowl between ingredients rather than dirtying a nested set of cups.

Volume is still the sensible choice for water-like liquids, where a jug is faster and the density is stable, and for teaspoon quantities of salt, leaveners and vanilla, where a scale is not accurate enough to be useful anyway.