mL to Cups Calculator — Millilitres to Cups Converter

Formula

How this is calculated

The "cup" is a cooking measurement whose exact volume depends on the country and context. The US customary cup is defined as exactly 8 US fluid ounces or 236.5882 mL. The US legal cup, used on US nutrition labels, is exactly 240 mL by FDA regulation. The metric cup (used in Australia, Canada and other metric countries) is exactly 250 mL — a convenient round number equal to a quarter of a litre. The imperial cup (4 imperial fluid ounces × 2 = one half-pint) is 284.131 mL, based on the British imperial fluid ounce, but it is rarely used in modern British cooking which has largely adopted the metric system.

Converting millilitres to cups requires only division by the appropriate mL-per-cup value. The reverse (cups to mL) multiplies by the same factor. For practical kitchen use, the calculator expresses the decimal cup result as the nearest standard fraction (⅛, ¼, ⅜, ½, ⅝, ¾, ⅞), allowing you to measure with standard cup sets without a digital scale.

A key source of recipe errors is mismatching cup standards: a US recipe calling for 1 cup of flour means 236 mL while a metric recipe means 250 mL — a 6 % difference that matters in baking. Always check which cup a recipe author used, or weigh ingredients for precision.