How many grams in a cup of flour? Chart by flour type

One US cup of all-purpose flour weighs 120 grams, or about 4.25 ounces. That's the figure in King Arthur Baking's ingredient weight chart. It assumes the flour is fluffed, spooned into the cup and leveled.

Other flours weigh less or more. A cup of almond flour is 96 g. A cup of semolina is 163 g. If you swap flours by volume, you can be off by a third or more.

Grams per cup, by flour

All weights below come from the King Arthur Baking chart. Where the chart lists a smaller amount, such as 1/4 cup of cornstarch, we scaled it to a full cup. Ounces are calculated with 1 oz = 28.349523125 g, the exact value in NIST Handbook 44.

Flour or starch	1 cup	1/2 cup	1/3 cup	1/4 cup	1 tbsp
All-purpose flour	120 g (4.23 oz)	60 g	40 g	30 g	7.5 g
Bread flour	120 g (4.23 oz)	60 g	40 g	30 g	7.5 g
Cake flour (unbleached)	120 g (4.23 oz)	60 g	40 g	30 g	7.5 g
Gluten-free measure-for-measure	120 g (4.23 oz)	60 g	40 g	30 g	7.5 g
"00" pizza flour	116 g (4.09 oz)	58 g	38.7 g	29 g	7.3 g
Whole wheat flour	113 g (3.99 oz)	56.5 g	37.7 g	28.3 g	7.1 g
Self-rising flour	113 g (3.99 oz)	56.5 g	37.7 g	28.3 g	7.1 g
Pastry flour	106 g (3.74 oz)	53 g	35.3 g	26.5 g	6.6 g
Medium rye flour	106 g (3.74 oz)	53 g	35.3 g	26.5 g	6.6 g
Spelt flour	99 g (3.49 oz)	49.5 g	33 g	24.8 g	6.2 g
Whole wheat pastry flour	96 g (3.39 oz)	48 g	32 g	24 g	6 g
Almond flour	96 g (3.39 oz)	48 g	32 g	24 g	6 g
Oat flour	92 g (3.25 oz)	46 g	30.7 g	23 g	5.8 g
Coconut flour	128 g (4.52 oz)	64 g	42.7 g	32 g	8 g
Cornmeal (whole grain)	138 g (4.87 oz)	69 g	46 g	34.5 g	8.6 g
White rice flour	142 g (5.01 oz)	71 g	47.3 g	35.5 g	8.9 g
Semolina flour	163 g (5.75 oz)	81.5 g	54.3 g	40.8 g	10.2 g
Cornstarch	112 g (3.95 oz)	56 g	37.3 g	28 g	7 g

A tablespoon is 1/16 of a cup, so it's simply the cup weight divided by 16.

Why cake flour isn't lighter here

Many older charts list cake flour as lighter than all-purpose. King Arthur's own unbleached cake flour is listed at 120 g per cup, the same as its all-purpose. Other brands may differ. If your recipe gives grams, trust the recipe. If it only gives cups and comes from a different brand's test kitchen, expect some variation.

How you fill the cup changes everything

The 120 g figure only holds if you measure the way King Arthur does:

1. Stir or whisk the flour in its bag or bin to loosen it.
2. Spoon it into the measuring cup until it overflows. Don't shake or tap the cup.
3. Scrape the excess off with a straight edge.

King Arthur says a cup filled by scooping straight from a packed bag can hold up to 160 g of all-purpose flour. That's a third more than the recipe intended. In a recipe that calls for 3 cups, the difference is 360 g versus as much as 480 g. That's enough to turn a tender cake dry and a soft cookie cakey.

A scale removes the problem. King Arthur also notes that being 5 g over or under generally won't change the result, which is well within what a kitchen scale can do.

Worked example: a recipe in cups, baked by weight

Say a bread recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of bread flour and you want to weigh it.

• 2.5 × 120 g = 300 g.

Going the other way, a European recipe asks for 500 g of plain flour and you only have cups.

• 500 ÷ 120 = 4.17 cups.
• In real measuring tools, that's 4 cups + 2 tbsp + 2 tsp.

The cups to grams converter does both directions and breaks the answer into cups and spoons for you.

What about sifted flour?

"1 cup sifted flour" and "1 cup flour, sifted" are different instructions. In the first, you sift and then measure, so the cup holds less flour. In the second, you measure and then sift. The King Arthur chart doesn't list a sifted weight, so we don't give one. If a recipe insists on sifted flour by the cup, weighing won't match it exactly. Use the recipe's own gram weight if it has one.

Quick answers

• 1 cup all-purpose flour: 120 g, 4.23 oz.
• 2 cups all-purpose flour: 240 g.
• 1 cup whole wheat flour: 113 g.
• 1 cup almond flour: 96 g.
• 100 g all-purpose flour: 3/4 cup + 1 tbsp + 1 tsp.

For sugar, see how many grams in a cup of sugar. For the reasons a scale beats cups, read why weighing beats measuring cups.