About This Cups to Milliliters Converter
The US cup is a volume unit equal to 236.588 milliliters (mL), defined as exactly 8 US fluid ounces or half a US pint. It is the standard measure in American cooking and baking recipes. The milliliter is the metric equivalent — 1,000 mL equals 1 liter — used by most of the world for liquid volumes in recipes, medicine, and laboratory work. One key distinction: a US cup (236.588 mL) differs from a metric cup (250 mL), which appears in Australian, Canadian, and some European recipes.
This converter handles seven common kitchen volume units — US cups, milliliters, metric cups, liters, fluid ounces, tablespoons, and teaspoons. Home cooks adapting US recipes for metric kitchens, bakers scaling formulas between cup-based and gram-based systems, baristas calibrating pour volumes, and nutritionists calculating portion sizes in both systems all use this converter regularly.
How to Use This Converter
- Enter your volume value in the Value field.
- Select the unit you are converting from (e.g., US Cup) in the From selector.
- Select the unit you want in the To selector (e.g., Milliliter).
- The result and formula appear instantly below the inputs.
- Use Swap to reverse the direction, or Reset to clear all fields.
Units Covered
| Unit | Symbol | Common Use |
|---|---|---|
| US Cup | cup | US baking and cooking (236.588 mL) |
| Milliliter | mL | Global metric cooking, medicine, lab work |
| Metric Cup | metric cup | Australian, Canadian, and some European recipes (250 mL) |
| Liter | L | Large liquid volumes; 1 L = 4.227 US cups |
| Fluid Ounce | fl oz | Liquid measures in US and UK recipes (29.574 mL each) |
| Tablespoon | tbsp | Small recipe measures; 1 US tbsp = 14.787 mL |
| Teaspoon | tsp | Spice and extract amounts; 1 US tsp = 4.929 mL |
US Cups to Milliliters Conversion Table
| US Cups [cup] | Milliliters [mL] |
|---|---|
| 0.25 cup | 59.15 mL |
| 0.5 cup | 118.29 mL |
| 1 cup | 236.59 mL |
| 1.5 cup | 354.88 mL |
| 2 cup | 473.18 mL |
| 3 cup | 709.76 mL |
| 4 cup | 946.35 mL |
| 6 cup | 1419.53 mL |
| 8 cup | 1892.71 mL |
| 12 cup | 2839.06 mL |
How to Convert Cups to Milliliters
To convert US cups to milliliters, multiply by 236.588:
Example: Convert 2.5 cups to mL:
To convert milliliters back to US cups, divide by 236.588:
Example: Convert 500 mL to cups:
When You Need to Convert Cups to Milliliters
Recipe adaptation is the most frequent trigger. American cookbooks and food blogs list liquid ingredients in cups — 2 cups of milk, 1.5 cups of broth. A cook in Europe or Asia following that recipe with a metric measuring jug needs the milliliter equivalents: 2 cups is 473 mL, and 1.5 cups is 355 mL. Getting this wrong by even 10% can affect the texture of baked goods significantly.
Scaling recipes up or down also drives this conversion. A restaurant chef scaling a home recipe from 4 servings to 40 cannot use cup measurements accurately at large volumes — measuring cylinders and commercial equipment read in milliliters and liters. Converting 8 cups of cream to 1,892 mL (close to 1.9 L) allows the chef to pour directly from a marked container without repeated scooping.
Note that the US cup and the metric cup differ by about 13 mL — enough to matter in delicate pastry work. If an Australian recipe calls for 1 cup of flour and expects the metric cup (250 mL), using a US cup (236.588 mL) will produce a slightly drier result. This converter includes both cup definitions so you can match the recipe's origin.