Volume converter
Type a value and pick the starting unit: gallons, pints, cups, liters, milliliters and cubic meters convert in real time, with handy references like soda cans and milk jugs.
Enter a value to see all the conversions instantly.
Gallons and pints: mind the US vs UK difference
There isn't just one gallon: the US gallon holds 3.785 liters, while the British imperial gallon is 4.546 liters, almost a full liter more. The same goes for the pint: 16 fluid ounces (473 ml) in the United States, but 20 imperial ounces (568 ml) in a UK pub. The American recipe "cup" is a precise unit too: 236.6 ml, usually rounded to 240 ml in practice. This converter uses US units for pints and cups, and shows both gallons side by side so you never mix them up.
Everyday references for estimating volumes
To get a feel for the numbers: a standard soda can is 12 fl oz (355 ml), a milk jug is one gallon, a bottle of wine is 750 ml, and a household bucket holds around 2.5 gallons. The cubic meter, the unit on many water bills, equals 1,000 liters, roughly 264 gallons: about the contents of six full bathtubs.
The ounces that are not ounces
The American fluid ounce and the British one are different: 29.57 ml against 28.41. On a single ounce the difference is invisible, on a twenty-ounce recipe it becomes a generous glass, and in cocktails it changes the result noticeably.
Worse still, the ounce is also a unit of weight (28.35 g), and American recipes confuse the two constantly. The rule for telling them apart: if the ingredient is liquid, volume is meant; if it is flour or sugar, nearly always weight, but the recipe has to be read carefully.
The spoon and the cup are not the same everywhere
The American cup is 240 ml, the modern British one 250, the Australian 250 and the Japanese 200. An English-language recipe translated without saying which cup produces 20% differences on the main ingredients.
The spoon changes too: 15 ml almost everywhere, but 20 ml in Australia. For small quantities (yeast, salt, spices) volume is an inherently imprecise unit, because it depends on how compacted the powder is: wherever possible, convert the recipe to grams.
Volume and weight are not the same thing
A litre of water weighs a kilo, but a litre of flour weighs about 600 grams and a litre of honey about 1,400. Every ingredient has its own density, and converting volumes into weights without knowing it is the simplest way to ruin a dough.
It is why European cooking weighs and American cooking measures by volume: two different traditions, neither better than the other, but incompatible in translation. With scales the result is repeatable, with cups it depends on how you fill them.
Nearby tools
To convert ingredients into grams there are Kitchen measurements and Scale a recipe. For other units there is Length converter.