Butter Converter: Grams, Cups, Tablespoons & Sticks

Why "sticks" confuse anyone outside North America

Butter sticks are a uniquely North American packaging convention: butter there is sold in quarter-pound (113g) sticks wrapped in paper with tablespoon markings printed on the side, four sticks to a standard box. Recipes written by US authors routinely call for "1 stick" or "1/2 stick" of butter as a shorthand, which is perfectly clear to someone who has that packaging in their fridge and meaningless to someone who buys butter in a 250g or 500g block, as is standard almost everywhere else in the world. This converter treats a US stick as exactly 113.5 grams (a quarter of the standard 454g/1lb block), which matches the printed markings on real stick packaging closely enough for any home recipe.

Butter is also one of the few baking ingredients where volume and weight measurements are reasonably interchangeable, because unlike flour or sugar, solid butter doesn't compress or aerate much differently depending on how it's packed into a measuring cup — a well-known reason many older cookbooks are comfortable giving butter in cups without ambiguity. The bigger risk with butter conversions is temperature, not measurement: "softened," "melted," and "cold" butter all measure differently by volume for the same weight, since softened butter can be pressed into a cup with less air than cold, cubed butter. When precision matters (laminated doughs, macarons, delicate sauces), weighing cold butter on a scale before it softens is the most reliable approach.

One US tablespoon of butter is a particularly useful reference point because it's printed directly on stick wrappers: each stick is marked with 8 tablespoon divisions, so you can cut off exactly the amount a recipe needs without any conversion at all if you have real stick packaging on hand.

Frequently asked questions

How much is one stick of butter in grams?

One US stick of butter is 113.5 grams (1/4 lb), equal to 1/2 cup or 8 tablespoons.

Is salted or unsalted butter a different weight?

No — salt content doesn't meaningfully change butter's density, so these conversions apply equally to salted and unsalted butter.

Does melted butter measure the same as solid butter?

By weight, yes. By volume, melted butter can measure very slightly less than the equivalent solid butter due to air pockets in solid butter, but the difference is small enough to ignore for home baking.