Flour Grams to Cups Converter

Why flour should be weighed, not scooped

Flour is the single biggest reason home bakers get inconsistent results when following a recipe written by someone else. A "cup" of flour is a volume measurement, but flour compresses depending on how it got into the cup: spoon it in loosely and level it off, and a cup might weigh 115–120 grams; scoop the cup directly into the bag and pack it down, and the same cup can weigh 150 grams or more. That 25–30% difference is enough to turn a tender cake into a dense one, which is why professional bakeries and most modern recipe developers specify flour by weight in grams rather than by cup.

This converter uses King Arthur Baking's published ingredient weight chart throughout, so every figure traces back to one consistent source rather than a mix of estimates: 120 g/cup for all-purpose flour, 120 g/cup for bread flour (King Arthur weighs the two the same despite bread flour's higher protein content), 106 g/cup for cake flour, 113 g/cup for whole wheat flour, and 113 g/cup for self-rising flour. None of these numbers are exact to the gram — humidity, brand, and how you fill the cup all shift the true weight slightly — but they are close enough for reliable baking results, and far more consistent than guessing.

If a recipe already gives you grams, there's no need to convert at all — weighing directly on a kitchen scale is both faster and more accurate than measuring by volume. This tool is aimed at the more common situation: a recipe written in cups (often from an older cookbook or a US website) that you'd rather follow using a scale, or a recipe in grams that you need to measure out with cups because that's what you have on hand.

Note that none of the flour types above include glutinous (sticky) rice flour, which is milled from rice rather than wheat and has a completely different starch structure — it's not gluten-based at all, despite the "gluten-free" name confusion some cooks run into. If your recipe calls for sticky rice flour (common in Thai desserts), use the dedicated Sticky Rice Flour Converter instead of this page's figures.

Frequently asked questions

Is 1 cup of flour always 120 grams?

Only for all-purpose flour measured by the spoon-and-level method. Sifted flour, packed flour, and different flour types all weigh differently for the same cup measurement, which is exactly why this converter lets you pick the flour type first.

Why does my recipe's flour weight not match this converter?

Cookbook authors and brands sometimes use a different reference weight (commonly 125g, 130g or 140g per cup). If your recipe states its own gram equivalent, always follow the recipe's own figure over a generic converter.

Should I sift flour before or after measuring?

Sifting before measuring by cup reduces the weight per cup by aerating the flour; sifting after measuring by weight doesn't change the weight at all. If you're measuring by weight, sift order doesn't matter for accuracy.