How Many Grams in a Cup of Flour?

All-purpose: 125 g per cup (USDA #168894)King Arthur: 120 g7 flour types comparedChecked Nov 15, 2026How we calculate

Grams to cups flour

Pick the flour and type the weight from your recipe; the calculator also runs in reverse and handles metric cups. For all-purpose flour, here are the common weights at both published densities. Cup fractions are rounded to the nearest ⅛ cup (⅓ and ⅔ are used when closer); the decimal in brackets is the value to 2 places, and ≈ marks a rounded fraction.

For sugar, butter, cocoa and the other ingredients, use the grams to cups converter.

Cups to grams flour

Going from a cup recipe to a scale: multiply the cups by the weight of one cup. All-purpose flour, both densities:

Grams in a cup by flour type

Different flours are milled to different fineness and carry different amounts of bran, fat or starch, so a cup of each weighs something different. The first column is the figure our calculator and charts use; the next two show what each source publishes.

Notice that King Arthur weighs all-purpose, bread and cake flour at the same 120 g. Their chart is built around one way of filling the cup. USDA's figures come from food composition data and vary more by flour. Nut and coconut flours are a different story altogether: almond flour is 96 g a cup and coconut flour 128 g, and neither swaps 1:1 for wheat flour by volume or by weight.

Spooned, sifted or packed: how you fill the cup changes the weight

With flour, the measuring method moves the number more than the brand does.

• Spooned and leveled. Flour is spooned into the cup and the top scraped flat. This is King Arthur's method and gives their 120 g. USDA's 125 g entry doesn't name a method, but sits within a few grams of it.
• Scooped and packed. Dragging the cup through the bag compresses the flour. King Arthur Baking says a compressed cup can hold up to 160 g, about 28% more than our figure. In their words, a little too much flour can be the difference between a dry, cakey cookie and a fudgy, chewy one.
• Dipped. USDA's own cake flour entry shows the effect: 137 g for a cup dipped into the flour, against 120 g spooned at King Arthur, a 14% gap from method alone. That is why we use the spooned figure for cake flour.
• Sifted. Sifting adds air, so a cup of sifted flour weighs less. We found no per-cup sifted weight for all-purpose flour in either source, so we don't invent one. Read the recipe wording closely: "1 cup sifted flour" means sift first, then measure; "1 cup flour, sifted" means measure first, then sift.

120 or 125 grams: which number should you use?

Cooking Measure uses 125 g per cup of all-purpose flour (USDA FoodData Central) by default; for a King Arthur Baking recipe, use 120 g, about 4% less. The 120 g figure also fits recipes from bakers who follow King Arthur's chart. Keeping one default means the calculator, the charts and the answers on each page never contradict each other.

The gap is 4%, or 20 g over a 4-cup recipe. In bread dough or pancakes you will rarely notice it. In shortbread, sponge cake or pie crust you might; for those, a kitchen scale beats any conversion chart.

How to measure a cup of flour without a scale

1. Stir the flour in its bag or canister to loosen it. Flour that has sat for weeks settles and packs.
2. Spoon it into a dry measuring cup until it mounds over the rim. Don't dip the cup into the bag.
3. Scrape the top level with the back of a knife.
4. Don't tap or shake the cup to settle it; that is packing by another name.

King Arthur calls this "fluff, sprinkle and scrape", and it is the method behind their 120 g figure.

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