Volume converter: teaspoons, cups, pints, oz and litres
16 fl oz × 0.0625 = 1 pt
This converter handles every common volume unit in one place. The anchors worth memorising: 1 US fluid oz = 29.5735 mL, 1 US teaspoon = 4.92892 mL (near enough to 5 mL), 1 US tablespoon = 14.7868 mL, 1 US cup = 236.588 mL, 1 US pint = 473.176 mL, 1 US quart = 946.35 mL and 1 US gallon = 3.785 L. Going the other way, 1 litre = 1000 mL = 33.814 US fl oz.
Pick a unit on each side and type a number. Volume measures the space a liquid occupies, so these conversions hold for water, milk, oil, beer or paint alike. Two things to watch: the imperial pint used in the UK is a different size from the US pint, and the litre is spelled "liter" in the United States but "litre" in the UK, Australia and Canada, same unit, same 1000 mL, different spelling.
How many millilitres are in each volume unit?
In millilitres: 1 US teaspoon = 4.92892 mL, 1 US tablespoon = 14.7868 mL, 1 US fluid oz = 29.5735 mL, 1 US cup = 236.588 mL, 1 US pint = 473.176 mL, 1 US quart = 946.35 mL and 1 US gallon = 3785.41 mL (3.785 L). An imperial pint, still poured in British pubs, is 568.26 mL.
The mL column is the safest place to compare units from different systems. Most kitchen work rounds a teaspoon to 5 mL, a tablespoon to 15 mL and a fluid oz to 30 mL, which is close enough for cooking but not for medicine or chemistry.
How to convert volume between any two units
Convert everything to millilitres first, then out again. To go from fluid oz to millilitres, multiply by 29.5735. To go from millilitres back to fluid oz, divide by the same number. To convert 3 cups to pints, note that a cup is 236.588 mL and a pint is 473.176 mL, so 3 cups = 709.76 mL = 1.5 pints. The converter above does this pivot for you, but the method is the same one you would use on paper: one multiplication, one division.
- Choose the unit you are starting from and the unit you want.
- Enter your number. Fractions and decimals both work, 1.5 pints, 0.75 cups.
- Read the result, and use the nearby-values table to sanity-check it.
What is a fluid oz?
A fluid oz is a unit of volume, the space a liquid takes up, and it is not the same thing as the oz used for weight. The US fluid oz is 29.5735 mL. It is the building block of the US kitchen: 8 fl oz make a cup, 16 fl oz make a pint, 32 fl oz make a quart and 128 fl oz make a gallon. Below it sit the tablespoon (half a fluid oz) and the teaspoon (a sixth of one).
The imperial fluid oz, still seen on some British and Commonwealth packaging, is 28.413 mL, about 4% smaller than the US one. It was originally defined as the volume of one oz of water, which is why the two names sound alike. Any pre-metrication British recipe may be using the smaller oz, and the gap grows quickly at gallon scale.
What is a litre?
A litre is 1000 millilitres, defined as the volume of a cube 10 cm on each side. It is the metric workhorse for liquids and equals 33.814 US fluid oz, 4.227 US cups, 2.113 US pints or 0.264 US gallons. Half a litre (500 mL) is a shade over a US pint; two litres is a little more than half a gallon.
The unit is spelled "liter" in the United States and "litre" in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and most of the rest of the English-speaking world. Both spellings mean exactly the same thing and both use the same symbol, L. The millilitre (or milliliter) is a thousandth of it, and because 1 mL of water weighs almost exactly 1 gram at room temperature, metric recipes can move between volume and mass for water without any real error, though that shortcut does not hold for oil, honey or flour.
The pint paradox and the small-measure ladder
Here is the fact that trips everyone up. An imperial pint is 568.26 mL and a US pint is 473.176 mL, so the British pint is clearly the bigger drink. Yet the imperial fluid oz (28.413 mL) is smaller than the US fluid oz (29.5735 mL). Both can be true at once because the two countries cut the pint into a different number of pieces: a US pint holds 16 fluid oz, an imperial pint holds 20. Britain made the pint bigger and then sliced it into more, slightly smaller slices. That is why a pint of beer in London beats a pint in New York by about 95 mL, while the British oz loses to the American one every time.
The rest of the US system is a ladder of doublings, and once you know it you never need a chart again: 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon, 2 tablespoons = 1 fluid oz, 8 fluid oz = 1 cup, 2 cups = 1 pint, 2 pints = 1 quart, 4 quarts = 1 gallon. Read it upward and a gallon is 128 fl oz; read it downward and a fluid oz is 6 teaspoons. The only rung that is not a doubling is the first one, three teaspoons to the tablespoon, not two, and that is the step people get wrong most often.
One more trap: the Australian tablespoon is 20 mL, which is four teaspoons rather than three. An Australian recipe calling for a tablespoon of anything potent, baking soda, salt, chilli, is asking for a third more than a US cook would pour. UK and Canadian tablespoons are 15 mL, close enough to the US 14.7868 mL that nobody notices.
Volume conversion table
US customary units unless marked imperial. Imperial pint = 568.26 mL; US pint = 473.176 mL.
| Fluid oz (US) | Pints (US) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 16 |
1 fl oz = 0.0625 pt
Common volume conversions
Popular volume conversions
Frequently asked questions
3. One US tablespoon (14.7868 mL) equals exactly 3 US teaspoons (4.92892 mL each). The same 3-to-1 ratio holds for UK tablespoons. The exception is Australia, where the tablespoon is 20 mL and holds 4 teaspoons.
A US teaspoon is 4.92892 mL, which everyone rounds to 5 mL. Metric measuring spoons are made at exactly 5 mL, so the difference, about 0.07 mL, is far smaller than the error in levelling the spoon.
16 US fluid oz in a US pint (473.176 mL), but 20 imperial fluid oz in an imperial pint (568.26 mL). If a source is British, assume 20; if American, assume 16.
Yes. An imperial pint is 568.26 mL and a US pint is 473.176 mL, so the British pint is about 20% larger, roughly 95 mL more beer. This holds even though the imperial fluid oz (28.413 mL) is smaller than the US one (29.5735 mL), because the imperial pint contains 20 of them rather than 16.
2. A US cup is 8 fl oz (236.588 mL) and a US pint is 16 fl oz (473.176 mL). A pint of cream is therefore two cups, and a half-pint is one cup.
8. A US gallon is 128 fl oz (3.785 L), and at 16 fl oz per pint that is 8 pints. It also works out to 4 quarts or 16 cups. An imperial gallon (4.546 L) also contains 8 pints, but they are the larger 568.26 mL ones.
Both are correct, it depends on where you are. "Liter" is the US spelling; "litre" is used in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland. The unit is identical either way: 1000 mL, symbol L, equal to 33.814 US fl oz.
33.814 US fluid oz, or 35.195 imperial fluid oz. So a 1 L bottle holds a little over a US quart (32 fl oz), and a 2 L bottle is roughly 67.6 fl oz.
2. One US fluid oz (29.5735 mL) is 2 tablespoons or 6 teaspoons. That makes a quarter-cup 4 tablespoons and a full cup 16 tablespoons.
No. A fluid oz measures volume (29.5735 mL); an oz measures weight (28.3495 g). They only line up for water by coincidence of definition. A cup of honey and a cup of oil are both 8 fl oz but weigh very different amounts, so never swap one unit for the other.