Converters guide
Cups to milliliters: US customary, legal, and metric cups
“One cup of water” is three different milliliter counts depending on who printed the book. The cups-to-milliliters tool on this site is the US customary cup of 8 fluid ounces — 236.588 mL. Nutrition labels and Australian cups are siblings, not twins.
Updated 2026-09-19
Pick the dictionary before you scale a cake
US customary: 1 cup = 236.588 mL. That is the Pyrex-ish liquid cup most US blogs assume.
US legal (FDA): 240 mL. Easier arithmetic on a label. Four legal cups are 960 mL, not a customary quart.
Metric / AU / NZ: 250 mL. If the author is in Melbourne, start there.
Dry cups are not milliliters of the food
A cup of flour is a volume of packed or spooned powder, then grams. Water’s milliliters match the cup. Flour’s grams do not. Use the flour cups-to-grams page when the recipe is baking, not the water converter.
Key takeaways
- US fluid cup here is 236.588 mL.
- 240 mL is a label cup. 250 mL is a metric cup.
- Dry ingredients need grams, not “the same mL as water.”