Cups to milliliters

The reverse conversion matters when a US recipe needs to be followed with a metric measuring jug instead of cup measures, which is common outside North America where cup-based kitchenware is far less standard. Getting the exact milliliter figure, rather than a rounded guess, matters most in recipes like baking where ratios between liquid and dry ingredients are easy to throw off, even by a small percentage.

Coffee and tea brewing ratios are a second common trigger: pour-over and French press recipes are often written as a certain number of milliliters of water per cup of grounds, so a home brewer measuring water with a US cup needs the milliliter equivalent to hit a published ratio precisely, since brewing ratios are sensitive enough to noticeably change the taste of the final cup. A ratio quoted as 240 mL of water per cup of grounds, for example, is already a rounded figure, and a brewer chasing real consistency may prefer the exact 236.588 mL value instead.

The US cup and the milliliter are both volume units on the same linear scale, so converting between them is a single fixed multiplier with no offset.

Multiply the cup value by 236.5882365 to get milliliters:

mL = cup × 236.5882365

At common volumes: 1 cup comes to 236.59 mL, 2 cups come to 473.18 mL, and half a cup comes to 118.29 mL, covering most recipe quantities.

Most liquid measuring jugs are marked in 25 mL or 50 mL increments, so rounding the result to the nearest marking is normal for cooking; only baking recipes sensitive to ratios, or lab-style measuring, need the full 236.5882365 figure to stay accurate across repeated batches.

The most common mistake is treating 250 mL as one cup, which is correct for the Australian and UK metric cup but about 5.6% too generous for the US customary cup this page converts from, enough to noticeably change a recipe measured out in several cups at once.