Grams of Flour to Cups
Convert grams of all-purpose flour to cups at 120 g a cup — the direction a metric recipe leaves you in.
Updated
cups of all-purpose flour
0.83cups
100 grams of all-purpose flour = 0.83 cups
Values use the 240 ml US cup, spoon-and-level — your bag’s label may differ slightly.
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In short
How many cups is 100 grams of flour?
0.83 cups, a little over three quarters. One cup of all-purpose flour is 120 g when spooned into the cup and levelled. Scoop the cup through the bag instead and it holds around 145 g, so the same 100 g becomes only 0.69 cups by that method.
The 120 g figure assumes spoon-and-level. How you fill the cup changes it by about 20 percent.
Grams to cups — quick reference
| All-purpose flour (g) | Cups |
|---|---|
| 25 g | 0.21 cups |
| 50 g | 0.42 cups |
| 75 g | 0.63 cups |
| 100 g | 0.83 cups |
| 125 g | 1.04 cups |
| 150 g | 1.25 cups |
| 200 g | 1.67 cups |
| 250 g | 2.08 cups |
| 500 g | 4.17 cups |
The formula, worked line by line
One division by 120. The number itself is not in dispute; what is in dispute is whether the cup you are about to fill will actually hold 120 g, and that is decided by your hands rather than by arithmetic.
“The conversion is exact. The measurement is not. Every error in this recipe enters after the calculator has finished.”
That is the honest position for a converter to take. It can give a faithful cup figure and it cannot make a cup hold what it says, so the useful part of the page is everything about filling it.
cups = grams / 120
grams = cups x 120
100 g / 120 = 0.83 cups
500 g / 120 = 4.17 cups
scooped: 500 g / 145 = 3.45 cups- Recipe asks for
- 200 g flour
- Converted
- 1.67 cups
- Whole cups
- 1
- Remainder
- 0.67 cups
- Times sixteen
- about 11 tablespoons
- Measure out
- 1 cup plus 11 tablespoons
Eleven tablespoons is tedious but exact, and it is a great deal better than rounding 1.67 up to a round two cups, which would add 40 g of flour. If the recipe is forgiving, one and two thirds cups measured by eye is the middle path.
Why flour settles in the first place
Flour is a powder of very fine particles with a lot of air between them, and that air is squeezed out by any vibration. A bag transported across a country arrives denser than it left. Stirring before measuring restores something close to the loose state the 120 g figure was measured in.
The flours worth telling apart
- All-purpose flour
- 120 g
- Bread flour
- 120 g
- Whole-wheat flour
- 113 g
- Cake flour, sifted
- lighter still
- Flour, scooped rather than spooned
- about 145 g
The last row is not a different flour. It is the same all-purpose flour measured by a different action, and it differs from the first row by more than whole-wheat does. Technique moves this figure further than choosing another grain.
The short version: if the recipe was written in grams, the writer chose grams for a reason. Converting away from them is a step backwards, and worth taking only when there is genuinely no scale in the building.
How to use the grams of flour to cups
Divide by 120. That single number is the weight of one cup of all-purpose flour filled the way recipe writers assume, which is spooned in loosely and levelled off. Everything difficult about this conversion is contained in the phrase "the way recipe writers assume", because most people do not fill a cup that way.
The common method is to push the cup down into the bag and lift it out full. That compacts the flour against the walls of the cup and packs in roughly 145 g rather than 120. It is faster, it feels more decisive, and it delivers about twenty percent more flour than the recipe asked for.
120 g
A spooned and levelled cup
what recipes mean
145 g
A cup scooped from the bag
a common result
20.83%
How much extra that is
per cup, every cup
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Twenty percent extra flour is not a subtle error. In a cake it produces a dry, tight crumb. In bread it stiffens the dough and holds back the rise. In pastry it makes something that cracks rather than folds. The recipe will be blamed, then the oven, and the measuring cup will not come up at all.
Working from grams gives you one advantage the other direction does not: you already know the target weight. If a scale is anywhere in the house, use it and ignore the cup figure entirely. Tare a bowl, spoon flour in until the display reads the number, and every source of error above disappears at once.
- 50 g
- 0.42 cups, a scant half
- 100 g
- 0.83 cups
- 125 g
- 1.04 cups, a level cup
- 200 g
- 1.67 cups
- 250 g
- 2.08 cups
- 500 g
- 4.17 cups
Note how close 125 g sits to a single cup. Many European recipes use 125 g as their flour unit for exactly that reason, and it is a useful anchor: if a recipe asks for a number near a multiple of 125, it was probably written in cups first and converted afterwards.
The same weight in a different ingredient
Sugar behaves nothing like flour in a cup: it packs to the same density however you fill it, so 200 g is reliably one cup and no technique is involved.
Open grams of sugar to cups →Gram weights of all-purpose flour converted to cups at 120 g per spooned cup, with the cups the same weight would fill if the cup were scooped from the bag instead.
| Grams | Cups (spooned, 120 g) | Cups (scooped, 145 g) |
|---|---|---|
| 25 g | 0.21 | 0.17 |
| 50 g | 0.42 | 0.34 |
| 75 g | 0.63 | 0.52 |
| 100 g | 0.83 | 0.69 |
| 125 g | 1.04 | 0.86 |
| 150 g | 1.25 | 1.03 |
| 200 g | 1.67 | 1.38 |
| 250 g | 2.08 | 1.72 |
| 500 g | 4.17 | 3.45 |
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What scooping actually costs a recipe
The gap is worth seeing as a whole recipe rather than as a percentage. Take a standard loaf built on 500 g of flour and convert it faithfully at 120 g per cup. You get 4.17 cups. Now imagine those cups being filled by scooping, and weigh what ends up in the bowl.
- Recipe calls for
- 500 g flour
- Converted
- 4.17 cups
- Spooned, four and a sixth cups
- 500 g
- Scooped, the same cups
- about 604 g
- Extra flour in the bowl
- about 104 g
- Hydration falls from
- 70 percent to about 58
The water in the recipe has not changed, so the dough is now far drier than intended. That is a different bread, not a slightly worse version of the same one, and no amount of proving time will recover it.
Run the arithmetic the other way and it explains a common frustration. Somebody who scoops needs only about 3.45 cups to reach 500 g. If they follow the converted figure of 4.17 cups, they have overshot by nearly three quarters of a cup without doing anything a recipe warned them about.
Which flour the 120 g figure describes
The figure on this page is for plain all-purpose flour. Bread flour measures the same at 120 g per cup, so the two are interchangeable for conversion even though they behave differently in the dough. Whole-wheat flour is lighter in the cup at 113 g, because the bran keeps the particles further apart.
Do
- Stir the flour in its container before measuring any of it
- Spoon it into the cup and level with a straight edge
- Weigh instead whenever a scale is within reach
- Use 113 g per cup for whole-wheat rather than 120
Don't
- Dip the measuring cup into the bag and lift it out
- Tap or shake the cup to settle the flour flat
- Press flour down to fit more under the rim
- Assume a sifted cup and an unsifted one weigh the same
Sifted flour is a fourth case and the most commonly mishandled. A cup of flour sifted before measuring holds noticeably less than one sifted after, and the difference is entirely in the word order. "One cup sifted flour" means sift, then measure. "One cup flour, sifted" means measure, then sift.
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Questions people ask
How many cups is 100 grams of flour?
0.83 cups, slightly over three quarters, using 120 g for one spooned and levelled cup. If you fill the cup by scooping it through the bag it will hold closer to 145 g, in which case 100 g fills only about 0.69 cups. The measuring method changes the answer by roughly twenty percent.
How many cups is 500 grams of flour?
4.17 cups when the flour is spooned into the cup and levelled off. Measured by scooping, the same 500 g fills about 3.45 cups, because each scooped cup holds around 145 g rather than 120. That is a difference of nearly three quarters of a cup on a single loaf of bread.
Why do recipes give flour in grams?
Because a gram is unambiguous and a cup is not. The same cup can hold anywhere from about 120 to 145 g of the same flour depending on how it is filled, so a recipe written in cups is also relying on the reader using the technique the writer had in mind, which is rarely stated.
Is a cup of bread flour the same as a cup of all-purpose?
By weight, effectively yes: both come to about 120 g per spooned cup. They differ in protein content, which changes how the dough behaves, but not enough in density to change the conversion. Whole-wheat flour is the one to treat separately, at around 113 g per cup.
Should I sift before or after measuring?
Follow the word order in the recipe. "One cup sifted flour" means sift first and then measure, which gives a lighter cup. "One cup flour, sifted" means measure first and sift afterwards. The two produce noticeably different weights, and the phrasing is the only thing that tells you which was meant.
Sources
Where the constants and formulas on this page come from. Each line names the figure it backs.
One cup of all-purpose flour weighs 120 g when spooned into the cup and levelled, and whole-wheat flour weighs 113 g.
Ingredient Weight Chart — King Arthur Baking
Scooping a measuring cup through the flour bag compacts it and yields substantially more flour than spooning and levelling.
How to measure flour the right way — King Arthur Baking
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