Grams of Sugar to Cups
Convert grams of granulated sugar to cups at 200 g a cup — the one ingredient that packs the same every time.
Updated
cups of granulated sugar
0.50cups
100 grams of granulated sugar = 0.50 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 sugar?
Exactly half a cup. One cup of granulated sugar is 200 g, so 100 g is 0.5 cups and 200 g is a full one. Unlike flour, sugar crystals do not compress, so the figure holds whether you scoop, spoon or pour it in.
This is granulated white sugar. Brown and powdered sugar behave differently and have their own pages.
Grams to cups — quick reference
| Granulated sugar (g) | Cups |
|---|---|
| 25 g | 0.13 cups |
| 50 g | 0.25 cups |
| 75 g | 0.38 cups |
| 100 g | 0.5 cups |
| 125 g | 0.63 cups |
| 150 g | 0.75 cups |
| 200 g | 1 cups |
| 250 g | 1.25 cups |
| 500 g | 2.5 cups |
The formula, worked line by line
One division by 200. It is the least troublesome conversion on this shelf, and the interesting question is not how to do it but why this ingredient cooperates when the one beside it does not.
“Sugar is the ingredient a measuring cup was actually good at. Almost everything written about the perils of cup measuring is really about flour.”
Knowing which is which saves effort. Reaching for the scale is worth it for flour every time; for granulated sugar it is worth it only when the recipe depends on a ratio rather than on a taste.
cups = grams / 200
grams = cups x 200
100 g / 200 = 0.5 cups
500 g / 200 = 2.5 cups
tablespoons = (decimal part of cups) x 16- Caster sugar
- 225 g
- Converted
- 1.13 cups
- Whole cups
- 1
- Remainder, times sixteen
- about 2 tablespoons
- Measure out
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons
- Error if rounded to 1 cup
- 25 g of sugar short
Twenty-five grams less sugar in a cake is a slightly less sweet, slightly less tender cake, and most people would not notice. The same rounding in a caramel changes the temperature curve and therefore the finished texture, which is the distinction worth carrying.
How much a few grams of sugar actually matters
In creamed cakes, sugar does structural work as well as sweetening: the crystals cut air into the butter, and that air is a large part of the rise. So very large reductions do change the result. Small ones, of five or ten percent, are absorbed without any visible consequence.
The sugars, side by side
- Granulated white sugar
- 200 g
- Brown sugar, packed
- 213 g
- Powdered sugar, unsifted
- 113 g
- Honey
- 340 g
Powdered sugar is barely more than half the weight of granulated in the same cup, because it is a fine powder full of air with a little cornstarch mixed through it. That single row explains why substituting sugars by volume goes so badly wrong.
The rule that comes out of all this is simple enough to remember at the counter: granulated sugar can be measured in cups without worrying, and every other sugar in the cupboard needs its own number.
How to use the grams of sugar to cups
Divide by 200. Granulated sugar is the ingredient this shelf can be relaxed about, and it is worth saying so directly, because most advice about measuring cups was written with flour in mind and does not transfer.
The reason is physical. Sugar crystals are hard, roughly uniform in size, and do not deform under the pressure of a measuring cup. However you get them into the cup, they settle into much the same arrangement, so the weight comes out much the same. Flour is a fine powder full of trapped air, and that air is what your technique squeezes out.
200 g
One cup of granulated sugar
however you fill it
0.5
Cups in 100 g
a genuinely clean number
2.5
Cups in 500 g
a standard bag opened
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The clean numbers are a small mercy and worth memorising. 100 g is half a cup, 200 g is a cup, 50 g is a quarter. Very few kitchen conversions land this tidily, and it happens here because 200 divides into round recipe weights without producing the long decimals that flour and butter throw out.
One caveat that is genuinely about sugar rather than borrowed from flour: this page is for standard granulated white sugar. Caster or superfine sugar has smaller crystals that pack slightly tighter, and coarse or demerara sugar has larger ones that pack looser. The difference is a few percent, which is inside the tolerance of anything you would bake.
- 50 g
- 0.25 cups, a quarter
- 100 g
- 0.5 cups, a half
- 150 g
- 0.75 cups, three quarters
- 200 g
- 1 cup exactly
- 250 g
- 1.25 cups
- 400 g
- 2 cups
- 500 g
- 2.5 cups
Every one of these lands on a mark a standard measuring set actually has. That is unusual on this shelf and it is the reason sugar is the ingredient people most often measure by volume without regretting it later.
The sugar that does need a technique
Brown sugar is measured packed, at 213 g a cup, and a loosely filled cup can be a quarter short of what the recipe expected.
Open grams of brown sugar →Gram weights of granulated sugar converted to cups at 200 g per cup, with the nearest standard measure so an awkward figure can be measured out in practice.
| Grams | Cups | Measure out as |
|---|---|---|
| 25 g | 0.13 | 2 tablespoons |
| 50 g | 0.25 | a quarter cup |
| 75 g | 0.38 | a third cup plus 2 teaspoons |
| 100 g | 0.5 | half a cup |
| 125 g | 0.63 | half a cup plus 2 tablespoons |
| 150 g | 0.75 | three quarters of a cup |
| 200 g | 1 | one cup |
| 250 g | 1.25 | a cup and a quarter |
| 500 g | 2.5 | two and a half cups |
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Why sugar measures reliably and flour does not
The difference is particle size and hardness. Sugar crystals are large enough to see and hard enough to resist being crushed, so they stack into a fairly fixed arrangement with a predictable amount of space between them. Nothing you do with a cup changes that arrangement much.
- Sugar, spooned in
- 200 g
- Sugar, scooped from the bag
- about 200 g
- Flour, spooned in
- 120 g
- Flour, scooped from the bag
- about 145 g
- Spread across methods
- sugar negligible, flour 21 percent
- Conclusion
- the warning is about flour, not cups
Advice to spoon rather than scoop is repeated as though it applied to everything in the kitchen. It applies to fine powders that trap air, which is flour, cocoa and powdered sugar. Granulated sugar, rice and most whole grains are indifferent to it.
This is also why sugar makes a useful calibration check. If you weigh a cup of your sugar and get something close to 200 g, your cup is a standard one and your scale agrees with the chart. If it comes out at 240 g, you are using a larger cup than this table assumes.
The sugars that need a different number
Granulated is the default, but the shelf holds several sugars with quite different densities, and the gaps between them are larger than any technique effect. Substituting one for another by volume rather than by weight is the mistake this section exists to prevent.
Do
- Use 200 g per cup for standard granulated white sugar
- Weigh for caramel, meringue, jam and anything held at a ratio
- Level the cup rather than leaving it mounded
- Check the other sugar pages before substituting by volume
Don't
- Apply this figure to brown or powdered sugar
- Pack granulated sugar down as you would brown sugar
- Assume caster and granulated weigh identically per cup
- Substitute one sugar for another cup for cup in a set recipe
Brown sugar comes to 213 g per packed cup and powdered sugar to 113 g unsifted. Swapping powdered for granulated cup for cup would put barely half the sugar in the bowl by weight, which in a meringue or a caramel is not an adjustment but a failure.
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Questions people ask
How many cups is 100 grams of sugar?
Exactly half a cup, since one cup of granulated sugar weighs 200 g. It is one of the few conversions on this shelf that lands on a clean fraction, which is why sugar quantities in recipes so often come in round hundreds of grams or tidy cup fractions.
How many cups is 500 grams of sugar?
Two and a half cups, at 200 g per cup. That is roughly a standard small bag, and it converts cleanly enough to measure out with an ordinary cup set: two full cups plus a half-cup measure, with no tablespoons needed to finish it off.
Does it matter whether I scoop or spoon sugar?
Not meaningfully. Sugar crystals are hard and do not compress, so a scooped cup and a spooned cup come out at about the same weight. The spoon-and-level advice repeated everywhere is really about fine powders such as flour and cocoa, which trap air that your technique squeezes out.
Is caster sugar the same as granulated for this conversion?
Close enough for baking. Caster sugar has smaller crystals that pack a little tighter, so a cup weighs slightly more than 200 g, but the difference is a few percent and sits inside the tolerance of any recipe that would call for either. Coarse sugars run slightly light for the same reason.
Can I swap powdered sugar for granulated cup for cup?
No. A cup of unsifted powdered sugar weighs about 113 g against granulated at 200 g, so swapping by volume puts a little over half the sugar in by weight. Powdered sugar also contains cornstarch, which changes how it behaves in anything cooked rather than simply mixed.
Sources
Where the constants and formulas on this page come from. Each line names the figure it backs.
One cup of granulated sugar weighs 200 g, brown sugar 213 g packed, and powdered sugar 113 g unsifted.
Ingredient Weight Chart — King Arthur Baking
The cup used for nutrition labelling is defined as 240 millilitres, the volume this density is measured against.
21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii) — Nutrition labeling of food — US Government Publishing Office
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